What You Need to Know About Co-sleeping
By Shel Franco
The first two weeks of my first child’s life I was not a mommy; I was a zombie. I can still remember how much I hated sunset – how I would fill with dread when I knew that everyone but me was drifting listlessly off to sleep.
My oldest son, Angelo, had mastered breastfeeding with the very first latch. From there on out, he wanted nothing more than to be with me – attached to me. At 22 years old, I was barely unattached from my own parents. So I waged a daily battle against the bottle-feeding, give-me-space mentality that my generation seemed so eager to embrace and the soul-deep desire to bond with my son on a unique, intimate level. Nowhere was that more evident than nighttime.
Angelo fell asleep at the breast almost as easily as he breathed. It was pure bliss – for him and me. But when the time came to place him gently in his crib, bliss was the furthest thing from our minds. He would scream the minute his body hit the mattress. My husband and I tried everything we read and even more that we heard about to coax him into his crib. His longest stretch was 15 minutes.
Toward the end of week two, the idea of falling asleep in the rocker with my newborn precariously perched in my lap and my husband curled up on the floor at my feet was starting to wear thin. When Angelo woke for the third time at midnight, I asked my husband to “just bring him to me.” The next thing I remember was sunlight pouring through the windows and the warmth of my son tucked in the crook of my arm. We had slept straight through until 7:30 a.m.
Angelo never used his crib again.
The Confusion
Three years after I brought my first son into my bed, Ann Brown, the commissioner of consumer product safety, advised parents not to sleep with their babies. She followed up by reminding parents that “the only safe place for babies is a crib that meets current safety standards and has a firm, tight-fitting mattress.”
By the time her words went public, 3-year-old Angelo was sleeping in his “big boy bed” and 3-month-old Lucas had taken over the warm spot in the crook of my arm. Did her words make me doubt my actions? Not really.
When 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.
But once again, I felt like science was on our side. McKenna says that anthropological and developmental studies suggest that moms and babies are designed to respond to each other’s physical presence. He also says that no data has ever shown that mothers who breastfeed and co-sleep in a “safe environment” are unable to sense the proximity of their babies in order to avoid smothering them.
“Our own laboratory sleep studies of co-sleeping/bed-sharing mother-infant pairs (2- to 4-month-olds) reveal that both breastfeeding mothers and their infants are extremely sensitive throughout their night – across all sleep stages – to the movements and physical condition of the other,” he says.
I knew this to be true. On many occasions, Angelo and I were in such sync that I would wake split seconds before he started rooting.
As for my son’s mental health, I was reassured to find that at least five studies conducted over the last 10 years showed that co-sleeping children had extremely positive adult characteristics – that’s more than can be said for the alternative. “While advocates of solitary infant sleeping arrangements have claimed any number of benefits of infants sleeping alone, the truth of the matter is none of these supposed benefits have been shown to be true through scientific studies,” McKenna says.
As for sex, well let’s just say that my husband and I are now the parents of three children, all of whom shared our bed at one time or another, and we are still very much in love.
The Choice
McKenna is quick to point out that his purpose is not to convince everyone to co-sleep. He simply wishes to preserve the choice for those who are interested. I have to agree.
Co-sleeping isn’t for everyone. My good friend can barely tolerate sharing a bed with her husband let alone her children, and McKenna is forever stressing the importance of co-sleeping in a “safe environment.” So let’s face it, some lifestyles simply aren’t conducive to sharing sleep.
If you find yourself wondering if your breastfeeding relationship could benefit from the family bed, read on. McKenna shares some critical thoughts on what makes co-sleeping safe.
- Infants should sleep on firm, clean surfaces in the absence of smoke, under light (comfortable) blanketing, and their heads should never be covered. The bed should not have any stuffed animals or pillows around the infant and never should an infant be placed to sleep on top of a pillow. Sheepskins or other fluffy material and especially beanbag mattresses should never be used. Waterbeds can be dangerous, too, and mattresses should always tightly intersect the bed frame. Infants should never sleep on couches or sofas, with or without adults, wherein they can slip down (face first) into the crevice or get wedged against the back of a couch.
- Infants a year or less should not sleep with other children, but always with a person who can take responsibility for the infant being there.
- Persons on sedatives, medications or drugs or persons who are intoxicated or excessively unable to arouse should not co-sleep on the same surface with the infant.
- Excessively long hair on the mother should be tied up to prevent entanglement around the infant’s neck.
- Extremely obese persons, who may not feel exactly where or how close their infant is, may wish to have the infant sleep alongside but on a different surface.
McKenna says that the physical and social conditions will determine the risks or benefits of the co-sleeping. “What goes on in bed is what matters,” he says.
The Truth
After breastfeeding Angelo for more than two years, it’s a little known fact that I almost quit by week two. As twilight descended upon my home one unremarkable day during those ominous first two weeks, I sat on the couch with tears streaming down my face. “It’s too hard,” I remember telling my husband and my mother. “I can’t do it. I want to quit. I don’t want to be the only one who can feed him.”
Twenty-two years earlier, my mother had been told to wean me, because the doctor couldn’t tell if she was making “high-quality breast milk.” That night, she sat next to me and made me a promise: “Give it 100 days. If you still feel the same, then I will support you 100 percent, and we will walk away with no regrets.”
At 7:30 the next morning, with sunlight dancing off the snowy white of my newborn’s skin, I knew it wouldn’t take nearly that long to love being a breastfeeding mom.
