Before our baby was born I already read about co-sleeping; letting your child sleep in the parents (in this case: our) bed. This is part of the attachment parenting philosophy, which states that you have to keep your baby as close as possible.

Co-sleeping isn't just applicable for kids, but also for babies. At first we were scared about the possibility of rolling over the baby at sleep. Mainstream Western pediatrics point out to that danger, while in the non-Western world co-sleeping is the standard. To be on the safe side, I didn't want to let the baby sleep in our bed. But in the last month we tried to take a different approach.

We already have our baby in a crib alongside the bed to keep our baby as close as possible. We think that this greatly helps in the bonding. Furthermore: my wife can react fast when our baby starts to cry. But sometimes our little girl just doesn't want to be alone in the crib. Or at least: it seems. Sometimes we can stop her fussing by giving milk, but on some times we seem to have no other option but to put her between us in bed. It will not calm her in an instant, but she will eventually get sleepy and go to Slumberland.

The first time she slept between us, I presumed that my wife would eventually pick up the baby and put her back in the crib. That seems naive, but she has a hard time to go to sleep before the baby does. Well, my wife figured that everything was just fine and didn't re-locate the baby. So you can imagine how surprised I was, when I saw our little girl still in our bed, when I opened my eyes on 4:00h.

Although nothing happened and our baby wasn't squashed by one of us, it didn't feel right. That was a feeling I didn't expect, because co-sleeping still feels like a very tempting thing to do. My wife reassured me about the safety of the situation by telling I was noticeably more aware of the fact that there was a baby next to me. Well, I must say: i can't remember rolling over my wife or slapping her in my sleep, so why would it be different with a baby although it sleeps a bit nearer to me than my wife.

I'm still not sure what's best, but for now I will take the middle way: we will only have our little girl in bed, if there's no other efficient way to make her go to sleep. That is: if singing lullabies and giving breast milk doesn't make her go to sleep, we'll put her in our bed. We will put her back in the crib if we should wake up in the middle of the night, but it's also ok if the three of us keep on sleeping until morning.

So we're not making a habit of it. yet. Our baby is getting older so everyday co-sleeping is getting less and less an issue of safety and more an issue of preference/privacy.

Labels: babies, co-sleeping, newborn, sleeping