I’ve always been a family bedder, in large part because I am lazy and get more sleep that way, but also because I believe that co-sleeping is safer for babies in particular. After trying the whole crib-in-another-room thing with baby #1, I quickly realized that I got a lot more sleep if the baby just slept in our bed or at least in our room. This was back in the early 90s though, and if anyone else was sleeping with their babies, they weren’t telling me. And my pediatrician told me in no uncertain terms that I should NEVER sleep with my baby or toddler because it would “spoil” him. But I didn’t listen to him; four kids and one book about attachment parenting later, I’ve logged a lot of nightttime hours with one or more kids in my bed. However, I am also a big believer in finding the family sleeping arrangement that provides the most sleep for the parents and children involved; since I could simply never sleep comfortably with my baby or young toddler in another room, there’s no way that arrangement could ever be more restful for me.
I know that some young children really do seem to prefer sleeping alone (my four year old nephew, N, for example, after his three older siblings happily slept in a family bed as babies). But co-sleeping works for us, just like it works for families from all kinds of cultures all over the world.
Currently, both 12 year old E and 14 year old J like to lie down in our parental bed every night and fall asleep with me and with their three year old sister, C, who has slept with us since birth. Then later, after all three of them are asleep, before Jon comes to bed, I rouse the two older sleepyheads and send them off to their own bedrooms for the night. Until recently, Jon carried E up to his bed every night, but he’s gotten so big that those days are about over. After the big kids are snug in their own beds, C stays right where she is in ours for the night. And now we also have newborn baby G sleeping (ha! I wish!) in the borrowed cosleeper attached to my side of the bed.
(Here’s our newest baby burrito, G being rocked to sleep by Jon before being relocated to the cosleeper for the overnight hours)
Until very recently, C didn’t really have a room of her own, so in addition to enjoying having her with us at night, there was no other place for her to sleep anyway. We have a first floor room that we had been saying we were going to get renovated for her ever since she was born, but we hadn’t gotten it done. The room had holes in the walls, bad paint and lighting, no furnitur. Her clothes were in the closet and we had an old dresser in there, but basically it was just a junk room. Then, while Henry was hospitalized, and we thought we would be bringing him home with some level of physical disability, we began to make plans to make that room over for him as a handicapped accessible bedroom – since it was the only first floor room available. But of course, we didn’t get to bring Henry home at all. Every time I looked at the door to that room, I felt horribly sad.
But then my sister, my older kids’ stepmother and a group of very dear friends did something very special; while I was in the hospital recovering from my c-section, there COMPLETELY transformed the room into a gorgeous bedroom for C and her new baby sister G. The walls are a pale blue and the trim is a crisp white. They installed a beautiful antique canopy bed from my mother’s house, and they painted the old dresser and ugly brown changing table so that they look like something out of Pottery Varn. It’s GORGEOUS, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I got home from the hospital. Tomorrow, my sister is overseeing the hanging of the new custom drapes and bed canopy that were donated and made up for the room by a wonderful local organization that does very nice things for families dealing with illness and loss – it’s called Special Spaces. I can’t wait to see the fabrics in the room, but even without these finishing touches, the new room for G and C is easily the most beautiful in our house. It’s just lovely, and C is so happy to finally have a place to keep her toys and books (as opposed to all over the house as they were before the room renovation).
So last night, C spent the evening playing happily in her room with her cousin NC, and then when it was bedtime, she totally surprised me by asking if she could sleep in her big girl canopy bed in her own bedroom. I had been holding off on suggesting this until we got the canopy on the bed and the drapes on the windows, but she really seemed to want to do it, so I said sure. I was skeptical that she would make it even a few hours in a bed that wasn’t mine. But after bath and jammies, we climbed in the bed and snuggled up together. Big brother E joined us, and we all three chatted and giggled until the two kids fell asleep together in the new bed.
