Updated: Feb. 8, 2021
Originally Published: April 11, 2014
Some days, I feel like a decent parent—other days, I wonder how I managed to leave the hospital with a tiny human four times. Today was definitely one of those latter days.
It had been ages since I tackled the task of washing sheets and making beds. I mean, what is it, the Ice Age? With one queen bed, two sets of bunk beds, and a crib, that’s a lot of bedding to contend with: 2 + 4, carry the 5… and add in 500 stuffed animals and 15 mismatched socks that somehow found their way under the mattress. You see where I’m going with this? It’s an overwhelming amount of bedding.
Related: Check out the coziest crib sheets for your baby.
I usually avoid this chore like the plague. However, while I was fluffing the pillows on the bottom bunk for my three-year-old, my eight-year-old piped up, “Mommy, can you make my bed too?”
“Of course, sweetie! Yours is next!” I beamed with pride for about three minutes—until I attempted the climb to the top bunk, which felt like scaling Mount Everest. The ladder seemed to mock me, almost gleefully saying, “Look at the big mom trying to climb! She can’t even manage that!”
When I finally reached the top, I was in for a shock. It was like a scene out of a horror movie up there. No sheets, 15 books stacked under her pillow, and instead of a proper mattress, there was just a thin toddler bed pad, split into three sections. I gasped. How am I the worst at this?
“Um, you don’t have any sheets. How long has it been like this?” I asked.
“I don’t know. A while, I think,” she replied, shrugging.
“Why are you sleeping on those thin pads? How did this happen?”
“I think something went wrong when you were fixing the beds last time. You couldn’t finish? I don’t remember. It was a while ago,” she explained, as if she were penning her memoir titled, “I Don’t Remember: A Journey Through Bedtime Chaos.”
Seriously, NO SHEETS. The only thing missing was a metal cup for her to rattle against the bed guard.
But wait, it gets better. The unused top bunk of my son’s bed looked like a five-star hotel suite—complete with a double mattress, an eggshell mattress topper, sheets, two pillows, and several blankets. Clearly, the invisible guest who sleeps there is living a life of luxury.
I ended up spending the next two hours wrestling with mattresses, fluffing pillows, and rearranging bedding. I tucked corners and added the softest sheets I could find for my poor Cinderella’s bed. How did I miss this? For weeks cough…months. Right, the ladder. That thing is a menace.
I give kisses at the bottom of the bed. No one puts baby in a corner—unless it’s the corner of an unmade prison cot bunk bed.
On the upside, I walked away with a newfound appreciation for my daughter. She’s the complete opposite of a diva. Not once did she complain. She never asked for sheets or fussed over her mattress pads drifting apart every night. She just kissed us goodnight and climbed up to her barren wasteland of a bed.
The old fable says a princess can feel a pea under a stack of mattresses, but I’m convinced a real princess would do exactly what my daughter did—kiss her family goodnight and make the best of a tough situation.
So despite my utter failings, I’ve got a bona fide princess on my hands. I hope she marries royalty; we could all use some Egyptian cotton around here.
For more insights on home insemination, check out this post, as well as resources on fertility journeys from Make a Mom and Mount Sinai.