Sleeping With Baby
By Saralee Sky
My friend,
Eric, was over the other day. He and his wife are expecting their
first baby in May. I was showing him my web site and he asked me,
“Do you have any cribs?”
“No,” I said,
“and I don’t recommend them.”
“Why not?” he
asked.
“Well for one
thing, you simply won’t use it. And for another, the baby will much
prefer sleeping with you,” I said. “If you sleep with the baby, it
makes late night feedings so much easier.”
I showed him
an ad for a
co-sleeping bed that attaches to the parents’ bed.
“You’ll get much more use out of something like this,” I told him.
He looked at me like I was crazy! I could sympathize with his
confusion – and his complete innocence as he approached parenthood.
Time and again
I have seen first time pregnant moms get all starry eyed as they
shop for cribs. Well-meaning grandparents step up and pay the price
for this ‘essential’ piece of furniture. More money is spent on
making the nursery just right. It’s part of the nesting instinct.
But once the baby is born, those parents end up turning the crib
into a storage area for all the cute stuffed animals they received
as birth and shower gifts. And the beautiful nursery is seldom used
until it is turned into a toddler’s bedroom.
Going to sleep
in a crib all by herself is the last place the baby wants to be! And
the nursery is just too far away from mom. For the first 12-15
months after birth, the baby still thinks of herself as part of her
mother. She will sleep much better in the bed with her parents or in
a sling or other kind of baby carrier. She needs the physical
closeness as she adjusts to life outside the womb. At times when she
absolutely must be put in the crib, a machine that makes the sound
of a heartbeat and other noises heard within the womb will help her
sleep. Those are the sounds she’s used to hearing. They are familiar
and comforting.
My oldest son,
Joseph, slept with me and my partner most of the time. Still I had a
bassinet and then a crib next to my bed that I would occasionally
try to use. He was an early crawler – in a hurry to be on the move.
At 5 months he could crawl well! One day when he was in his 5th
month I put him down for a nap in his crib and went to the bathroom.
I was sitting on the toilet when I heard a thump and then a series
of short pat-pat-pat-pat-pat-pat-pat-pats coming closer and closer
to the bathroom door. I opened the door with some trepidation to
find Joseph right outside the door!
Wait a minute!
How could that be? I just put him in his crib! So, I picked him up
and carried him back to our bedroom and put him back in the crib and
sat down on my bed to watch what he would do. That little 5 month
old baby shinnied up the bars of the crib and launched himself head
first out of the crib, landing first on my bed (I was there to catch
him this time!) and then down onto the floor! Needless to say that
wa
s the end of the crib for Joseph!
Now I know
that co-sleeping isn’t for everyone. You must decide what works best
for you and your family. The most important thing to understand is
that your little baby will grow up and away from you as quickly as
he possibly can. That’s his job. Your job is to love and nurture and
protect him as he grows. The early lessons he learns about the world
around him in his first years he will carry with him throughout his
life. If he is held and cuddled as much as possible in the first
year, if all his needs are met quickly and with love, he will learn
that the world is a safe place in which to live and grow.
When should
you transition her to her own bed? There are many options here:
* When you
are feeling too cramped.
* When she
tells you she wants her own bed.
* When
another baby is on the way.
* When it
just feels right. Trust yourself and your baby to know when it’s
time for her to sleep on her own.
I write this
article from the perspective of a mother and grandmother. When my
children were young I thought that time would be forever. Now my
sons are all grown up and on their own. Still they look to me for
companionship, for support when they are in trouble, and to help
take care of their own children. How we parent says more about us
than how we make our living or how we practice our spirituality. We
are everything to our baby or toddler. If we raise him with love and
respect he will grow up to love and respect himself and others. And
- if you sleep with him when he is a baby - chances are much better
that everyone will get a good night’s sleep!
The following
articles were written by Saralee Sky, M.A. Ms Sky has 30+
years of experience with children, as a mother and grand mother, as
a therapist for abused children, as the director of three nonprofit
agencies serving children, and as co-owner and manager of Womb To
Grow LLC and http://www.babynut.com.
Babynut provides natural, organic and alternative products for
pregnancy, adoption, childbirth, parenting, babies and toddlers.
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