Dangers of co-sleeping: Parental version

There are known dangers to co-sleeping, though there are also ways to ensure co-sleeping is safer than it would otherwise be if you took no precautions. But who has studied the dangers of co-sleeping to parents?

Nobody. 

It's all about the babies. Blah, blah, blah. Babies this, babies that. 

Nobody ever mentions harms that can befall the parents!

(Note that this is very tongue-in-cheek. I love babies (obviously, I hope) and I think their safety is important. While I admittedly have done a lot of co-sleeping, I have always taken precautions to avoid SIDS. But for real though...what about me?!)

Last night Phoebe climbed into bed with us at...some point in the night. I don't know when. But I know that I helped haul her onto the bed and settle her into her spot—right in the middle. 

She fell asleep fairly quickly.

Or perhaps I was the one who fell asleep quickly and was simply unaware of any shenanigans she was pulling (sometimes rather than simply going back to sleep she's a little bed bug, quite the bother). 

But I'm pretty sure she settled down right away and committed to going to sleep. 

So there I was, serenely sleeping on my back, with my cherubic toddler beside me, and dozing daddy on the other side of her. All was well with the world and then...

*POW*

"OW!" I yelled into the night (like a poet). 

"Sorry, mean to," Phoebe whispered.

"Holy cow...ow, ow, ow, ow, ow..." I said, clutching my nose.

"What happened?" Andrew asked (the fact that I yelled loud enough to wake him up is impressive).

"Phoebe must have wanted to share my pillow," I said (sometimes Phoebe prefers my pillow to hers; in fact, her true preference is to sleep plastered to my body). "She just slammed her head into my nose."

"Sorry, mean to," she said again. 

"I don't think it's bleeding," I said. "But...yikes...I am in so much pain."

"Sorry, mean to."

"It's okay, baby. Just...think about personal space. Let's go back to sleep."

My nose was still pretty sore when we got up in the morning and I'm honestly not convinced that it entirely feels...right. It doesn't hurt, per se. It just doesn't feel...like my nose...yet...if that makes sense. It feels fuzzy—like the feeling in your mouth after the dentist numbs you, where it feels like your lips and cheeks and nose and chin are all...tingly and swollen...but they're not really swollen. That's a little bit how my nose feels. 

But it doesn't actually appear swollen. And there's no visible bruising. 

I wonder if it's like a tactile-satiation thing, where I've been thinking about and touching my nose so much more than I normally do...so of course it doesn't feel...right.

I don't know. 

Sometimes when I, for example, see someone get punched on television—like really just straight up punched in the face, for example—I wonder how I'd handle it. Could I get punched in the face and keep on fighting? Or would I just pass out? Sometimes these fight scenes show someone getting punched several times...probably (I actually don't watch a lot of fight scenes). How?!

After last night I'm pretty sure that if anyone bigger than, you know, my toddler were to punch me in the face, I'd definitely pass out. Or run away. Or call a time out. Or whatever.