How to co-sleep

[Rainbowbrite]

This may sound like a silly question but how do we go about co-sleeping?

MJ used to be a great sleeper until recently and I am so tired, worn-out and depressed of late due to lack of sleep. MJ is waking so much and i'm getting very little rest. DH is very open to the idea luckily so want to test out having MJ in bed with us and see if it helps.

As it is MJ's cot is in our room and we want it to stay there till she's in a bed as we sleep better being able to hear her. But lately she wants me to get up and hug her or just feel me near her at night.

So, yeah, how do we do it?

Do i put her on a pillow between us or beside me?

I just desperatley need sleep so please help.

RB

[AM]

Check out this link

http://iparenting.com/sears/columns/co-sleep.htm

We have had ds in bed with us since day one, and he sleeps between the wall and me, and we just sleep on a matress on the floor.
I make sure the matress is firmly against the wall, no crack for a baby to slip into, and keep pillows, cushions and loose bedding away from ds.

another link

http://www.attachmentparenting.org/cosleepwork.shtml

[AM]

O and any other questions you may have about co-sleepng or clarification, please don't hesitate to ask, I'll do my best to answer!

[Rainbowbrite]

Thanks for that :)

But i still can't think straight - i hate sleep deprivation :(

I'm worried about my pillow as I use a triangle or boomerang pillow. Should I not use it? What I was thinking of doing is pulling the ends of a spare triangle pillow together, covering it with a blanket to make a kind of groove for her to sleep on. Is that a bad idea?

Oh and also, is it better for her to be wrapped or not?

RB

[talon]

those are good articles. i don't co-sleep myself but have always wondered what the safety "rules" were for it.

Thanks!

[talon]

hi rainbowbrite - i was just thinking about your question and i know you can get a thing called a tetrabed or something similar and it is sort of like what you are describing but adheres to all the safety stuff. it is a bed, rounded (portable, so you can take it places also) with cushioned, slightly raised sides on it. maybe that might be suitable? i have seen them in big w and special baby stores.

[AM]

I'm worried about my pillow as I use a triangle or boomerang pillow. Should I not use it? What I was thinking of doing is pulling the ends of a spare triangle pillow together, covering it with a blanket to make a kind of groove for her to sleep on. Is that a bad idea?

Your idea of using the triangle pillow reminds me of those 'sleep positioners' you can buy, which people do use successfully, I guess you need to assess how wriggly your particular baby is, and decide whether or not she would be able to dislodge them or the blanket, and create a hazard for herself.
I never used anything like that, just laid ds on the matress beside me.
I think if you were going to adhere strictly to the guidelines, the answer would probably be to not use the triangle pillow around your baby.


Oh and also, is it better for her to be wrapped or not?

RB

Wrapping is just personal choice really, I used to wrap ds while he slept relatively inert, but soon he was such a wriggle bug, there was no point, as it would be off in 5 seconds flat.

[Rainbowbrite]

thanks for that. This forum is a life saver :)

One more thing while i think of it, what about blankets? SHould i just have her in sleeping bag, have seperate blankets for her or use ours?

RB

[AM]

One more thing while i think of it, what about blankets? SHould i just have her in sleeping bag, have seperate blankets for her or use ours?

RB

I found those growbags really good, kinda like a sleeping bag with arms, and I did put light blankets on ds sometimes, making sure they were tucked underneath his arms, nowhere near his face.
I used to place him quite high up on the matress, and wriggle myself down a bit, so there was absolutely no chance that my bedclothes would end up over his face.
I think I was extra careful, because of the fact that i just made it up as i went along, and never knew anyone else who co-slept, but i know of other mums now, who do share bedclothes with their babies.
It really depends on what works for you, and your personal comfort level.
I was such a sook, I would hold ds's hand for most of the night, I just loved the contact.

[JanetF]

My son has coslept from the day he was born. I adore it! When he was very little and liked being wrapped, he slept in between me and his dad in a wrapped blankie. As he got older and started taking off the wrap, he started sleeping just in between the two of us. We use a duvet each so he was in between them with his own blankie over him then. These days, his dad sleeps in another room and ds and I share a queen-sized bed with a sidecar cot which was very handy when he was rolling but sleeping without me in the bed during the day. So we have the cot against the wall but with the side nearest the bed taken off and the bed jammed up against it. Sometimes his daddy cosleeps with us and then ds sleeps in the cot and we sleep in the bed. Having dp in another bed is wonderful for me and also means there's an adult bed for when you need it ;) Ds is now 22 months and I have never had an allnighter awake with him. I hope you get some sleep! Happy cosleeping :D

