The family bed

Co-sleeping with a baby has left quite a debate in my head. Never would have thought to be divided with this question. My five years old daughter never had a problem to sleep in her crib when she was a baby.

With our 6 months old son, it has been an issue. At three months of age, he slept through the night in his crib, in his room. For one whole month, I got so much sleep!

It only lasted a month. At 4 months of age, he got a cold, then 5 teeth came out and got an ear infection. In two months, he was in pain. He couldn't sleep alone anymore. Waking up every half hour screaming to be held. Co-sleeping became the only solution for him and for me. Yes, it was nice not having to get out of bed at night to breast feed or rock him back to sleep.

But after a few weeks, lacking sleep, I furiously researched sleep on Google and on every baby website possible. Every minute I wasn't holding him was passed looking up this subject on the internet. I became obsessed. Every website basically said if you feed or rock your baby to sleep or co-sleep with your baby, it's a problem and your creating sleeping problems when your baby will grow older.

Sleeping problems? Really? I guess my husband has sleeping problems because he was breast fead and rocked to sleep and co-slept with his parents for a long time (lack of available rooms for 7 kids)...and so was his sisters and older brothers. Basically, almost the entire Asian, African and European continents are having sleep problems.

This is when I realized that co-sleeping seems to be an issue for North Americans. Our culture is telling us that a "good baby" should sleep through the night, fall asleep on his own, in is own bed. And if a baby should cry, we should use the "let the baby cry himself to sleep" method to avoid bad habits.

Bad habits? I wonder what lesson we are teaching the baby about trust. Making a baby feel confident that there will always be someone to count on when needed, to feel secure and loved. Aren't those the first things a baby needs to become independent?

So co-sleeping it is as long as our little brown eye bear needs it. And we kinda like to be snuggled and close to our babies at night. Our bed has become the family bed...and I wouldn't change it for anything. Well, maybe just one good night sleep :-)

Sleep tight!
J