Is anyone getting enough? Not if you’re the parent of young children, it seems.

I have a friend who has a teething 10-month-old. She’s not sleeping much these days. Neither is another friend, whose 4-year-old daughter wakes up at night wanting to crawl into bed with her mom and dad.

At my house, I have become “a reluctant co-sleeper,” a term that cropped up in a New York Times article last year about the family bed. I didn’t listen to some of my friends who advised against sleeping together. It was so convenient when they were little, but now that they’re 4 and 1 ½, my husband and I are running out of room in our queen-size bed.

On most nights, all four of us are still playing this exhausting game of “musical beds” – moving from one bed to another in an effort to get some sleep. It usually begins after our 4-year-old wakes up in the middle of the night, climbs out of his bunk bed and joins the rest of us. The move creates a domino effect, forcing my husband to relocate to the guest room. When I try to escape so I can sleep alone, one or both children wake up and try to join me.

As the Times article points out, we reluctant co-sleepers are just “too tired to disrupt a practice that may irritate one or both adults, but in the end seems to promise the most amount of sleep for the most people in the house.”

Which for me, adds up to about six hours.

How about you? Are you getting enough sleep? Any advice on how to get children to sleep through the night?

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