It was flat out adorable to see the two of them – E in his favorite Peyton Manning football jersey – sacked out in the cute canopy bed. I figured that C would sleep an hour or three in her own bed and then come get in our bed. for the rest of the night. (Again, she has NEVER SLEPT in a bed other than ours). Instead, however, the next time I saw her was early the next morning when E carried his little sister into our room after she had woken up. She spent almost THE WHOLE NIGHT in her own bed! Yowza. I couldn’t believe it. And it felt really, really weird not to have her in our bed.
I’ll be interested to see what happens tonight.
So tell me, what are the sleeping arrangements in your household and how did they evolve over time? Tell me how your family sleeps in the comments below.
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Not really a sleeping comment, but just wanted to send some love and good wishes your way. I’m in awe of how you are dealing with everything and think you are amazing. Peace.
Lorelei (almost 6!!!)still sleeps with me. She does have her own room, and when we first moved here she slept there, but it’s gotten kind of messy . . . and she always wanted me to lie down with her there, and I’m lazy and it’s easier just to welcome her in.
As for my thoughts on the whole family bed thing and how I came to where I am now, I’ve written a long post about it here: http://lesliesholly.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/sleeping-beauty/
I have always had my babies in bed with me, before I ever had heard of co-sleeping. I was never tired when Emily was a baby and I couldn’t believe no one had ever thought of this great idea before!
Congratulations to C on starting this transition–when SHE was ready for it!
Good for C! And that picture is beyond sweet! What a good brother E is.
My kids have never slept with us. Recently, though, my 3 year old has decided her only goal in life is to sleep in our bed. She never wanted to before, but now, she thinks it’s the best idea ever. Very odd.
Love it! Congrats, hope the good sleeping is contagious and G catches it.
When my daughter was born we started out having her in our room in a bassinet. However, after just a few weeks we realized that neither she, nor us, were sleeping very well so we moved her to the crib in her own room. She loved it and slept like a champ from then on. She is now just over 2 and a half and moved into a big girl bed this past weekend.
I thought we’d do the family bed. W. Woke every 1.5 hours. On a fluke, we tried her crib when she was a week old. She slept four hours (nursing on demand as she was well past her birth weight). She is six months old and sleeps 11 hours at night without waking. I guess we have to do what gets her the most rest. In our case, it’s her wish to sleep in her own bed.
Our son slept in our bed for a while… Until he was 18 months old? Then he had his playpen, then his toddler bed next to us in our room. He was a bad sleeper, and this arrangement worked for us in that we all slept well. At 3, we bought him a big bed in his own room, and suddenly, without any transition, he started to sleep there on his own. Sometimes the whole night, sometimes he wakes up a couple of times, but it’s been like magic. I loved co-sleeping, I have very fond memories of our family bed, plus it was much easier while I nursed him (for a year). At some point we were ready for him to move out though (first of our bed, then of our room), and it seems like he was, too.
I’m pregnant with baby number 2, due in November. I plan to use a bassinet near our bed for the beginning, and then we’ll see. If she’s a better sleeper, I think we’ll transition her to her crib sooner (she’ll most likely share a room with her brother, at least for the first year or so). But I don’t really have a fixed plan, I think it makes sense to adapt to your kid and go from there.
Our son was the same way as Melissa’s – tried co-sleeping but no one was getting more than an hours worth of sleep at a time. At a couple days he moved to the crib in our room, but he only slept a little better. At about 2 weeks tried putting him in his own room – he slept for 4 hours straight! And we’ve never looked back…now at 18 months, he sleeps for 12 hours straight every single night.
My son who just turned 10 still falls asleep in our bed with my husband and then I move him to his own bed when I come to bed later. I can’t believe that your older kids do the same. I figure when he’s ready he will eventually choose his own bed. He won’t want to forever, right?
