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Home › Articles › Issues for Mom › Breastfeeding in Bed

Breastfeeding in Bed

What You Need to Know
About Co-sleeping

By Shel Franco

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By the time those words hit the airwaves, I was entirely too well rested to even care, but I worried about the first-time moms who might take Ann Brown's words to heart, and I worried about what that meant for the steadily rising numbers of breastfeeding couples. Thankfully, men and women of science, like James McKenna, Ph.D., director of the University of Notre Dame Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Lab, came out in droves, supporting the time-tested tradition of parent-child co-sleeping and preserving the choice for a new generation of breastfeeding moms.

The Science
You see, what I experienced during those first couple weeks after birth wasn't unique. In fact, science backs me up. "Babies will breastfeed more often with less disruption to Mother's sleep and the baby will receive more sleep, as will the mother, compared with solitary-sleeping breastfeeding babies as recent studies show," says McKenna.

Angelo was a 10-pound, 6-ounce baby. He liked to nurse a lot. And just like McKenna says, the baby nursed and I slept. I would wake for a split second, get Angelo latched on, and I would be back to sleep before my next breath.

The Fears
I liked breastfeeding a lot more once I started sharing sleep with my son. In fact, I finally started feeling less and less like a zombie and more and more like a mommy. Still, it wasn't all sweetness and light my husband and I were painfully aware that our decisions to breastfeed and co-sleep would be frowned upon by more than a few people in our circle of family and friends. Not willing to invite conflict into our home, we chose to keep our sleeping arrangements quiet.

We knew that people would be worried that my husband and I would lose our bearings and roll over on our precious child. We also knew that more than a few people would worry about our son's future psychological health. And still more people would claim concern for our marital relationship.

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