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The family bed began innocently enough. The funny thing about innocence, however, is that it does not carry the wisdom of experience. I thought this to myself as I flipped around trying to get comfortable in the confined space of my daughter's bottom bunk. If only I could have back peddled into a parental backbone. Perhaps then I would not find myself regularly sneaking off to get my beauty sleep on a plasticized toddler bed.

My husband, John, was sleeping with our two children in a king sized bed that was meant for only us. Thus far, he hadn't caught on to the fact that I had found an escape route from the nightly family bed torture. He still woke up every morning unable to feel his arms after a night of children sleeping on them, and he most certainly was not rested.

The main dilemma with the whole co-sleeping situation was once you start how or when do you stop? When the children were nursing infants, it made sense to my husband and me to have them in bed with us. But, then how does one transition a baby, who is now habituated to the co-sleeping arrangement, into a crib?

By the ages of 4 and 2, we still had not figured out how to put Davy and Anna in their own beds without causing a post-traumatic stress disorder. As time wore on, however, it was hard not to question who really was in danger of developing PTSD, them or us.

It seemed that the children were a lot more emotionally resilient and in control than we as their parents were. So, there we were, suffering the consequences of parental impotency. We had made our bed - now the whole family was sleeping in it.

From the start of the family bed madness, it was never possible to get a full night of uninterrupted sleep. Early on, John had gotten into the habit of taking our infant son onto his chest and patting his bottom while chanting a lullaby. This worked so well at putting baby Davy to sleep that John started the same routine two years later when our daughter, Anna, was born

Although it did work well, the children became so reliant on the bedtime ritual that they couldn't fall asleep without it. They also couldn't get back to sleep without it - even as they grew older and bigger. This addiction to John's bum-patting/chanting ritual caused frequent nighttime awakenings, as the children squirmed, cried, and awoke to get their fix before falling back to sleep again.

In addition, as the children grew bigger, especially Davy, all the nighttime commotion increasingly included John yelling out in pain.

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