Mama, Will You Lay With Me?

On a routine day, I get up around 5 or 5:30 a.m. I work for a few hours, take a quick shower if I’m lucky, and then, a little before 8, I wake my sleepy-headed little girl up for school.

I get her fed and dressed. We get her teeth brushed, and her coat and shoes on. She climbs in the car, and then, after a short 5-minute ride, back out again. She gives me a quick kiss and hug and yells, “Bye, Mom!” before she runs into the school. Have fun, I tell her. Make good choices.

I zip back home to work for a few more hours while she’s at school, and then, in what seems like 3 minutes instead of 3 hours, I head back to the school to pick her up.

I make us lunch, clean up the kitchen. We do homework, then play, or go shopping, or watch a movie, or meet up with friends for a play date.

Around 5, I start getting dinner ready. I cook, we eat, and then if the stars align, I work for a few more hours while her daddy takes over.

Around 7:30, she gets a bath, then a story and a snack. Bedtime comes shortly after.

By this point, as any parent knows, I’m running on fumes. I want to be done adulting for the day. I just want to put my fat pants on and watch bad TV or start reading one of the six novels that remain untouched on my nightstand.

But each and every night, after we tuck her in, I hear her tiny voice in the dark: “Mama, will you lay with me?”

And each and every night, I cave.  As tired as I am, and as much as I just want to quit for the night, I say, “Sure, honey. Just for a few minutes, ok?”

Sometimes, a few minutes are all she needs. Other nights, when I try to get up, she’ll beg me to stay for just “one more minute.” And on other nights, I’ll be so tired that I’ll fall asleep in her bed, waking up at 11 p.m. or 1 a.m., where I’ll stumble blindly back into my own bed, novels still untouched, Netflix queue unchanged.

She’s six now. It’s safe to say that this little routine of ours has been in play since she first started sleeping in her big girl bed — and that was, oh, three years ago.

Now, if you had asked pre-child me what I thought about co-sleeping, I probably would have said something like, “Oh, I would NEVER do that. Children need to fall asleep on their own! They need to learn to be independent!”

But here’s the thing: pre-child me didn’t know shit.

As tired as I get – and OH BOY do I get tired – I always, always take those few minutes (or, let’s face it, hours) to lay with my not-so-baby girl.

You see, in the moments before she finally falls asleep, an incredible thing happens. She’ll start talking. She’ll talk about the stuff that she didn’t feel like talking about just a few hours before. She’ll tell me a few funny things that happened in school that day, or she’ll tell me what she wants to be for Halloween next year, or she’ll ask me if mermaids and fairies are real. She’ll ask me how many more sleeps until her birthday or Christmas or Valentine’s Day. Sometimes, she’ll say that I smell pretty, or she’ll tell me that she loves me more than butterflies. Sometimes, even after all these years, she’ll ask me to sing her a lullaby.

We giggle, we snuggle, and I relish every single second.

Sometimes, after I sneak out of her room, she’ll find her way back into our bed around 3 a.m., her pillow and stuffed animals tucked into her arms.

“Mama,” she’ll say, “I want snuggles.”

“Ok,” I say. “Come on.”

Who could resist?

The way I see it, in a few short years, she’ll be closing the door behind me, asking me – nay, TELLING me — to give her some privacy. So, for now, for as long as this little slice of heaven lasts, when my baby girl asks, “Mama, will you lay with me?” my answer will always, always be a resounding “yes.”

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