We did a bassinet by the bed as a newborn. Then moved her to her crib around 10 weeks old. Occasionally she’d fall asleep snuggled on me after nursing and either me or hubby would wake up and put her back to bed. I did nurse on demand and nursed to sleep for 2 years. When the milk was gone we switched to a back rub after the rocking chair. She was in a big bed before the age of two and ended up right in a full size bed which was nice b/c at least once a week I ended up falling asleep in her bed. Part of our routine was me laying with her after stories and rocking when we still had the chair. She would wonder into out room every once in awhile and sleep with us. Sometimes she would toss and turn and we’d put her back in her bed. Other times she couldn’t (wouldn’t) fall asleep in her own bed but as soon as she was in our bed she’d crash. But she tosses and kicks so we had her start sleeping on the loveseat in our room and that was great. Well now the loveseat is gone. And Daddy was working out of town for 2 months so she slept with me nearly everynight back this past spring. And now at age 6 she will still go to sleep in her bed 99% of the time but will wake up every other day and come into our room. I don’t mind but hubby does so I have to take her back to her room. I lay with her for 5 minutes…sometimes the rest of the night. Thinking about it my Mom was usually pretty cool about me crawling into her bed but Daddy preferred I stay on her side of the bed! And last spring on vacation with my mother it was musical beds. I slept 2 nights with hubby, 2 with J and 2 with my Momma. And I can’t forget the dog and cat…The dog at my head and the cat at my feet. Good thing we have a king size bed!
Our son slept in a bassinet at our bedside until he was two weeks old and then we had to move his bassinet to the hall way. 2 weeks later we moved him to his own room and he slept much better…I would give up a limb if our son would co-sleep… even just a little tiny bit. He’s 11 months old and still wakes up in the middle of the night to nurse but that’s it. When he’s done, he’s done and he wants back in his own crib. Why do they have to grow up so incredibly fast?
My son Peer is almost the exact same age as your C. Will be turning 3 this week. He started out in a bassinet, then moved to a crib and slept through the night (meanwhile my period came back at 4 mos. suck.), then his sleep habits started to regress. At six months we started bringing him to our bed a little at a time until it was a full-time thing by 8 mos. He sleeps with us still and we all love it, but now I’m pregnant w/ baby #2 and we’re trying to figure out what to do. We don’t really have another room to put him in, unless we give up our family room, which I love. We have his big boy bed set up in our room but he never wants to sleep in it. We want the new baby in our bed, but we’re still tossing around all the options…
Thanks for acknowledging that not all kids like to co-sleep or that it works for every family. I was beginning to feel a bit like an outcast. Our daughter slept with us for a week, then went to her crib and we all started sleeping a lot better. I can barely get her to nap with me – only when she’s sick. Otherwise, she has to be on her own.
I shouldn’t think either of my two daughters (now 8.5 and 6-and-a-quarter (don’t forget the quarter)) have spent more than 10 nights altogether in my bed. I know for certain that the rare times we tried it, almost no one slept (the girls both thrash about like tornados and kept waking up when they hit us, and we, well, kept getting hit) and the very idea of co-sleeping gives me PTSD (I exaggerate, but seriously? co-sleeping? No way). Plus, when Carla was born (at 37 wks) I was too scared of smothering her or something. As for Lydie (born at 36 weeks), well, she basically never slept so the question was virtually moot anyway.
So, obviously, now that I’m a (very new) single parent) I’m finding this big old bed rather roomy, but I actually like it (for now, anyway – it’s only been 3 months). And I do co-sleep a little – my cat joins me most nights and THAT, I LOOOOVVVVVEEE (he most definitely DOES NOT thrash around, quite the opposite).
My child never slept with us. I was so afraid when she was an infant of rolling over on her, even though I am a very light sleeper. Then as we got older, she loved being in her toddler bed, then her pretty canopy bed. I know people whose 5 year old still sleeps with mom, and dad ends up on the couch. It’s not working for the parents, if you know what I mean, but I’m sure in time all will be fine. I also know of a family whose two boys slept with the parents for six years, all in a double bed. I say whatever works is what’s right for you and yours!