Safe cosleeping links - just snippets. You can read the whole articles at the links.

http://www.naturalfamilyonline.com/5-ap/312-co-sleeping-safety.htm


http://www.drjaygordon.com/ap/cosleeping.htm
In a statement that ought to provoke a firestorm of controversy, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has just issued a warning to parents not to allow their infants to sleep with them. The recommendation was based on a study of deaths attributed to babies sleeping in adult beds from the period 1990-1997. This report is available at the CPSC website as the cover story, Don't Place Babies in Adult Beds. The authors of the study maintain that babies younger than 12 months should be put to sleep in a crib rather than sleep with their parents.
The media is now giving this study considerable attention, largely ignoring previous studies and evidence that safe co-sleeping is of great benefit to babies and their parents. Almost lost in the media frenzy are the important statistics involving babies that are lost to SIDS in their own cribs, in order to glamorize the new results. This was not a comparative study, yet many media outlets are jumping on the bandwagon in announcing that all new parents must buy cribs or they are akin to child abusers. Peggy O'Mara, editor of Mothering Magazine, writes more about the media and government's sudden attack on co-sleeping in Get Out of My Bedroom!


http://www.babyreference.com/Cosleeping&SIDSFactSheet.htm
The Crib Industry wants you to know that 60 "accidental" infant deaths have occurred per year in adult beds for age birth to 2 years.
Why did they forget to mention that cosleeping actually reduces bed deaths??
The crib industry (JPMA)provided a large forum for the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to announce this report. Unfortunately, no comparative statistics are provided in their announcements, and even the statistics they report are admittedly anecdotal and irregular. While the report supposedly left out the adult bed deaths that were diagnosed as SIDS (versus accidents), the determination between suffocation and SIDS is often a judgment call. Suffocation in a crib is more often reported as SIDS, while suffocation in an adult bed is reported as "death by adult bed."

http://www.naturalchild.com/guest/tami_breazeale.html
Cosleeping
by Tami E. Breazeale
Solitary infant sleeping is a principally western practice which is quite young in terms of human history. The practice of training children to sleep alone through the night is approximately two centuries old. Prior to the late 1700s cosleeping was the norm in all societies (Davies, 1995). Today in many cultures the practice of cosleeping continues, with babies seen as natural extensions of their mothers for the first one or two years of life, spending both waking and sleeping hours by her side. Cosleeping is taken for granted in such cultures as best for both babies and mothers, and the western pattern of placing small infants alone in rooms of their own is seen as aberrant (Thevenin, 1987). Comprehensive studies of western nonreactive cosleeping, defined as family cosleeping from birth as a custom, rather than as the result of childhood sleep disturbances, are not yet available. However medical and anthropological evidence suggests the western movement to solitary infant sleeping in the past two centuries may have consequences in the areas of attachment security and physical safety.

[JanetF]

http://www.mothering.com/articles/new_baby/sleep/family-bed.html
Families who are practicing safe cosleeping should not feel the need to change their practices. Over 100 studies have been published on this subject, and the majority show that cosleeping and bedsharing are beneficial to infants and mothers alike. Cosleeping can be a key component of the mother-child bond, and parents sleep with their infants in hundreds of societies all over the world.
http://www.apparenting.com/cosleeping-cpsc.html

http://www.mothering.com/articles/new_baby/sleep/ball.html
In a further study, we videotaped regularly bedsharing parents and infants sleeping together at home, and compared the bedsharing behavior of 10 sets of breast- and formula-feeding mothers and infants. Breastfeeding bedsharers slept together in a characteristic manner that has been independently described by several researchers: The mother spontaneously adopted a distinctive lateral position facing the infant, with her knees drawn up under the infant's feet and her upper arm positioned above the infant's head.18-20 This position facilitates the baby's easy access to its mother's breasts, and babies orient themselves towards their mother's breasts for most of the night. It also provides several safety benefits:
• the baby is flat on the mattress, away from pillows
• the baby is constrained by the mother's knees and arm so that it can't move up or down the bed
• the mother controls the height of bed covers over the baby
• it is very difficult for the baby to be rolled on by either parent, as the mother's elbow and knees are in the way
• the mother is close enough to monitor the baby's temperature and breathing continually
The presence of a father in the bed did not present any universal pattern or implications for bedsharing infants. The vast majority of fathers of both breast- and formula-fed infants faced away from their infants for the majority of the night, and their presence did not alter the proximity or orientation of the mother-infant dyad. We did note great individual variation in paternal arousability in response to infants during the night.

