why i love cosleeping

I mentioned in my last post how so many people freak out when they find out about our bedsharing.

I urge you to read this article and if you don't have time for that one, this article. To sum them both up a little bit, examine the following quotations from the first article:

Mother–infant co-sleeping represents the most biologically appropriate sleeping arrangement for humans and is both ancient and ubiquitous simply because breast feeding is not possible, nor as easily managed, without it.

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Most USA and other western infants die from SIDS or from fatal accidents during solitary sleep outside the supervision of a committed adult. Moreover, the overwhelming number of suspected accidental overlays or fatal accidents occur not within breast feeding–bedsharing communities but in urban poverty, where multiple independent SIDS risk ‘factors’ converge and bottle feeding rather than breastfeeding predominates.

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Surely, the fact that in Japan safe bedsharing and futon co-sleeping is increasing as SIDS rates decline to unprecedented levels should raise some doubts about any singular or predictable positive association between bedsharing and SIDS rates. Moreover, data on recent Asian immigrants in the USA lead to an interesting observation: the longer different Asian immigrant sub-groups live in the USA and presumably begin to adopt American life styles, including placing their infants in cribs for night-time sleep rather than co-sleeping, the more the SIDS rates of these ethnic groups begin to rise to match the higher rates of SIDS among whites.

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Almost all SIDS deaths associated with parental bedsharing occurred in conjunction with a history of parental drug use and occurred in association with the prone [on the tummy instead of on the back] sleep position or sleep surfaces such as a couch or waterbed.

Anyway. Basically I feel that, having done the research, bedsharing is really the way to go, at least for my family. We don't do drugs. We don't smoke. Our mattress is firm. We breastfeed.

I love our sleeping arrangements. I never have to worry about how Nathaniel is doing because I can just look at him in the night if I wake up. If he's hungry, I can read the signs before he even wakes up and I can nurse on my side. He sleeps while he eats and I doze until he's done. I can monitor his temperature easily, and turn up or down the ceiling fan if he seems uncomfortable--not to mention that when he is so close to me, our biology means that his body attunes to mine for temperature regulation and breathing. My breaths cue his; my temperature influences his.

When he has gas in the night, as he has every night this past week, I can help bicycle his legs, or rub his tummy, or supervise a quick nighttime tummy time to get out all the gas so he can get back to sleep.

Don't knock it til you rock it--or at least do the research. Seriously, check out that first article. It is a scholarly article through the University of Notre Dame entitled "Why babies should never sleep alone: A review of the co-sleeping controversy in relation to SIDS, bedsharing and breast feeding" (the second article I linked discusses this first scholarly article). Essentially, bedsharing can be very safe--as long as you follow the precautions. But there are too many variables to recommend bedsharing for everyone.


Overall, we personally both sleep better because of it. I honestly believe that Nathaniel gets the best, most, and safest sleep within a foot of my person. I'm sure he believes that too. Bedsharing isn't for everyone, and I'm not trying to say that it should be. My parents definitely didn't bedshare and I turned out all right (right? or maybe this means you SHOULD bedshare! :^P). But I'm so glad I stumbled across the blogs of women who were brave enough to admit that they cosleep like this. When our culture is so set against it, reading the accounts of other women who bedshare really opened up my mind to it and I'm so glad I did.

So this is me sharing my account of my bedsharing choices. I imagine I would be far more stressed and tired if my baby were in a separate room in a separate bed, and his only chance of waking me up to feed him, or comfort him if he were lonely or scared of the dark or fussy from gas, was to scream for me. For me personally, this is the way to go--and I never would have known it except for a few brave bedsharing bloggers. This is me joining their ranks.