There was a time when I could not wait for my bed to belong to me again.
I wanted to stretch my legs without hitting a small body. I wanted to turn from one side to the other without waking someone. I wanted to sleep without an arm trapped beneath a child’s head, without tiny feet pressed into my stomach, without someone deciding that the exact space I was occupying was the only comfortable place left on the entire mattress.
Back then, bedtime often felt less like rest and more like negotiation. When there were only M (my eldest) and A (my second born), each of them slept on one of my arms. One on the left, one on the right, as though my body had been designed specifically to become their pillow. Somehow, despite having an entire side each, they would still argue about who should sleep where.
There were nights when my arms went completely numb beneath them. I would lie there staring at the ceiling, too afraid to move because I knew one small adjustment could wake both children and restart the entire bedtime process.
It was ridiculous. It was exhausting. And it was also, although I did not always recognise it then, incredibly tender.
For a season, I was breastfeeding both of them too. A was born when M was only eighteen months old, and M continued breastfeeding until she was three years and two months old. I cannot remember exactly how long I tandem-fed them or the precise details of how I managed everyone during those nights. Motherhood has a way of blurring the hardest seasons once we are safely on the other side of them.
I remember the feeling more than the logistics. I remember always being needed. My arms, my body, my bed and my sleep seemed to belong to everyone except me. There was always someone reaching for me, lying against me or calling for me in the dark.
At the time, I longed for space. I wanted one uninterrupted night. I wanted to sleep in whatever position I liked. I wanted to wake up without feeling as though I had spent the night folded into an impossible shape just to keep everyone comfortable. I knew even then that I would probably miss it one day. Mothers are warned about this constantly.
People tell us that the children will not always be this small. They tell us that one day, nobody will ask to be carried. One day, nobody will crawl into our beds. One day, the house will become quiet and we will wish for the noise again.
I understood the warning. I tried to prepare myself for it. But knowing that a season will end does not make the ending feel any less sudden when it finally arrives.
When H (my third born) was born, the sleeping arrangement changed again.
M had to give up the place she had always known. A younger sibling now occupied the space beside me, and although M was growing, she was still my little girl too. She would lie behind or beside whichever sibling was closest to me, and I would reach my arm around to hold her.
It was my quiet way of telling her, I am still here for you too. Even when my arms were full, I wanted her to know that she had not been replaced. Her place had changed, but she still belonged.
Perhaps that is what so much of motherhood is.
Trying to make room for every child, even when there never seems to be enough room. Trying to reassure the older ones while tending to the younger ones. Trying to divide yourself without allowing any child to feel that your love has been divided.
By the time L (my fourth born) entered our lives, the girls had gradually stopped sleeping with me. There was no grand announcement. No final night that I recognised as the final night. They simply became older.
They moved into their own spaces. They became comfortable sleeping without my arm beneath their heads. They stopped needing my body to feel safe through the night. The transition happened so quietly that I did not fully notice what I had lost until it was already gone.
For years, I had complained about not having enough space. Then, one day, there was space.
And my heart ached.
The bed that I had once desperately wanted back suddenly felt too large. I missed the weight of them. I missed the warmth beside me. I missed the tiny hands reaching out in their sleep just to make sure I was still there. I even missed the arguments over who would sleep on which side.
That is the strange contradiction of motherhood.
We can be completely exhausted by a season and still grieve when it ends. We can need space and still miss being needed. We can dream of independence for our children and then feel a quiet sadness when they begin to claim it.
I had prepared myself for the possibility that I would miss those nights, but preparation did not protect me from the ache.
L is still moving between both worlds.
Some nights, he sleeps independently in his own room. Other times, he comes into mine first thing in the morning and curls himself against me as though that is where the day must begin. I know this season will pass too. One day, he will stop coming in for morning snuggles. One day, he will wake up and begin his day without first searching for me. I know it.
And perhaps because I know it now, I try to remain inside those moments a little longer. I do not rush him away. I notice the weight of his head against me. I notice the warmth of his body. I notice how naturally he still assumes that there will always be space for him beside me.
The older children may no longer sleep in my room every night, but they have not stopped returning. On weekends and school holidays, the first thing they often do is gather in my room. They climb onto the bed, claim their corners and immediately begin fighting over space as though no time has passed at all. The bed fills again.
There are too many bodies, too many voices, too many elbows and not enough room. And somehow, I love it. Perhaps I never truly got my bed back. Perhaps it was never only mine to begin with.
For years, it was the place where my children learned that they were safe. It was where they cried, slept, fed, argued, cuddled and returned whenever they needed closeness.
Now that they are older, the closeness looks different. They no longer need to sleep in my arms every night, but they still come into my room when they want to talk. They still gather on the bed when there is nowhere else they would rather be. They still return to the same space that once held all of us through some of the longest and most exhausting nights of motherhood.
I once thought I was waiting for the day my bed would finally belong to me again. But perhaps it never stopped belonging to all of us. The children simply grew from sleeping in my arms every night to returning whenever they wanted to feel close again.
Motherhood keeps teaching me that the seasons we beg to end are often the ones we later ache to revisit. Not because they were easy. Not because we imagined the exhaustion.
But because love was there too, buried beneath the sleeplessness, the numb arms, the cramped muscles and the endless need.
Sometimes, what we thought we lost has not disappeared.
It has only changed shape.
Ummi Noi