My little Azita is only 19 months, but she has only every slept in our bed. We actually got rid of the crib given to me by my sister (whose 3 kids never used it and all slept in her bed also), when we realized that it was just taking up space. If we are lucky enough to have a second and maybe even a third baby, they will also sleep in our bed. Unless they don’t like it, in which case they would probably sleep in a Pack n’ Play or cosleeper in our bedroom. I just can’t bear to sleep with my baby in another room, and my daughter needed to be held while sleep so this is what has worked best for all of us thus far.
Okay, so not the point of the blog, but your little E is going to be such a good man. So sweet with his family. And I got a tear in my eye thinking of Jon carrying him up to bed. My boys are almost 3 and it already pains me that I won’t get to hold them forever. Maybe, though, longer than I thought.
The youngest of our 6 still falls asleep in our bed every night. We “transplant” her, but she almost always finds her way back before morning. She’s 5 and, I must say, a little dangerous to sleep with. Her little fist can pack quite a punch when she flings out her arm in her sleep. But we know that, pretty soon, she’ll be in her own bed full time. And for the first time in 20 years, my husband and I will have all that space to ourselves. I’m going to miss having a little body to cuddle at night, I must say.
I’m with Rosstwinmom – what a sweet boy.
The problem with not co-sleeping and having “the most sleep” as your goal, is that the human infant was designed to night-nurse. A baby separated from his mother may indeed sleep longer stretches, but that should not be considered an optimal thing at all. Brain development for the human baby requires night nursing, and studies show that YES babies who don’t cosleep wake up less frequently than the biological norm…. should this not cause us to question, is this a good thing?
I will never understand the ideal of placing the children in the marital bed.
The poor husbands.
suburbancorrespondent said: “I’m going to miss having a little body to cuddle at night, I must say.”
One wonders if the husbands in these situations said the same thing when their wives took children into the marital bed….
We planned on having our daughter in a co-sleeper…what actually happened is that she slept between us in our bed. We put little towel barriers up, both my husband and I are light sleepers and did not worry about rolling over on her. I found it easiest to nurse her down this way, and then roll over and go back to sleep. I occasionally napped while she was nursing, but at night I typically was awake while nursing her. She quickly developed a set pattern of waking up twice in the night to nurse, she wasn’t nursing non-stop. We decided to transition her to the co-sleeper at 5 months because she was already getting too big and taking up too much room in the bed. She transitioned pretty easily, started taking a pacifier, gave up nursing, and still woke up to eat once a night until she was 10 months old. We transitioned her to a crib next to our bed at around 8 months old, and we all slept in the same room until we moved when she was 2.5 years old. At that point, she got her own room. She was unable to fall asleep alone in there ever, so we started having her fall asleep in our bed, and then transferred her to the crib where she slept through the night. At age 3, we transitioned her to her first big girl bed, a queen size futon mattress low to the ground. She LOVED this, and we figured she could theoretically use the bed all the way through college. We do lie down with her until she falls asleep, and we are able to sleep there if we need to. We are having baby #2, and plan to have her in the co-sleeper for an undetermined amount of time, will play it by ear. Then, I was thinking it would be nice for the girls to share a room, and maybe even share the queen size bed for awhile. Then, we might not have to lie with our daughters to fall asleep! My philosophy has also been whatever gets the most sleep for parents and babies, and what is most convenient for mom in the early days. I also really liked having her close by, and missed her when she moved into another room.
Our son slept in a crib in our room until he was one. We tried some co-sleeping but he is a wild man in his sleep, making getting quality sleep for us difficult. It was nice having him in our room but it got hard tiptoeing around in the morning.
Just a reader-where a child sleeps is a family decision and my husband had just as much say as I did, no “poor husband” here. Why be so critical of others?
Our youngest two, twins, were born at thirty weeks. After five weeks in NICU, we brought them home to share a single crib in our room. With two of them plus oxygen and apnea monitors, it just wasn’t possible for all of us to sleep in a queen size bed. My husband and I swapped babies each night for bedtime prep and we did spend a lot of time snuggling all together with the older kids (my three, his two) in our room.
