"You're not doing family bed."

My mother says in a dismissively demanding way, which makes me laugh and shout. She sees a smothered grandbaby and mocks a fictitious future where smelly pre-pubescent children are lodged between our legs. And after years of intimacy deprivation, you and your husband will only then realize the fault in your parenting ways and howl at the deaf moon, 

"WHY OH WHY DIDN'T WE JUST GET A CRIB?" 

Our initial plan was for the shocking transition between warm womb and cold world, I explain. Yes, I am due in August. A baby in bed is for comfort and milk. And I wasn't going to just plop the newborn in between our fidgety forearms, squishy pillows and dog-dandered comforter. Goodness! There are special bumpered baby sleepers...sleepers meant, apparently, for teeny tiny parents or king-sized beds. We are not this, nor do we have this. We are attached, quite literally, to our unquestionably long limbs and we share a bed sized for a queen. In addition, I am a greedy sheet stealer, while he is a blanket flapper. Whenever the corners of the layered bedding are not aligned perfectly, he whips the cotton into hurricane winds until the hemmed edges are kissing and I am shivering and shrieking to STOP RIGHT NOW OR I WILL DIVORCE YOU! We are not still, small sleepers, but blanket hoarders and wigglers, sliding to the center of our bed where we either join like a sweet set of silver spoons or whine incoherent commands for the re-occupation of what we think is our SIDE OF THE BED! 

Mom and I lay side by side in her bed. I grasp and tuck a sheer sheet of pregnant optimism beneath my chin, while beside me, her 35-year-old quilt of tattered patches warms and protects her. I will buy a blue bathrobe and perfume, I decide. I won't be a good mother otherwise. I don't tell her this, but instead assure her that a friend has offered us her crib. When I finally finish talking, she falls into a light snoring slumber and I make a note of the irony.