The horrors of co-sleeping

Reddit, I'm here under an anonymous account to get some issues off of my chest. These are the things I want to say to my wife, but can't say to my wife, so I'm going to share some contrarian advice to parents who are thinking of co-sleeping with their children.​I have an established career and make practically all of our income, while also working through an engineering degree on a part-time basis to build long-term career growth. My wife is starting a less demanding career, so she works a low-income internship from home and handles 90% of our kids' needs.​Three years ago, we had our first of two children. My wife had done a lot of reading about co-sleeping and was dead-set on it. I trusted her judgment. I wish I hadn't.​As it happened, our first son had colic for six months, causing him to wake up in the middle of the night shrieking in pain, repeatedly, every night. It quickly became apparent that I couldn't keep serving as the primary income source *and* maintain any progress in my studies on chronically low sleep. I bailed out of our bedroom and moved to a basement couch so I could sleep through the night and keep our income stable.​Our sex life essentially vanished. My wife was dealing with ongoing health issues and experiencing low libido. Our loss of regular physical contact at night created a loss of emotional connectedness. And our bed was almost constantly occupied by our son at night, which put a big dent in our usual spontaneity.​My wife had decided that our boy would be co-sleeping until he was ready to move into his own room. I expected our split sleeping arrangements to be temporary... but we didn't really talk about a specific timeline... so this temporary arrangement turned into a year, and then two years, and then three years. We argued frequently, which always ended: "We committed to this together, and I think that stopping now will cause bigger problems, so our best choice is to continue." She's done all the reading, so again, I have to trust her judgment.​Our second boy was born shortly before our first boy turned three. Again, my wife was dead-set on co-sleeping. I figured it would just be more of the same, and not much would change, right? Wrong.​Our older boy apparently isn't crazy about sharing his mama. He began exhibiting severe boundary issues - constantly cramming up against her at night, pushing his feet into her, pulling her hair, touching her face. My wife was already coping with postpartum depression, and his behavior provoked episodes of rage. Nothing serious came of it - just full-volume shouting and slamming doors - but it created some scary moments.​Eventually, she caved on co-sleeping... a little. She bought a child bed for our older boy and put it next to the master bed. But he refuses to sleep in it through the night; he frequently crawls into the main bed. He won't take "no" for an answer. She's now trying to move him to his own bedroom next door. It's not working.​As a result of all this, our oldest boy has developed severe sleep issues. He cannot sleep through the night without waking up, crying (waking up everyone else), and demanding to sleep with mama. He has no circadian rhythm: some nights he's out by 7pm; other nights he absolutely *will not sleep* until midnight or later. When he's tired - which occurs often, including midday - he becomes frantic: will not stay in bed, will not listen to instructions, cries constantly, and sometimes resorts to throwing toys and hitting everyone, including his six-month-old brother. And we absolutely *cannot* get him to stay in his room through the night, short of locking the door from the outside.​My wife is massively strung out. Every night is an enormous struggle to get our son to bed, in addition to feeding our younger son when he wakes up through the night. She's under-slept and exhausted. She's also dealing with chronic pain and health issues from the birth - it's been seven months, and a battery of medical tests has failed to reveal a cause.​And I've been stuck in a moderate depression for over a year. My productivity is way off, which reduces our income, leading to mounting credit card debt and financial anxiety. Sex happens only when her libido and health issues cooperate, and she's absolutely not interested if she isn't able to participate. Sex happens less than once per month for *over three years now*, with no improvement in sight. My own sex drive has been strong for decades... I can feel it ebbing away from non-use.​I've reached the conclusion that most of these problems resulted directly from our commitment to co-sleeping. I don't know whether she mis-applied whatever techniques she learned about it, or whether we've just had an awful run of bad luck compounding bad luck. Obviously, now is not the best time to share that realization with my wife - but I'm having severe regrets about the trust I placed in her judgment. I feel like I've been just hanging on, waiting for things to get better... but it seems like we're years away from any kind of resolution.​I guess I'm open to advice, but mostly just needed to tell my story.​ via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2OAJ3cR