Last night I put my daughter to bed and spent some much deserved tv-veg-out-time. We don’t have cable, and I am fickle when it comes to watching shows, so I tend not to watch much tv. My husband and I watched the entire first season of iZombie on HuluPlus though, and caught up on the new season last night. Feel free to judge, I’m okay with it. I digress…

After a couple hours of tv I went in to bed, only to find our daughter stretched out across the middle/top of our Eastern King. I thought it was incredibly cute, as well as something that I *know* other bed sharing families deal with, so I snapped a picture and posted it to Instagram with the comment “You know you bed share when…”. As I sat there in the dark staring at the picture, something came over me and I deleted it.

Yes, she was close to a pillow. She is 20 mos old, and fully able to navigate the pillows, but other people don’t know that. Her stuffed tiger, that she commandeered from her brother and named Mr. Mow (for Meow), was also near her. She is my second bed shared child. It is a practice I believe in for our family. I understand that many a tragedy has occurred during bed sharing, and I don’t take that lightly. I also don’t let it scare me in to making different choices for my family. I feel good about bed sharing. I respect that it doesn’t (and shouldn’t) work for all families.

That written, when I see a post/picture of a beautiful baby sleeping in a crib I never feel compelled to tell the poster that they should reconsider their sleeping arrangements. I never lecture or provide links or even suggest they consider cosleeping or bed sharing. If I comment, it is on the beauty of infant/toddler/child sleep because let’s be honest…sleep is a beautiful thing for children. Can I get a high five?

The process of reacclimating to social media is going to be interesting for me. I am fully aware of the myriad opinions that exist across the globe and the internet, I’m just not used to dealing with them all the time anymore. I have friends across all boards, and support them happily while feeling supported. While all of that is great, I am also acutely aware that I will experience a lot of different things as I open myself up to the world, and that is hard for me. I am taking this leap though, because I believe it important. I believe myself and my contribution to be important. Not in any kind of self aggrandizing way, simply that I matter. And so do you. We all do.