Attachment Parenting | Co-Sleeping

Attachment Parenting - Co-Sleeping

There are few things in child rearing as hotly debated as co-sleeping with your baby. For many parents, the choice is as simple as the choice to subscribe to the attachment parenting beliefs. It is a natural choice, for some. For other parents, it is not, and that is ok.

Personally, I am a strong advocate for the family bed. I feel, as one who strongly advocated attachment parenting, that the child should be as close to the parents as possible at all times, and this includes at night. I look at it like this - were I a baby, new to this huge world with all its sights, sounds,

feelings and emotions, being left alone in the dark for hours at a time would not be a pleasant experience. I would want to feel my Mommy next to me, to roll over and smell her, feel her body heat, know that she is there even if it is on an unconscious level. This is what I want my child to feel.

I have slept with my son since the day we brought him home from the hospital, and with my daughter (he is 8 years older than he is) when she was a baby as well. It has not been an easy row to hoe at all times, either, but it is a choice that I feel has been the best for my children and myself. Did you know that co-sleeping is common practice in almost every country EXCEPT the United States? In fact, in most countries, attachment parenting is the norm, not the endeavor to push your children to become as independent as possible from as young an age as possible as is advocated in the United States. (Personal observation here - but do you think that just maybe, all the violence in schools and crime we see from our young people here in the US could possible be related to this trend? I don’t see these problems elsewhere in the world, where parents are as involved with their children as possible.)

All that aside, the choice to co-sleep or share a family bed with your child is an intensely personal choice. And you should not let anyone push you in either direction. You have to be happy with the arrangement, your spouse has to be happy with it and you have to keep your baby safe at all times. Safety and co-sleeping SO go hand in hand. There are actually many co-sleeping CRIBS and bed-attachments that you can buy if you don’t want to have the baby directly on the mattress beside you. Click on the Baby Universe box at the top of this article to check them out. There are 3 sided “Arm’s Reach” cribs, that fit right up to the side of the parent's bed that act as an extension of the bed. There are also small “separation units” available, that is like putting your baby in his own crib but inside your bed with a small (several inches high) flexible wall that will keep baby from rolling around or parents from rolling on to the baby. I must say, in all the years that I have slept with my children, I have never once rolled over on them or come even minutely close to suffocating them. I know that is a big debate in the medical world, but unless you go to bed in an altered state (such as drunk, high or taking sleeping pills) I do not see how you can roll onto an infant and not notice.

Here are some co-sleeping safety guidelines taken directly from www.attachmentparenting.org:

1. Always place baby to sleep on their back.

2. Baby should sleep next to mother, rather than between mother and father.

3. Take precautions to prevent baby from rolling out of bed. Use a mesh guardrail and be sure the guardrail is flush against the mattress and fill in any crevice with a rolled-up baby blanket or towel.

4. Use a large bed with a mattress that fits snugly against the rail or is flush up against a wall. Don't use fluffy bedding or cover baby with comforters, etc.

5. Do not sleep with your baby if you are under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or sleep-inducing over-the-counter medications or if you are overly exhausted from sleep deprivation

6. Do not allow baby-sitters or older siblings to sleep with baby.

7. Don't fall asleep with baby on a couch, bean bag chair or waterbed.

8. Do not let baby sleep unattended on an adult bed.

9. Don't overly bundle baby, because they get additional warmth from the mother's body. Overheating can be dangerous to infants.

HOWEVER! As I mentioned earlier, the choice of co-sleeping is a personal choice and if you are not comfortable with baby in your bed, then do not do it! Instead, try the Arm’s Reach Crib (check it out at Baby Universe, you’ll go right to that page by clicking below), or even put baby’s regular crib next to your bed so that you can be right there when baby wakes up and he does not suffer from separation anxiety. Do what is right for your family, always, and remember, it is YOUR family.