In bed with my family (warning: not particularly funny)

I read a blog this week that documented in some detail a mum's experience of "sleep training" her 14-month-old. Now I don't know this mum in real life, and I am personally uneasy with the idea of sleep training (for anyone out there who doesn't know, it's when you use a variety of techniques to teach your baby not to call out for you in the night), but I applauded the honesty and bravery that went into creating that blog post in an era when criticism of other people's parenting choices is so rife. And I thought, well why don't I document our sleeping choices too?

So, for the record here's what we do.

Fred is now nearly 2.5 years old and has co-slept with us since birth. The first five months he was mostly in a moses basket beside the bed, coming into bed for feeds, and then we set up a sidecar cot next to my side of the bed, which gave him an extra foot or two of separate sleeping space (flush with our mattress) in accordance with NCT safe co-sleeping guidelines (1).

That arrangement was convenient for many reasons: it enabled me to continue the breastfeeding on demand without the annoyance of getting out of bed to settle a crying baby; it meant there *was* no crying baby in the first place since I'd feed Fred at the first wakeful sound instead of him having to wake me from another room. And in our two-bedroom house it also meant we had a proper spare room for guests.

But those points of convenience, while nice by-products, weren't my top reason(s) for choosing to co-sleep. I'd read early in Fred's life that study after study shows that co-sleeping is hugely psychologically beneficial to a small child. That the oxytocin released during physical contact at night is strongly linked to psychological strength (2), and that the more physical touch a child gets in childhood, the calmer and less fearful he is likely to be in adulthood (3) and the better able he is to deal with stress (4). And that those effects last a lifetime. (And given that I'm hoping Fred lives for a good 90 or 100 years, our little 2.5 years so far is but a wink of an eye). All that, not to mention the fact that in some non-western societies where co-sleeping is commonplace, SIDS is a virtually unknown phenomenon (5).

As far as I know, no study has proven that children sleeping in another room is beneficial to anyone except the parents.

So that's why we did what we did. And still do, although the sidecar cot has gone the way of Freecycle since it really wouldn't fit with the lovely minimalist decor in our new house. Fred now sleeps in the middle of our king size bed, with me to his right and his dad to his left.

Now, the whole co-sleeping thang hasn't always been easy. That idea that co-sleeping babies feed in their (and your) sleep? Utter myth as far as we found. I was going doolally with sleep deprivation around ten months in. Fred would often latch on to feed, fall back to sleep, and then go mental if I tried to unlatch him so I could roll back over. I spent a LOT of his first two years sleeping (or just lying awake) on my left hand side. The night when he finally unlatched himself, rolled over and went back to sleep (he was probably 2 and a bit) I nearly wept for joy, then promptly rolled on to my underused right side and slept like a log. Our next milestone will be Fred sleeping through the night, which I may be able to expect some time around his third birthday. And then I suppose our next milestone after that will be me sleeping through the night, which might happen around the time I'm 60.

Also, I'm sure Fred's dad would say that co-sleeping isn't ideal on several counts, especially as it's meant he gets kicked in the crown jewels quite a lot more than he did before we had a baby. I'm very lucky - rather, Fred's very lucky - that his dad's on board with the psychology of bed-sharing, probably because he knows it won't be forever. (Fred will leave the parental bed when he chooses to, not when we enforce it; I think in children who choose this is generally around 6 to 7 years old).

The biggest downer for me though, has been that I LOVE my own bed space, and sharing it, even with a scrummily soft, warm child isn't where I expected to be at this stage in life. Then again, a lot of my pre-baby expectations have been completely confounded in the past couple of years, and I'd bet my bottom dollar that on the day I do finally get to sleep alone again, I'll feel weird and empty and sad.

What else do I need to say in my bare-all sleep post? I should probably mention that I've never spent a night apart from Fred. I've started the night in another bed, when sleep was the only thing on my mind, and I've ended the night in another bed, on the few occasions I've had a stomach bug, but each time he slept with his dad I could hear him crying for me and the urge to go and join them was utterly overwhelming. Some mums and dads go away overnight, and that's fine for them, and in the first year I often wished we could do the same. But I didn't want Fred ever to wake up not knowing where at least one of us was. And now if we want a night away, all three of us go as a team. The beauty of co-sleeping and travel is a) no travel cots, and b) a child who can sleep pretty much anywhere as long as he's touching distance from his mum.

And if we have another baby? We'll do the same thing all over again. Only this time we'll need a bigger bed.

References
(1) www.nct.org.uk/parenting/sleeping-safely-your-baby

(2) Keller, M, et al. (2000) Co-sleeping and children independence; challenging the myths; in McKenna J (Ed.) 'Safe Sleeping with Baby: Evolutionary, Developmental and Clinical Perspectives', University of California Press, California. McKenna J (2000), Cultural influences on infant and childhood sleep biology and the science that studies it: toward a more inclusive paradigm; in Loughlin J, Carroll J, Marcus C (Eds.) 'Sleep in development and paediatrics', Marcel Dekker, New York: 99 – 230.

(3) Kramer KM, et al. (2003) Developmental effects of oxytocin on stress response: single versus repeated exposure, 'Physiology and behaviour' Sept; 79 (4 - 5): 775 – 82. Hofer MA (1996) On the nature and consequences of early loss, 'Psychosomatic medicine' Nov – Dec 58 (six): 570 - 81. Buckley P, et al. (2002) Interaction between bed sharing and other sleep environments during the first six months of life, 'Early human development' Feb; 66 (2): 123 – 32.

(4) Francis DD, et al. (2002) Naturally occurring differences in maternal care are associated with the expression of oxytocin and vasopressin receptors. 'Journal of Neuroendocrinology' 14: 349 – 53. Flemming AS, et al. (1999) Neurobiology of mother – infant interactions; experience and central nervous system plasticity across development and generations, 'Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews' May: 673 – 685

(5) "Nobody understood my questions; the concept of sudden infant death or cot death was apparently unknown among professionals and laypeople in such different places as Peking, Hsian, Loyang, Nanking, Shanghai, and Canton. Furthermore I learned that Chinese babies sleep with their mothers… Ever since then I have held the view that even if it happens during the day, cot death is a disease of babies who spend the night in an atmosphere of loneliness and that cot death is a disease of societies where the nuclear family has taken over." Michael Odent, Lancet 1986 Jan 25; cited in Sunderland M (2006), 'The science of parenting', DK, New York.
Davies DP (1985) Cot death in Hong Kong: a rare problem? Lancet 2: 1346 – 48.