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.)

Reflective Magnification

Cranky toddlers make me cranky. Perhaps I should say cranky toddler makes me cranky. Since I have only one.

I'm working on this character flaw. And it's a really weird one. I seem to have some kind of problem about overdone behavior. And what I do in the face of it, is engage in overdone behavior. Oh, it feels all justified and right and not overdone when I'm doing it. But after examining it carefully later, I can see it.

Someone deletes a forum thread that I started, and I think they were overreacting. Then I overreact and post a new thread about how much I detested the deletion.

My wife gets a little irritated with a cranky toddler who ought to be going to sleep and isn't, and I get all upset that she's upset. A short time later when she's stopped being upset, and the boy is sound asleep, I'm still out of kilter.

Some coward posts nasty comments to my technical blog (he or she posted anonymously) and I feel I have to use all the wits at my disposal to defend myself and make the person look foolish. Mission probably accomplished (gratuitously insulting people generally makes one look foolish all by itself). But why the heat? Why the overreaction? Have I now been the foolish one by insulting back, though more sophisticatedly? Even if it wasn't gratuitous?

I have some real thinking to do about this. I've seen it a lot lately. I don't think it's because I'm really doing it more, but that I'm seeing it more.

I know I have some real hot buttons around fairness and basic "niceness." And yes I know that's a really blah way to put it, but I haven't really come up with a better way. The fact is, I like to be nice. I like people to be nice. When I feel people aren't being nice, I behave not nicely. The problem is, that isn't nice. What it is is hypocritical.

I've got to stop reflecting what's hurled at me, reflecting and magnifying it.

Difficult Time Ahead

There is a difficult time ahead for my family. It's going to be hard on me. And it will be harder on my wife. But it will be even harder on my almost-16-month-old son, because he's going to be having open heart surgery to replace his aortic valve next month.

I'm not so much worried about the actual procedure. My son is in God's hands and I trust Him, no matter what happens. Even if my son were to die I will still trust Him. The suspense on the day of the surgery, the fear of a visit from a gowned hospital employee whose face appears just a little too grave... those are things I feel equipped to handle.

What bothers me is that my son will not understand why he is in pain, and it's going to hurt. He is so active and energetic, and he'll not only have his chest cut open but will be poked full of holes for various tubes and wires. The breathing tube hurts and is really unpleasant. It hurts to cough. He hates sleeping on his back and that's where we're going to have to try to keep him. The list goes on and on.

What happens to a child's trust in the world, in his parents, when he goes through that kind of trauma? I wish I could spare him all the pain. But my wife and I will definitely be there with him to comfort him and do our best to be the present, loving parents he needs.

I wish that instead of taking seven work days off for his surgery, we could take the same eleven days (including weekends) to go to Disney World or the Grand Canyon or have some other fun vacation.