Some children don’t like having bowel movements, perhaps because they have felt pain before, and now resist going. This resistance can cause constipation as the faeces become hard and compacted, making bowel movements even more painful….

My decision was based on trying to avoid bedsharing where possible. Unfortunately, there does appear to be a possible risk associated with even safe bedsharing. Not of suffocation, as the risk of that is negligible if proper guidelines are followed, but of SIDS. Several studies have compared bedsharing rates between SIDS infants and surviving infants, and, after controlling for confounders, some of them have shown increased bedsharing rates among the SIDS infants compared to the non-SIDS. This isn’t conclusive, as other studies have shown no difference in risk, and it’s also likely that any difference in risk would be a small one only, but it’s still concerning. I wanted to avoid bedsharing if possible. With my son, it wasn’t possible, as he was such a poor settler it was the only way I could get sleep and stay sane. My daughter is better at settling, so it hasn’t been necessary in her case so far.

How did it affect my family life? Well, the fact that my son was a lousy sleeper affected my family life adversely. So the co-sleeping wasn’t great, but any other way of dealing with it wouldn’t have been great either. I’m glad it hasn’t been necessary this time, though.