Baby Sleep Positions: “The Pillow Fort”

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Baby Sleep Positions: The Pillow Fort

Early along in the amazing magical spell I like to call my marriage to Lizzie, I walked into our bedroom and my eyes went very wide, like O_O type of wide, to take in all the horror at once, as if ripping a band-aid off my mind. So it might hurt less. My lovely wife had purchased pillows. Lots of them. As in LO_OTS of them.

“Doesn’t it look goooooorgeous!” she said proudly. If it wasn’t frozen in place, I would have rotated my head to her and answered, “AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!” You see, I did some quick mental math. I multiplied the pain in the ass of dealing with all those pillows in one night by a factor of several hundreds or thousands of nights and it all equalled AAAAAAHHHHHH!!! Then she jammed her tongue in my mouth or something and math didn’t seem as important as it did a moment before, and the pillows may or may not have wound up in a state of disarray.

Pillow FortFortress of Pillowtude! ATTACK!!! (They’re kinda meant to be attacked, y’know?)

Fast forward. When we had a baby in bed with us, we started Project: Pillow Fort. Now, I remember pillow forts as kid. Pure fun! I constructed pillow forts of not just bedroom pillows but actually strip mined the family couches for their cushions and created engineering marvels. Good times. But this pillow fort was to promote both the swaddled sleep of the little one as well as protect the little one from any untoward slumber movement… and possibly my horrible open-mouth sleep breath.

In any case, beds with more pillows than mattress can be a daunting thing. Whether you have a little super lad or lass nestling in their Fortress of Pillowtude or not.

P.S. I did draw the line at those tube-like cushions. I refuse to have one those cylinders of insanity in any bed I’m sleeping in.
 



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22 Comments

  • Canadian Dad says:

    Pillow Forts are the best! My wife and child also employ the blanket taco position, in which I am left cold and blanketless. That is probably fine if you live in California, not so much here in Canada.

    Thanks for the laughs!
    Cheers!

    • Andy says:

      Ha ha! My mom’s family came from Russia so I was raised with that blanket wrap being referred to as the “perogi.”

  • Makyo says:

    We called ours the Fortress of Babytude. It lasted about three weeks until she figured out how to roll *over* the pillows. Onto the floor. Of course.

    • Andy says:

      Totally! Been there done that. Yeah, once they can roll over them, they’re not really necessary anymore, in fact they just increase the likelihood.

  • lol too funny. This is what our bed looked like pre-baby….preggo sleep kind of resembled this 😀

    • Andy says:

      TOTALLY! During pregnancy Lizzie went through sooooooo many pillows. Crescents and wedges and body pillows oh my!

  • Sabrina says:

    We had a similar Pillow Fort, but it was on the other side of the baby and daddy was kicked out of the bed. The pillows became the daddy.

  • Vania says:

    We are using one body pillow to block my baby from getting smothered by my husband weird sleeping positions.. LOL…
    Your pillows look a lot comfier..

  • Claudia says:

    This makes so much sense to my crazy constant desire to BUY MORE PILLOWS… we have 4 on our queen bed as is, but lately, it seems like I NEED all 4 to keep baby from figuring out how to get out of the bed.

  • BFMama says:

    My daughter is 2 now and she loves to snuggle up to one of us when she’s in our bed. My husband isn’t so much into pillows, but I have a 5.5-ft body pillow I can’t sleep without. So it kind of looks like this, just no pillows on my husband’s side, except for the two under his head.

    When I was pregnant the first time my hips hurt too much to sleep on my side, so I needed what my husband called “the pillow throne”. He joked that I’d add one pillow for each month of pregnancy, and that was about accurate. I’m hoping to have a recliner for the third trimester this time (after we move) because my beloved pillow throne won’t fit in the (king size) bed when my daughter is there.

  • Paige says:

    Yep, we’ve had pillow forts in the bed – my husband still actually makes a wall of pillows on the edge whenever my 4 year old gets in to bed with me in the mornings (and before he leaves for work). My 4 year old also takes all the pillows off both couches and builds a massive fort on the living room floor. She LOVES it!

  • Could there be a better reason than these posts for having a second child? Lots more possibilities… and with 3 kids, the amount of combinations tends toward the infinite(ly painful).

    • Andy says:

      Oh, I’ve got three! I think you’re confusing me with Charlie. 😉

  • Christina says:

    Hey! I use tube pillows to keep our plethora of pillows from falling between the mattress and the headboard! For the life of me, I can’t get rid of that gap. So the originally banished tube pillow found a home in my bed once more – as caulk for my bed.

    Amazingly enough, lately the only way our toddler will sleep in the privileged “ma’s bed” (a conjunction of “my” as I always call it and “mom’s” as he SHOULD call it) is if my husband constructs said pillow fort. But so far, the precious bundle of female joy sleeps curled in my arm on the edge of the bed to avoid dad rolling on top of her in his efforts to get to me for a mid-sleep spoon.

  • I have way too many pillows too. I even have a cylindrical one which serves no purpose whatsoever. It’s a disease. But you can’t have any of my pillows. I need them.

  • One additional note – I can see by your illustration that you’re aware of the TODDLER PADDING benefits that extra pillows provide. The more pillows between me and my kid, the less I get kicked. There. Justified.

  • Gale says:

    Ah…but those pillows can also help to prevent some of the other sleep positions that you’ld rather avoid. And once the kiddos get older and manage to soil their own pillows in the middle of the night, having a stash of pillows to resort to is nice.

    By the way, have you seen the post on Baby Rabies today. I immediately thought of your “Bad Product Ideas” series, only this product is real.

    http://www.babyrabies.com/2012/03/pin-the-ovaries-on-the-uterus-its-a-real-game/

    • Andy says:

      Too true on the pillows. Oh my GOD!!!! On the period party kit! That’s craaaaazy!

  • stacey says:

    After looking at the drawing again I realise I need to get a three more pillows… Just for the rare times that our daughter joins us in bed. Usually only on those work nights when my wife is too wiped out to deal with getting her to go to sleep in her crib. The extra pillows would reduce the junk damaging baby ninja kicks (as stated before…). But I think it would also keep our little wiggle worm from braining herself on our headboard, lol. She’s a pillow burrower like me so I think it would be effective in this endeavour.

    • Andy says:

      After a certain point, with too many pillows, your bedroom starts to resemble a children’s play area or the part of gymnastics school for practicing flips.

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