Intrepid Murmurings

So, cosleeping.

I've written three half-posts about it and I keep deleting them thinking they sound preachy or boring or long. I have been reading a lot about it, because its a big part of our parenting these days. I mean, nighttime counts for a good 8-10 hours, you know? And most babies, well, at least our baby, do not go away for those hours. Not at all. Nada. She is always here, and always needing us for something.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that we do it. Yup. We didn't intend to, but it just happened by necessity early on, and now it works so well we don't think we'll stop. At least not yet. We do have a beautiful crib, one of our first baby purchases, and while I do like it quite a bit, and had visions of her sleeping in it from around now on and always for naps, that totally isn't happening. But what a nice place to put her when I need to shower or pee! It looks great in the room! And she will play in it for quite a while, sometimes...

So here is the down and dirty about our cosleeping. Ha, dirty cosleeping. That sounds not so good! In fact, thats why we as a culture stopped cosleeping (unlike most of the rest of the world)...the "experts" of the time thought that sleeping next to another person and breathing their air would cause illness. This is also why they made nurseries and incubators in hospitals and whisked healthy babies away from their parents into them. Much healthier than staying with dirty old mom!
So, back to the particulars:

• We started cosleeping the first week, when it was the only way to get her to stay asleep. She would sleep on us, as we slept on the couch, rocking chair, or bed. This is the not-so-safe way to cosleep (mainly the couch/chair thing) because proper safety precautions are not in place, and you are so exhausted you fall asleep without meaning to. I was always worrying about accidentally dropping her.
  
• Eventually, I started sleeping in the guest room with her, with pillow walls to make it feel safer. I kept blankets and pillows away from her, and once we got the hang of sidelying nursing, I really got a lot more sleep.
  
• We then moved into our bed upstairs all together, and soon got a guardrail on my side and a new, firmer, non-pillowtop mattress (soft beds are a no-no with young babies). We actually prefer the firmer mattress ourselves!
  
• No, I don't worry about rolling on her. It was something I was hyper-aware of in the beginning, along with keeping blankets away and other SIDS-y risks, but I realized that I am, like they say, always aware of where she is. The fact that I can't roll and flop over without care took a little getting used to, but now I am totally used to it.
  
• Since starting cosleeping, I have rarely felt tired or wiped out during the day . I wake up rested! I did not expect that to happen so soon, I always had the "foggy sleep deprived mother" image in my head and after the first two weeks that really didn't happen. Woo!
  
• We love it for a lot of reasons, but mainly it is because it truly simplifies our nights. Emma SUCKS at the "transfer" (from arms to bed) because she is a really light sleeper. You can get her to sleep (by nursing, bottle, or bouncing) and then as soon as you put her down in her bed (floppy arm stage or not) she wakes right up and smiles or screams, and then its another hour or so of trying to get her back to sleep. Rinse. Repeat.
  
• She also can not will not fall asleep if put in bed drowsy but awake. But nursing her down in our bed works every time!
  
• Lonnie also likes it because he gets to see more of her, and its great bonding time. It is nice to have our whole family close. He (lucky dog him) doesn't wake up much at all in the night when Emma does because she rarely cries, she just moves around or makes little sleepy sounds to let me know she's awake.
  
• She does, yes, wake up quite a bit. Maybe 5-6 times, sometimes less, sometimes more. No sleeping through the night here (though often a 4 hour chunk, which is nice)! Cosleeping breastfeeding babes are known to wake frequently...the all night diner is available and open for business! Yum! For us, though, this is something we actually need and want (at least early on, and even now to some degree) because of my low milk supply. Night feeding helps boost supply, and I think she gets a fair amount of calories at night. And, I sleep through much of it...I'm awake for maybe 5-10 minutes, max, most wakings. WAY better than waking up fully and sitting up/walking down the hall to feed, a couple times a night.
  
• I think there is really something to be said about the fact that cosleeping babies and moms sync up their sleep cycles, too. So when Emma wakes, she is waking me at a light point in my sleep cycle, so I am able to wake easily to help her latch on, then fall back to sleep without trouble. Even though I have fragmented sleep, I wake rested. Yahoo!
  
• I know a lot of people think you should teach your child to "self soothe" and sleep alone, perhaps by "crying it out", but that just does not feel right to us. We like to sleep near each other, are not surprised she likes it too. It feels like a natural thing, the right way to go for us. We like the idea that if you keep them close now, they will be more self-assured and independent later on. And no, we are not worried she will be in our bed forever. The people we've talked to who have cosleept say the transition, whenever it happened, went pretty smoothly.
  
• What about sex, you say? Is that any of your business? No, its not. But I will say that all the books I've read mention that having to get creative isn't such a bad thing....
  
• Lastly, I do have some concern about how things will go once she is more mobile, which is soon soon soon! This doesn't actually pertain to cosleeping at night when we are in the bed as much as when I leave her there for naps. The guard rail and pillow walls we construct to contain her will work for only so long. I am not sure we are willing to get rid of the bed frame and put the bed on the floor like so many cosleepers do. We may have to get her transitioned into the crib for naps, we'll see how that goes....