http://www.attachmentparenting.org/artbenefitscosleep.shtml
Long-term Benefits
Higher self-esteem. Boys who coslept with their parents between birth and five years of age had significantly higher self-esteem and experienced less guilt and anxiety. For women, co-sleeping during childhood was associated with less discomfort about physical contact and affection as adults (Lewis & Janda, 1988). Co-sleeping appears to promote confidence, self-esteem, and intimacy, possibly by reflecting an attitude of parental acceptance (Crawford, 1994).
More positive behavior.In a study of parents on military bases, co-sleeping children received higher evaluations from their teachers than did solitary sleeping children (Forbes et al., 1992). A recent study in England showed that among the children who "never" slept in their parents bed, there was a trend to be harder to control, less happy, exhibit a greater number of tantrums, and these children were actually more fearful than children who always slept in their parents’ bed, all night (Heron, 1994).
Increased life satisfaction. A large, cross-cultural study conducted on five different ethnic groups in large U.S. cities found that, across all groups, co-sleepers exhibited a general feeling of satisfaction with life (Mosenkis, 1998).

Common Co-Sleeping Myths
Children Can Suffocate.
The recent Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) finding that adult beds are inherently hazardous is both misleading and inaccurate. Parents should know that this recent campaign is sponsored and financed by the Juvenile Product Manufacturing Association (i.e. crib manufacturers), an organization that has everything to gain from parents choosing to buy cribs. Parents should also know that perhaps millions of parents sleep safely with their infants every year. A recent study persuasively documented that babies who sleep on their backs with a nonsmoking, non-drinking, parent who did not abuse drugs show no greater risk than solitary sleepers.
Dr. McKenna, professor of anthropology and director of the Mother-Infant Sleep Lab at Notre Dame, gives the following safety suggestions: "Infants should sleep on firm surfaces, clean surfaces, in the absence of smoke, under light (but 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. Water beds can be dangerous, too, and the mattresses should always tightly intersect the bedframe. Infants should never sleep on couches or sofas -- with or without adults -- where they can slip down (face first) into the crevice or get wedged against the back of a couch."
If they sleep in your bed, they'll never leave. This has never been studied or documented, and anecdotal evidence from co-sleeping parents does not bear this out. Many co-sleeping parents report that their children become willing to leave, with little or no persuasion, on their own around age two or three, as they mature physically, emotionally and cognitively. These families also report that there are many ways to help children find their own sleeping space.
Co-sleeping families tend not to see things in terms of habits that need to be broken, but as patterns that can be established, but that continually evolve and change. For co-sleeping families, laying the foundation for security and closeness takes precedence over early independence.

[jembelina]

[QUOTE=JanetFIn a further study, we videotaped regularly bedsharing parents and infants sleeping together at home, and compared the bedsharing behavior of 10 sets of breast- and formula-feeding mothers and infants. Breastfeeding bedsharers slept together in a characteristic manner that has been independently described by several researchers: The mother spontaneously adopted a distinctive lateral position facing the infant, with her knees drawn up under the infant's feet and her upper arm positioned above the infant's head.18-20 This position facilitates the baby's easy access to its mother's breasts, and babies orient themselves towards their mother's breasts for most of the night. It also provides several safety benefits:
• the baby is flat on the mattress, away from pillows
• the baby is constrained by the mother's knees and arm so that it can't move up or down the bed
• the mother controls the height of bed covers over the baby
• it is very difficult for the baby to be rolled on by either parent, as the mother's elbow and knees are in the way
• the mother is close enough to monitor the baby's temperature and breathing continually
The presence of a father in the bed did not present any universal pattern or implications for bedsharing infants. The vast majority of fathers of both breast- and formula-fed infants faced away from their infants for the majority of the night, and their presence did not alter the proximity or orientation of the mother-infant dyad. We did note great individual variation in paternal arousability in response to infants during the night.

wow! I assumed this position without even really realizing it!!

Bub co slept with us from day one to 6 months(began shimmying down the bed, despite my legs being there!) and loved it. Bub slept in between us and we moved our pillows so they were half of the bed making a big gap for bub. ONe thing i was very cautios about was overheating - it is so much warmer with all that body heat. I was really careful not to rug him up, just a cotton all in one with a singlet, even on really cold winter nights was plenty and he would just share our doona. When he was tiny i tended to leave his bottom half bare, but use a bunny rug or muslin.

sorry i stuffed up the quote and didn't know how to fix it without deleting all i just typed :o

[Rainbowbrite]

thanks so much for all the tips.

