Co-Sleeping
A large majority of the world sleeps with their babies. For some cultures they do it because of space issues. Others co-sleep because they feel it’s safer and better for the baby and parents for the baby to be in such close proximity.
In the United States, many parents are advised by our pediatricians not to co-sleep because it’s too dangerous. However the American Academy of Pediatrics says differently. They do not take an official position on the issue except to say you should not sleep with your baby if you smoke, are obese, or are under the influence of anything. They also define co-sleeping as sleeping in the same room as your baby, not necessarily the same bed, and have acknowledged the advantages (such as reduced instances of SIDS). You should also consider how people sleep. You don’t want someone who thrashes around all night next to your baby.
Most pediatricians don’t mention the benefits of co-sleeping, which is a great injustice to the parents. Co-sleeping provides many benefits to both the baby and the parents. There have been many cases documented where the mother noticed the baby wasn’t breathing because she was right there and was able to act and save her baby’s life. Research actually shows that co-sleeping reduces the chance of SIDS, though the exact reasons aren’t known. Some speculate that the mother’s breathing and heart beat acts as a pacemaker for the baby.
Many people say that co-sleeping allows parents to get more sleep overall. Once mothers have the side-lying nursing position figured out, they’re good to go. Nothing is more frustrating in the early days of nursing every 2 hours than just getting to sleep and it’s time to get up again. Not having to get up is more restful. Most women eventually learn to nurse and sleep at the same time – talk about multi-tasking! Some women don’t even wake up at all to nurse their babies. Partners and spouses often get more sleep as well because there’s no crying coming through a monitor. With such close proximity, the mothers usually tend to the babies before they start to cry and their partners don’t always wake up at all.
Aside from medical reasons to sleep with your baby, it has many emotional benefits as well. Many mothers worry about their baby being so far away in the other room and sleeping next to them can ease this worry. The first night home with my son my husband put him in the next room, in his crib, and turned the monitor on so I could go to sleep. For about 5 minutes I strained to hear every little sound on the monitor before I started to cry. I had gotten used to him being within my reach at the hospital and it seemed to unnatural to me for him to be so far away. I began to cry and my husband went in the other room, got our baby, put him next to me in our bed, and said, “he’s only little for so long.” He’s slept in our bed ever since.
We hear never-ending nagging from our families about how he will be in our bed for longer than we would like. I get grief from the nurse at the pediatrician’s office about how he needs to learn to sleep on his own. Both of these impressions are false. Babies can learn quite easily to sleep on their own. My son doesn’t need me next to him when he takes naps or before we come to bed. And children will want to sleep in their own beds eventually. I’ve never heard of a case of a high school student still sleeping with their parents on a regular basis!
The most important thing to remember is to sleep in a way that works best for everyone and ignore the rest. The bottom line is that relatives or anyone else is not the one to sleep with your baby or raise him. Things are only a problem if you see them as a problem. If you enjoy sleeping with your baby then by all means sleep with your baby.