From the minute Luke was born, he all but refused to sleep on his back. Literally the minute he was cleaned, swaddled and put on his back in the bassinet at the hospital, he started to cry. When we would pick him up and hold him, he was fine. Lay him on his back...tears. Ok, so we have a belly sleeper. No big deal other than that you are made to believe that if you put your baby on his belly, he will surely die from SIDS. So we were conflicted. He wouldn't nap or sleep on his back. So we ended up either holding him for every nap or trying to prop him on his side. Didn't make for awesome naptimes. And that brings me to nighttime.
I thought we would bring the baby home from the hospital, rock him to sleep at night, and put him in his crib (to sleep on the 300 dollar organic, chemical-free mattress we bought him.) He would sleep there for a few hours, wake up and need to eat, and then go back to sleep until morning. WRONG AGAIN. L to this day has never slept in his crib. Not once. Oh, we tried, don't get me wrong. We tried ALL night the first night he was home. He wasn't having it. After nursing him, I would rock him, then put him in his crib. I would tiptoe back to bed, fall asleep immediately, and after 15 minutes, he would wake up crying. I had to get up and start the whole process over again. I was exhausted. We were exhausted. Since we flat-out reject the Cry-It-Out method as a way of getting our baby to sleep, we didn't know what to do. The second night, we tried laying him down in the bassinet next to our bed. On his side. Nope. On his back. Nope. Sleep-deprived and desperate, I layed him in our bed, between us. He fell asleep and stayed that way for two hours. Two glorious hours!
The next morning, I started my journey onto researching alternative sleeping arrangements. I learned that there were two terms. One was co-sleeping, which meant that you share a room with the baby, basically. Baby might be in his or her crib, but the crib is in your room. Or the baby might be in a bassinet or a cradle, but you are sleeping in the same room. The other term was bed-sharing, which is obviously sharing the same bed with your baby. I spent hours reading everything I could about bed-sharing. I watched videos, listened to podcasts, and read articles about the pros and cons. And my eyes were opened to an entirely new way of thinking about a topic that I had only heard negative things about in the past. All I knew before was that it was dangerous because you could roll onto your baby and kill them. Mainstream media will have you believe that babies must be taught to sleep in a room away from their parents. That they need to learn as soon as possible that they sleep in their crib by themselves. However, this goes against scientific research. Believe it or not, babies are actually hard-wired to sleep by their parents!
Let's pretend we are back in cavemen times (I am fully aware that we are not). But during those times, babies needed to be quiet at night because they did not want to attract predators. They needed to stay close to their parents because if they didn't, they would be eaten by wild animals! Well babies nowadays, although we have matured and evolved, still have the same instincts. It's no secret that most babies sleep better next to their parents in the early months than by themselves. They are designed that way. It all makes so much sense.
Mike and I talked about it. Were we ok with having a baby in bed with us? Yep. Did we think we could roll over onto him and suffocate him? Not a chance. Anyone who has a newborn knows that sleep in those early days, weeks and months is not the same as the sleep you are used to having. Your body becomes attuned to every noise baby makes. You literally almost sleep with one eye open. And unless you are drunk, on drugs, or massively overweight to the point that you can't feel certain parts of your body, I have no idea how you could roll onto your child and crush them without knowing it. Did we feel like having a baby in bed would interrupt our "couple time?" Maybe, but in all honesty, we have been together for seven years. We are past the spooning phase. We are past the falling asleep in eachothers arms phase. We JUST had a baby and between being exhausted, bleeding, having stitches and being covered in spit-up, there certainly wasn't any x-rated activity going on in the bed. So there really wasn't anything stopping us from having L sleep with us. We decided we would try it. And we have been bed-sharing ever since.
Luke is not much of a sleeper, but he certainly sleeps FAR better in our bed than he would in his crib. I can easily nurse him when he needs to eat without having to get out of bed. And if he startles or fusses, we are right there to calm him before it escalates. I know the critics say "oh, if you let baby sleep in your bed you will spoil them," or "baby will never want to sleep in their own bed," but I think those arguments are ridiculous. We believe that a baby cannot be spoiled. We want Luke to know that we are there to soothe him whenever he needs it, day or night. And I don't know any teenagers that are still sharing a bed with their parents. So clearly, at some point, the child will not be in our bed anymore. Until that time comes, we are bed-sharing and proud of it! I learned so much through all of my research. I am positive that all three of us sleep far better together than we do apart. And although I would have never ever believed that we would be sharing our bed with our baby, I am so glad we are.
For more information, you can read a great article about cosleeping here.
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