Co-sleeping: the fears and the reality

It was apparent from our very first night in the hospital with my son that he was only really comfortable sleeping in bed with mama. For the first four months of his life we went through a whole slew of approaches to sleep (more on this in a later post), but the only way I could guarantee he would fall asleep (and stay asleep) was if he was lying in bed next to me and breastfeeding until he fell asleep.

I resisted co-sleeping for a couple weeks after he was born. The reasons why I was reluctant are mostly what I consider the common fears new mamas have about co-sleeping:

Fears

1. fear of rolling over onto baby
2. fear of baby falling off bed
3. fear of smothering baby with blankets
4. fear of SIDS

All I can say in hindsight is that these fears were basically a result of my inexperience with newborns. Here is my response to these fears after co-sleeping with my newborn for a few months:

Reality

1. As a new mother you have a heightened awareness of what your baby is doing, even when both of you are asleep. This phenomenon is hard to understand until it happens to you. There was no chance I was going to roll over onto the baby (although dads don't always have the same sense of where the baby is in bed, so sometimes this can pose a problem). If anything it was sometimes harder for me to sleep because of new mother anxiety and because every little sound or move my son made would wake me up at first.
2. Newborns do not roll. They can wriggle a little bit (what my husband and I called the B.P.S. "baby propulsion system") but this does not get them very far. Most newborns sleep swaddled and most mamas wake up as soon as baby starts making sounds or moving so there is very little chance they could launch themselves off a bed (of course with older babies this changes). Of course the obvious preventative measure is just to put baby in the middle of the bed.
3. I used to worry my baby would not be able to breathe if the blankets got pushed up against his face, this never happened. By far the bigger problem is that if the blankets get over the baby the baby might get overheated and then wake up and wake you up. Some people go so far as to remove all blankets and pillows from the bed, I took a halfway approach and just pushed the blankets down to my waist.
   
4. the fear of SIDS is harder to explain away since people really do not know what causes SIDS. All I can say is that I felt much better with my son right next to me where I knew I would wake up immediately if he was in distress than I would have felt if he were in another room. Proponents of co-sleeping like Dr. Sears suggest that the risk of SIDS actually goes down with co-sleeping, see this explanation. Check out the AskDrSears.com website for some great advice on co-sleeping and how to do it safely.

A lesson that I learned quickly: newborn babies are well equipped with alarm systems, if they are uncomfortable or in distress they let you know loudly. When I talked to nurses and my pediatrician about co-sleeping they all said that as long as I took basic safety precautions (don't put baby near edge of bed, etc.) it was fine to co-sleep and that in their experience most mothers (especially those who were breastfeeding) did co-sleep at some point.

There is so much more to say about co-sleeping, for example how it really improved both baby and mama's sleep, and when and why we decided to stop co-sleeping - the topic of future blog posts.


So that is my two cents. Any other mamas want to chime in with their perspective on co-sleeping? Please leave a comment.