The twins stayed in our room until they were nearly two. We only moved them when my husband took another job out of state, we put our house up for sale and the realtor said potential buyers wouldn’t see how large the master bedroom was when full of children and their assorted equipment.
Of course, moving them in with their older sisters at the same time my husband was home only every other weekend wasn’t the best thing for me. For the first time since I’d remarried, I had to (try to) sleep completely alone, without the soothing sounds of others’ breath. I’d undoubtedly have slept better if I’d dragged a sleeping bag into the girls’ room and slept on the floor.
For a teaching and learning experience on the bed sharing experience, perhaps someone could possibly, in discret terms,(of course) explain for those who may not understand just how do you integrate the sexual intimacy with co-sleeping?
As Jean above notes, please explain how adults can maintain a thriving, healthy sexual relationship (using their bed regularly and without having to decamp elsewhere or save sex for furtive daytime groping in a dark closet or in the family laundry room) with this longterm arrangement? It sounds like an absolute, absolute nightmare. And if you do choose to have sex in the bed or in the room while the child/ren are asleep, what happens if they wake or if they hear? How does one explain that to say, a 3 year old?
Maintaining an intimate relationship with your spouse while co-sleeping is easy! Please, first of all, there are other rooms in the house. Secondly, yes, you can do it in the bedroom. If the child(ren) wake up, they typically stir and you have plenty of warning time to stop what you are doing and get the child back to sleep….
Our son is 8! He still often sleeps with us, but has his own room. He is welcome to sleep where he chooses. I can honestly say that even with co-sleeping AND a small house, he hasn’t caught us once! Well, there you have it, in a nutshell! That’s how we deal with it. I suspect people find other creative ways as well. You do what works for you!
@Logical Mama “If the child(ren) wake up, they typically stir and you have plenty of warning time to stop what you are doing and get the child back to sleep”…
Good grief – what kind of sex are you having?
I would also be very concerned for the emotional well-being of an 8 year old who co-sleeps with sexually active parents. Life consists of a series of trade-offs and in this delicate area, this might be one of them.
Our first son slept in our bed, on my side, until he was almost 18 months. He night-nursed until just after his first birthday, and after that he was really only nursing before nap and bedtimes, not too many times in the day, and water at night. We nursed until just before his second birthday, when I was pregnant with his brother.
Around 18 months we moved him to a vintage second-hand co-sleeper next to our bed, which he liked just fine. I would nurse him and then lay him down semi-awake in the co-sleeper, and I would read until he fell asleep. I loved that time of day, when my only job was to BE THERE for him while he fell asleep. No laundry folding, no dish washing, just quietly reading and breathing with him.
We found another awesome wooden bed (a weird futon-chair thingie) on the the side of the road, and had some high-density foam cut for a mattress when #2 was still in utero. We wanted #1 to like being in his own room and not feel “kicked out” after the baby arrived. We don’t have room for a king-sized bed otherwise we probably would have had family bed.
Up until we tried out his new bed his room had just been for a change table, bookshelf, dresser and reading chair that never got used. He liked his new bed, and we started a new routine of reading his bedtime story in the chair in his room at around his second birthday. Then I would usually lay down with him for a few minutes in his new bed. This is when he started saying “nie-nie” – so sweet! Before long I would leave the room while he was still awake and just close the door gently.
He used to wake up a lot in the night for water, and one of us would go in and give him his sippy cup, but at 2.5 that doesn’t happen very much anymore.
#2 now sleeps in our bed, and now that Daddy has a new job that requires him to wake up at 5am, he sleeps in the guest room most nights. This is fine for us now, as baby’s night-nursing disturbs Daddy’s sleep, and I am more flexible with my time and comfortable with broken sleep. But really, with co-sleeping, side-lying nursing is awesome! I barely even wake up. I was so excited when baby was coordinated enough for it.
