Co-Sleeping With a Baby Is Not a Good Idea

Subtitle: "How To Construct A Torture Chamber Out Of Your Own Bed"

I love my son. I wanted to do every good thing for him.

I did research about the dangers of co-sleeping, and found that unless the adult is intoxicated or ill, there is essentially zero danger to the infant, as we have subconscious awareness even during sleep. The same thing that keeps adults from falling out of bed in their sleep also keeps them from crushing a baby.

Thinking of some emotional benefit he could reap from being close to us (and also thinking of not having to get out of bed to tend to him) we tried let him sleep in our king size bed, right in the middle.

There was plenty of room. We used rolled towels folded in with sheets to give him a little edged bowl that was his own. He stayed in that place pretty well--infants don't really move much at all, let alone in their sleep, so the rolled towels were adequate.

But now, 16 months later, I wish ever so much that we hadn't done that. Now my son thinks his place is in our bed.

Every night, we put him to sleep in the playpen. (The crib experiment failed miserably and I have yet to do it again--ask me some other time about what happened). Then, somewhere during the night, he wakes up. No big deal. All children do. And we're working on putting into practice the principles from the book The No-Cry Sleep Solution, so there's hope. So that'll be good, some day. And often I can get him to go back to sleep and I put him right back in the playpen.

But then he wakes up again. Then again. And again. And again. And again. I notate the hours I've seen. 11. 12. 3. 3 again. 3 again. 4. 5. His ability to wake up surpasses my ability to tolerate putting him back to sleep. He DOES NOT WANT to be in the playpen. It's not his place, he thinks. So eventually I give in because I'm tired of leaping up to console and placate and tease him back to sleep, and I put him in our bed. The sheet/towel thing is long gone.

There the real torture begins. The whimpering and moaning and crying in his sleep, which awakens me but not him (he's teething). The kicking--he loves to get his feet on one of us and kick and prod. The hand smacking me in the face. The climbing on top of me or my pillow or my face. The very real danger of a vicious head-butt to the nose (poise hard and heavy weight called child's head above face, now child has just to fall over--and falling is a frequent activity by toddlers). The sheet pulling. Put him on top of the sheet and he manages to kick the sheet down. Put the sheet over him and he even more quickly rolls over and tangles in it and then wakes me up.

I've only repaired to the couch once so far. But I've seriously considered it again several times since then.

Our next child is going to sleep in a crib. All the time. Avoiding torturing the parents is a very valuable emotional advantage for a child. Just think of all the potential benefit to the child from having parents who aren't in a bad mood because of that child!

Think very carefully before you let your child sleep in your bed.

P.S. I confess that I haven't very carefully done everything in that book I linked above, so don't knock the book at all when you contemplate our failure to get our son to sleep through the night. I'm sure there's probably something in there that will help. I haven't even finished the book.

We also bought the second book that talks about getting toddlers to sleep, and it has even more detail and ideas. My wife is reading it, and so far we're pretty sure my son is actually suffering from sleep deprivation and we need to put him to bed earlier every night. Now, I haven't read it yet, but I think that pretty soon I'm going to make it a priority. (I've just been distracted with reading some older Andre Norton novels.)