Just to update, if MJ wakes through the night now i just put her in bed with us, on my side ofcourse. I've tried both on a pillow at my head and just beside my torso and she slept both times. Pulled her in bed with me this morning at 4.30am to see if she was hungry or sleepy and she went back off till 6 *bliss*

Just also wanted to get your advice on something else too.

My mum and MIL both think i'm spoiling MJ by doing the following things and would like some opinions;

Is having her sleep in our room till she's in a bed is not a good thing?

If she will only sleep in my arms and not in the pram when i;m out should I risk a very grumpy baby, or just cuddle her and let her sleep which i don't mind doing?

Also, I've heard you can get a patten for a sling. Does anyone know where i can find it? Can't really afford to go out and buy one at the moment.

I do have 2 baby carriers but one is from a chinese dress shop (the ones that sell kids clothes) and the other is a Snugli which i got second hand and don't have instructions for. Just not sure whether they are safe enough.

Thanks so much for all the help and support you've all given me on bubhub :D

RB

[jembelina]

Is having her sleep in our room till she's in a bed is not a good thing?

If she will only sleep in my arms and not in the pram when i;m out should I risk a very grumpy baby, or just cuddle her and let her sleep which i don't mind doing?



I can't see anything wrong with either of those things at all!!! I think many mothers and MIL's have out dated ideas about these things, which can make things difficult as you end up feeling like you have to justify yourself....please don't! Babies need love, affection and security and what better way to show that than by keeping them close and giving lots of cuddles? Sound like you aare listening to your instincts, so stick with them they are a mothers strongest tool! :)

[JanetF]

I feel that babies are really smart and let us know exactly what they need so when your bub tells you she wants to be cuddled just go with the flow :D My son is 22 months and he slept on me yesterday for 3 hours. I love it! As for cosleeping, read the studies I posted about the longterm benefits to your child's development and feel very pleased with yourself! *hugs*

[Rainbowbrite]

HI again,

I was just wondering about something, when you bf while co-sleeping, do you sit up in bed and hold bub (thats what i've always done), or do you just let them attach while laying there?

Also, and i know this has been covered but have to ask again with my example so here goes;

When i put MJ in my bed, swaddled and positioned so her head is near my breast so what do i do about the sheet & Doona that i use to keep warm? Is that the best postion for her? Also, i'm not sleeping that well cause i'm scared to turn my back to her, so stay in the same position all night.

I'm just so scared that the Doona will cover her head or something.

Thanks again
RB

[JanetF]

I bf lying on my side. Talk about a lazy mama ;) but I'm a well rested mama too rofl. Give it a go! Here are some pics.
http://www.parentingweb.com/lounge/bf_basics/position_pics.htm

My son always slept in between us when he was your bub's age. We had separate duvets and he was in between them. Your bub is pretty strong in the neck department now and wouldn't lie with something on her face. She'd let you know ;) My back gets sore if I sleep on one side so I have always flopped about and slept however it worked for me. Instinct keeps us from rolling on our babies and they speak up if you squash them, I imagine. If my son slept in another room I wouldn't sleep properly because I'd be anxious about him. Babies are biologically adapted to sleep *with* their mama (and dad!) because particularly for newborns, their breathing and oxygen supply is regulated by their parents' breathing near them. I promise RB, that if you relax a little, you'll be fine. We know that babies are safer cosleeping, not in cots, (it's called "cot death" for a reason!) so you're actually providing the safest way for your bub to sleep. Way too much research supports you.
*hugs*

[Funkychicken]

When our daughter was born, she co-slept with us pretty much from the start. I alwys put her on my outside so my husband didn't roll over her and I actually learned to sleep with my arm folded above my head or under it when she was drinking. This gave her full access to my breasts and kept her safely tucked into my side. I regularly swapped sides of the bed with my husband to ensure feeding on both sides. It may sound complicated but this set-up became normal very quickly. As she grew bigger we started putting her in the middle and all of us were well rested and contented. Also, I have read quite a number of reports that co-sleeping can actually reduce the number of sids cases as babies are more alert and aware of mum beside them. I wonder how many of the cases quoted about it being dangerous were examined for evidence of alcohol, ciggarette and/or drug use by the adults prior to sleeping. All reccomendations advise against co-slepping if any of these substances have been used.