Yay for C! My oldest still prefers our bed under any and all circumstances. My younger hated it, even as an infant (squirmed and cried until we put him in his own bed in our room and at 6-ish months, his). It was only the first of many, many, many differences between them!
My oldest was one of those babies that preferred to sleep alone in his bassinet/crib. I couldn’t believe it, because every mom-friend of mine was co-sleeping with her baby and I just figured I’d be doing the same with mine. He’d happily lie between us to night-feed, but would then fuss and grunt until one of us moved him back to his own bed. He’s a very active sleeper, moves all over the place all night long, so I guess he just knew he needed his own space!
we cosleep with both of our kids (6 and 4) and our dog (100 lbs ;>) and sometimes a cat or 2 : in order for it to work we have 2 king size beds next to each other in the room!
I firmly believe that you have to do what works for your family. In our case, it sure fluctuated. We did the co-sleeper next to the bed. We did between us in the bed for a couple months where that was the only way he’d consider calming down and catching an hour of sleep at a time. He moved to his own room when he was around eight months old (because he would.not.sleep.in.our.room. It was PLAYTIME!) but continued to night nurse (thank you, darling hubby for getting him every single time so I didn’t have to get out of bed!) at least once a night til he was around a year. And right around 16 months, he decided that he much preferred 12 or so hours of uninterrupted sleep in his own room. He still does not sleep well when in the room with us (if we’re at our respective parents, or at a hotel or whatever where it is unavoidable), heck he sleeps better in a room with his two similarly aged cousins, which in theory shouldn’t work!
@Earth Muffin – that seems to be our son’s issue as well…or, as husby puts it “did you know that queen bed is NOT large enough for a toddler, much less a toddler and two parents?”. We apparently cramp his eggbeateresque sleep style.
@Anon– ummm, very good sex, thank you but we are not exhibitionists either! Let’s not forget that sex is a natural occurrence between two consenting, loving adults and I am not raising my child to be shameful of his body or the bodies of others.
Like I said, our child has his own room, he can sleep where he wants. He typically sleeps in his own room. It is nearly never nowadays that we have sex while he is in bed with us, but when he was younger, it did happen. We have a queen and a twin up against one another so he’s in his own bed but right next to us. As I said earlier, as well, there are other places in the house so enough with the judgement, hiding behind “Anon” and don’t worry about the children who co-sleep. Again, he’s never seen anything and even children that have never co-slept have walked in on their parents so I’d say we are pretty damn careful! No need for your concern, the emotional well being of my 8 year old is far better than most we know so back off!!
my two beastlies are now 17 and 27. we had a very small bassinette/crib (we could use a standard pillowcase as a sheet!) for the first few months, in the bedroom if it fit, right outside the bedroom door if it didnt.
then baby moved to a “real” crib in their own room. i have issues with sleep. i have chronic insomnia and i need to get the sleep i *can* so i can be a good parent. so that’s what we did. i dont think any one way is perfect for all families, and i think keep trying till you find what fits your baby.
With my older son, we hadn’t really considered co-sleeping, until his first full night in the hospital after he was born, when a wise nurse pointed out that we would all get more rest if he slept in the curve of my arm. Once we got home, I realized that I hated the idea of him being away from me physically. Especially once I was back at work, we both wanted the physical contact and easy nursing that came from co-sleeping. When he got big and wiggly, my husband slept in the guest room for a while. When R was around 2 1/2, we bought a single bed; bringing it home on the roof of the car was such a memorable experience that he went into the bed, with me nursing him each night, without a single complaint. He still likes a pre-bed cuddle, which we do when we have time.
We didn’t even consider setting up the crib for our second son. This time, Daddy was the one who stayed in the bed long term, and I went to the guest room after a year or so. Again, transition into his own bed went quite smoothly. We have a double bed in that room, and one of us slept with him at first, and soon he was sleeping on his own.
