Let me open by saying that today our six children range in age from 10 to 22. Maybe that doesn't make me an expert on the topic, but at least we can tell by now, more or less, that none of them have developed serious personality disorders as a result of having been part of our somewhat chaotic family bed scene.

How did our sleeping style evolve?

Like all new parents, when my oldest was an infant, I filled my shelves with books on Parenting by Experts. I guess the leg up I had on the other moms in the neighborhood was that while many of my friends were getting married and having babies in their early twenties, I was 27 when Sara was born.

Now, getting married at 27 doesn't mean you'll be a better parent; it does mean that you've already had more of a chance than a younger mom to deal with colleagues with idiosyncrasies, with neighbors who get on your nerves, with the electric, phone and gas companies and with the local municipality that is trying to cut down that old maple tree on your lawn. You've also voted more times and have stood at the polls wondering, "Why am I casting a ballot for someone with less municipal/state/national sense than my students/the receptionist in my office/our local paper boy?"

All this gives you a feeling of empowerment (well, it should, anyway,) a sense that you have the Right to Decide, an awareness that none of those authors on your shelves are looking over your shoulder and that, even if your mother- or sister-in-law does occasionally look over your shoulder, shoulders are meant for shrugging.

So, frankly, my dears, to quote Rhett, I didn't give a damn what anyone thought about whether or not our little ones crept into our beds (two large ones, shoved together, with lots of room for kids) in the middle of the night. For that matter, I didn't care if anyone thought I held my babies too much when they cried, snuggled with them too much before they went to sleep or let them run around naked in the house (in the summer, when the carpets were rolled up) because they needed some "airing out."

I know this may sound presumptuous, even narcissistic, but my most trusted expert was my intuition. Let me rephrase that as a universal statement: I have this belief - somewhat New Age, I admit - that basically a mom and dad know what is good for their kid.

And every parent has her own style. I believe that a structure freak would fail if he tried to force himself into a go-with-the-flow parenting style, and vice versa. Parenting books teach great skills, but skills are meant to enhance your child-raising style, not abort it.

After that long preamble, back to the Family Bed.

So it all began when I realized that both Sara and I really liked curling up in each other's arms after she breast-fed. This was not an ideological statement. It just felt good. Life is finite, I thought. Why not enjoy these moments of paradise for us both?

Before Sara's second birthday, along came Noa, who slept like a log and who joined me in bed only when she got hungry, which was around 4 AM. Sara started the night in her youth bed, but before dawn she too would find her sleepy-eyed way, like radar, to Noa and me.

It wasn't just mother-daughter bonding; it became a family affair. My (very patient) husband, Jacob, and I were bookends by daybreak.

At some point Sara crawled in with us less often, around the same time that Adina joined the clan, 28 months after Noa.

Now that there were days we were accommodating three musketeers, Jacob and I began to feel a little crowded by around 5 a.m. So we actually started to gently suggest to Sara and Noa that they spend more time in their own room. They were okay with it. I padded their scenes with lots of dolls and stuffed animals, just in case they got lonely.

Then one day a friend gave me a book called The Family Bed. "Look, Jake!" I cried out. "Validated! Someone actually says this is a good thing!" That night I announced to my daughters, "Hey, you can start the evening in our beds!"

The experiment lasted one night. There were just too many arms and legs. And I realized that this method might raise happy kids but it would also throw a wrench into a happy marriage.

So as the sun rose, I announced, "Okay, that was fun, but we're not going to do this any more. Well," seeing the disappointed faces, "maybe only once in a while."

Life went on. Ephrat was born when Adina was 16 months old.

By now I realized that the family bed was not a reliable method of birth control.

Ephrat slept in her crib for seven-hour stretches at night. David was born two years later, and crawled in a few times a week. Mitch came along, who breast-fed till the age of four. He was the most dedicated proponent of the family bed. It was with Mitch that we had to start remembering to lock our door when we REALLY wanted privacy. The others seemed to have natural antennae.

The unexpected perk of our laid back attitude to the family bed was that my kids also bonded with each other. I'm convinced it's no coincidence that the two boys, the youngest, who have the largest gap in years between them and therefore were never in our beds at the same time, are the least close.

There was another consequence to our arrangement. Today, 22 years after the process began, our kids still share their beds. Mitch shares a bed with his soccer ball, David shares a bed with his CD player, Ephrat, Adina and Noa share beds with their books and Sara shares a bed with her husband.

Our kids are not perfect. But they're sensitive to others' feelings, affectionate, flexible and know how to relax and have fun. We'll never know if the family bed helped them to become that way. But we know it didn't hurt.

I don't think I've been a perfect mother. But I don't regret one single second spent cuddled up under the covers with my kids.

And neither, I think, should you.