I am a co-sleeper. I am a bed-sharer. There, I said it!
Jules has been sleeping with me since birth and I absolutely love it (except lately, but more on that in a bit).
Re-wind to 6 months ago on the day Jules was born. I had an incredible home birth. After 24 hours of labor and about 2 hours of full adrenaline with all those “highs” flowing, I was needing some rest. My mid-wife (who totally rocks, by the way) told me to get in bed and try to sleep. So I happily obliged. She then handed me Jules to snuggle right next to me. That’s when I said, “WAIT! Is that okay? Won’t he get hurt”. She said, “he will be just fine” and sure enough, he was.
This first night with Jules broke my preconceived ideas of how and where babies should sleep which later transformed into how I felt about sleep in general. What was I thinking having him sleep away from me? After all, he was in my womb close to my beating heart for 39 weeks! How dare I separate him from me so quickly and so shockingly?
The truth is, my concerns were enbedded in my subconscious based on conditioning I had received. It was the “norm” for baby to go right into a crib. When I allowed my incredibly solid I-know-my-shit mother instinct to flow through, I didn’t even think twice about bed sharing. It felt natural, easy, the way it was suppose to be.
Sleeping Close Felt Safer
Now, I get it that there are concerns of rolling onto your precious newborn baby. I heard it over and over again which is why I was starting to get quiet about my co-sleeping habits. I got so sick of hearing that I was going to hurt Jules that I just stayed quiet and sometimes lied about where and how he slept.
At last, here I am today and not an ounce of worry, shame, or embarrassment. I WOULD NEVER, NOR WILL I EVER, ROLL ON MY BABY! I’M HIS MOM AND THOSE MOTHER INSTINCTS ARE BULLET PROOF! In fact, the couple of nights he did sleep a few stretches in his crib, I was crazy worried about him. “Was he breathing okay?”, “Was he comfortable?”, “What if I fell asleep and he rolled onto his face and I didn’t know because he wasn’t close to me?” OMG, so many thoughts ran through my head that I just said, “screw it, you need to be next to me so I can keep you safe.”
Pre-baby I was a lover of sleep. My hobbies included yoga and sleeping…and I was a heavy sleeper at that. With Jules in my life, I would wake up with just the slightest movement of his pinky finger. It’s indescribable the shift that takes place once your mama bear instincts kick in. So no, people, rolling onto my baby is not happening over here.
I Never Felt that Newborn Exhaustion
What’s remarkable is that I slept and slept slept well during those so called exhausting first weeks. I contribute that to having Jules close to my heart. I gave him what he needed when he needed it: Easy access to my milk and a tight closeness which stretched out his sleeping, allowing me to get in extra time of sleep as well.
The Way Nature Intended
I noticed Jules was sleeping better (therefore I was too), less fussy and over-all happier, sleeping between mom and dad. I delved deeper into the topic and discovered that there was some evidence-based studies to my instinctual habit of co-sleeping. Babies need connection. Since I don’t want to paraphrase such an important message, I have copied and pasted a excerpt from a blogger who puts it so well:
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“Irrepressible (ancient) neurologically-based infant responses to maternal smells, movements and touch altogether reduce infant crying while positively regulating infant breathing, body temperature, absorption of calories, stress hormone levels, immune status, and oxygenation.” – James Mckenna
Has anyone ever stopped to think about this one for a second? Babies and small children are vulnerable little beings who depend on us for their safety. Can you imagine our ancestral mothers out in the wild, sleeping anywhere but right next to us? Generations and generations of human beings depended on that closeness. We may be in big houses with locks on our doors, but the biological imperatives remain the same…
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Babies need to be with their caregivers as much as possible.
Shelby from Sunshel.com says it so well! Babies need us. It’s the way it is supposed to be.
I’m still not sure how this will play out as he gets older. He is certainly getting more active and moving more during his sleep. I’m enjoying our bond tremendously so I’ll wait until we both feel ready to sleep separately. I’m sure a time will come that we both know is right for us (could be tomorrow or in a year – whatever feels right). I’ll let him lead the way. Until then, I’m happy to have him snuggled between us and I’ll soak up those mornings where he opens his eyes, looks both ways, and smiles endlessly. Our bed is now a family bed, for family sleeping.
P.S. I encourage you to do your research and most importantly, do what feels right for your baby. You can also look into this article here for some more details from studies done by the Director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame.