Quite amused by the oft-repeated concerns about parental sex lives. Whole house, one sleeping baby, and having one bed busy is supposed to be a problem?
Somewhat related: this month’s Parents magazine has an article about a new SIDS study, and includes the statistic that in their study, 39% of babies who died of SIDS were co-sleeping. Before gasping in horror, realize that that means that 61% of SIDS deaths were to babies sleeping alone. Seems to me like co-sleeping is safer! (Yes, I recognize that I am using the statistics badly, but the reader was supposed to see how dangerous co-sleeping is, when the statistic shows the opposite).
first, let me say i am heartbroken for your loss and have read many of your most recent posts with tears in my eyes. thank you for sharing so much of your life.
the sleeping arrangements of my three kids have varied as much as their personalities and temperments. what worked for one didn’t work for another, and what worked for one made me wish desperately i had tried it with the one who had preceeded him or her in birth.
my most valuable memory of co-sleeping came in the months following a very painful separation and divorce from my childrens’ father. all four of my children and i slept horizontally in my daughter’s double bed. it was the largest in the house as my husband had taken our bed with him as part of the settlement. the kids were little…10, 7 and 4 and likened the experience to the way their pet hamsters slept…all nuzzled together.
there is great comfort in co-sleeping and this was a time in our lives when we were all in desperate need of comfort. it sounds silly, but as a working mother, whose time was now stretched even further than it had been before, i considered these hours what many would refer to as ‘quality time.’ i knew we were sleeping, but more importantly, we were resting….and we were all in desperate need of rest.
I honestly wasn’t sure what sleeping arrangements we would use when we brought our son home from the hospital. We bought a crib which was in our room, but it quickly became clear that it was so much easier and lovelier to nurse and sleep with him in our bed. At about a year, I started to put him down to sleep in the crib (still in our room) mostly for safety’s sake but when he would wake during the night he would join us in our bed, which was great since it started to give us the real opportunity to be alone in bed early in the night if we wanted to be
We had the same approach with his sister, and it all has worked beautifully. When we moved to a bigger house at ages 4 & 2, they were asked to stay in their rooms until it got light out, which has been great for everyone I think. They still come and snuggle with us in the morning so we all sleep well and get to be close too. I *so* agree that every family needs to find their own sleeping groove and that it doesn’t have to be a struggle complicated by preconceived notions.
I co-slept with my older son who is now a very well adjusted independent 18 year old and I currently co-sleep with my 21 month old son who doesn’t even have a crib. I have found it is almost impossible to explain to people who don’t or have never co-slept the benefits and logistics of it so I don’t even try anymore. As for the “poor husband”, my husband travels a lot and spends many nights in a hotel room and he loves and misses falling asleep to our son breathing and waking up to a hi daddy and a big snuggle first thing in the morning.
I had my 17 month old son in bed with us until he was about 8 months old. Around that time, he had trouble falling asleep, and became a wild man all night, and it was impossible for me to get any sleep. He sleeps in his crib now, and I can’t get him to sleep with me anymore unless he is sick. He puts his teddy in the crib, I put him in, he kisses me goodnight and says bye bye. I wish the co-sleeping could have lasted longer, but we all get better sleep on our own. Oh well.
I’m so happy the women in your life could help you out the way they did. The new room sounds wonderful, I’m sure your girls will make good use of it over the years.
My mother passed away when I was five, and so I co-slept with my father for a while — while she was hospitalized and then for several months if not a year afterwards. The way he got me to go into my own room was very similiar to what your family has done for you. They redid my entire room — painted walls, new furniture, etc. It made me feel safe and comfortable. So, even though I am no psychologist, the fact that it felt like it was done just for me made me happy and made me want to be in there. It also helps that my older brother spent that oh so important night in the bed with me. (He too later died way too young).
We are a co-sleeping house. My oldest (10) slepw with us until he was around 4 as did his sister (7). My almost 4 year old is still in with us! It works for us!