Controversial parenting topics: Co-sleeping
This is the third post in my series about parenting decisions that can be controversial or divisive, and I'm sharing my experience, no judgment, of what we did (or didn't do). Alternate title: controversial mom things I did and didn’t do, and how I feel about them. (See the whole list below.)
Note: I've seen "co-sleeping" to mean bed sharing and/or room sharing, but most commonly, bed sharing. That's how I mean it here. We did have each baby in our room for the first 3-4 months or so.
Co-sleeping
This is a hot one and there’s a good amount of research on how to do it safely and I know a lot of cultures do it… But I just never felt comfortable. I am a nervous person sometimes. It would’ve saved a lot of time particularly with Otto, and there were one, maybe two times when he was a newborn when I fell asleep feeding him in the side-lying position or just left him on the bed after he fell asleep nursing in the middle of the night, but then I just felt really nervous about it.
I know it can be done safely, I just… I think with Lucy in particular I just felt so much more peaceful when I knew she was sleeping soundly in her bassinet and I had the whole bed to myself and wouldn’t disturb her. Just a mental thing for me really.
With Otto I looked into the Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper thing that attaches to the bed, thinking that way he could be in his own space but I wouldn't have to get all the way up to get him. Ended up going with a flat rocking swing bassinet instead.
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| Our room until we moved everyone upstairs. You can read more about that bassinet/swing here--I have done a lot of research! |
As the kids have gotten older, and when Otto had a phase around age 3 after we took the rail off his crib and he would sometimes come in our room, we have also had a no sleeping in our bed policy. I know some kids and some parents have a hard time with that and I’ve just been really anxious/afraid of having sleep continue to be interrupted even after they sleep trained, so we have just never done it. Otto sometime snuggles Jason in the morning weekend mornings as we’re getting up, but when he’s had difficult times and waking up in the middle of the night we can always tuck him back in or send him back to his room. It works for us.
That was a short one! More coming later this week and you can check out all the posts in this series here.
The posts in this series are meant to be me sharing my personal experience only. 100% no judgment if you did things differently! If you don't like the sound of what I did, no worries! I'm just sharing for those of you out there who are interested. Best wishes to you no matter what you choose!
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