In the bedroom

It’s time for us to share some personal stuff here at Jen on the Edge. Specifically, I want to know about your bed.

No, not WHAT you do in it, but WHAT SIZE it (the bed — you pervs) is.

Pete and I sleep in a full size, which I’m guessing is abnormally small for married people with 16-ish years of togetherness under their belts.

In the beginning, there were twin beds — one each in our respective college bedrooms. Note that I have mentioned two different beds in two different rooms, because we would never ever cohabitate or anything like that before we got married. (Hey, don’t call me Pinocchio! Would I lie to you? Hell yes I would. No I would not.) We got so used to those teeny beds that anything larger would have been pure decadence, akin to a vibrating bed with satin sheets and a mirror on the ceiling overhead.

When we were engaged legally and lawfully married, we got a full size bed — in fact, the same one that currently takes up space in the Jenworld master bedroom. The bed itself is a Colonial four-poster and was our first nice piece of furniture.

(Can you imagine it? We had a combination of hand-me-down and el cheapo furniture on which we played quarters with entertained our college drinking buddies guests, and the nicest piece of furniture was hidden away in a bedroom. We should have just hosted people in bed — John and Yoko style.)

Our bed has been very comfortable all these years, with a few exceptions.

The first time was when I was pregnant with Graceful and my ginormous bloated beautiful belly took up an inordinate amount of space. Let’s just say it’s not a good thing when an unborn child can kick her father awake in the middle of the night. Graceful slept with us for a couple of weeks after she was born, but she by and large preferred her crib to sharing with us. Maybe it was because Pete snored? So Pete and I went back to a two-person-zero-baby/belly bed.

The next time the Jenworld marital bed seemed a bit snug was when I was pregnant with Elegant. Cue in the large belly, plus add in numerous pillows to support my belly, back, hips, and all other body parts. Rolling over at night involved me fully waking up, steeling myself for major exertion, and then rolling over in a ten-point maneuver that also involved grunting. No, Pete didn’t sleep so well. But he didn’t complain too much once I mentioned giving him a vasectomy my own damn self, as he is a smart man who knows when to back away from the crazy woman loving and caring husband.

Then, Elegant was born and decided that she wasn’t really ready to be separated from me and that her preferred sleeping spot was wherever I happened to be. Pete and I would carefully place her between us in our bed and then spend the rest of the night hanging off the edges of the mattress whilst young El (weighing in at a mere nine pounds) took up all of the prime real estate. It took only a couple of nights of this before Pete decided that he belonged in a spare bed across the hall. And I agreed missed him greatly.  Elegant and I slept in spatial splendor until a couple of months later when Pete reasserted his martial rights we decided it was time for the baby to sleep on her own.

From that time on, the Jenworld marital bed has been a two adult-zero child space. Occasionally, a child would wander across the hall and climb in with us, but we’d let her wiggle and squirm for a few minutes and then take her back to the perfectly good pink princess bed that she’d just vacated. Eventually, the girls realized that we are not a family of co-sleepers and that if they want company, they’ll have to wait until they’re over 18 and at college sleep with their stuffed animals and American Girl dolls.

In the past couple of years, Pete and I have discussed getting a larger. A queen size, not king, which is just too damn big. We talk about it only, because we’re too lazy to actually do anything about it we prefer our own cozy little spot where we can’t help but sleep snuggled together like rats in a cage in marital bliss. When we travel, hotel rooms always have either queen or king sized beds, so we like to test our theory that queen size would work better for us but king is too large. What invariably happens, however, is that I gripe mightily over even the queen sized bed. I’m so used to sleeping with my conjoined twin that I miss him when he’s another 12 inches further away.

(Pete, on the other hand, revels in that extra space. Probably because it’s harder for me to kick him when he snores.)

While we were in England, every single bed we slept in was a queen or king, so my impressions of those larger beds are very fresh in my mind. Too big and too damn big. Plus, with Pete all those many inches away, my primary source of warmth in that damp and cold country was not immediately available to me.

(Again, Pete probably does not concur.)

(Note to Hen: If you’re going to put king beds in your house, for heaven’s sakes, don’t use two single mattresses pushed together. It doesn’t work. Trust me on this one.)

So right now I’m not feeling too eager to buy a larger bed. What we have is fine with me except for those nights when Pete snores directly in my ear all of the time.

So now it’s time for an informal poll to see what kinds of beds Jenworld readers like best: twin, full, queen, king, hammock, vibrating Playboy mansion bed, or something else entirely.