I respect your position, but I would like to point out to you some rather obvious information about cosleeping.

1. I don’t subscribe to the idea that bonding can only occur when cosleeping happens. Likewise, I don’t buy into the idea that if my child cosleeps with me now, he’ll never want to sleep by himself.

2. The unsafe cosleeping arrangements you write about are probably a minority of people. I agree entirely that people need to be mindful of their bedding before they cosleep. There are a number of ways to do this: put your mattress directly on the floor. After all, in most traditional cosleeping arrangements, families sleep on the floor on pallets. Failing that, take all the soft sleeper pads off your bed, remove all your fluffy pillows and unnecessary comforters. When my son was brand new, we put him in a special little cosleeper mat that was designed to go in the bed with us.

3. I wonder if either parent in these cases was drinking and/or otherwise intoxicated? A word to the ladies…men will NOT wake-up like you will. My hubby was scared to death of rolling over onto our boy, and I agreed with him, so our son never slept between his father and me, ONLY between me and the edge of the bed.

Also, we invested in a king size bed. Since we are not rich, ours came from Ikea, but this seems to actually be better. Our mattress is a simple, firm foam pad that was actually only slightly softer than the crib mattress (friends of ours donated a crib to us).
I am not the kind of woman who likes to have soft, fluffy bedding and 10 pillows, so the only pillows on our bed were our firm, specially designed neck-supporting pillows (the kind you have to order from a chiropractor), so there was little chance of suffocation there.

An open-sided cosleeping crib, like Arm’s Reach (I think that’s what it is called) is also an option.

I cannot tell you how getting enough sleep, via breastfeeding and cosleeping, helped in those early months. I had to have an emergency c-section with our son and had I not co-slept, I would never have gotten enough sleep to heal. With cosleeping, my son sleeps beautifully through the night.

One other BIG caveat: my son was a full-term, extremely healthy baby. If your baby is premature or has other health difficulties, cosleeping in the same bed might not work for you.

With the proper precautions and assuming your baby is a perfectly healthy, full-term infant, however, cosleeping can be a lifesaver.

Ultimately, though, I believe this most emphatically…do whatever makes you–the mommy–most comfortable and happy. If the idea of sharing sleep with your infant sounds like a nightmare, DON’T DO IT. As the saying goes, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

Now, I know many mothers prefer to co-sleeping/bed-sharing because of the convience in breastfeeding. I’m a mother of 2 young children and can certainly validate the tiresome nightly feedings. It seems the easiest answer for bonding and nursing is to have our babies in bed. However, I think of the pictures of the dead babies I reviewed and remind myself- I’d rather be with my baby when she wakes than to risk the chance of her accidently suffocating without my awareness. I nursed my babes exclusively for 6 months and continued to nurse up to 2 years with baby 1 and 18 months with baby 2. If the concern is bonding, there is nothing wrong with having the baby’s crib/bassinet in the same room. I’m very close to my children and I don’t think my choice of putting them in their crib affected our emotional bond. For all the new mothers out there, PLEASE, PLEASE be mindful of your choice. I’ve seen far too many pictures of dead infants that were all preventable. Remember an adult bed was not designed for a baby’s safety in mind.

But with Oliver, we co-slept. He slept beside my bed in the bassinette when he was a baby and when he got older he slept with me in the bed. He had some issues with bowel movements when he was a baby and he was also a very high-needs, fussy baby, and it was just easier for me to have him next to me. It meant that I could get to him sooner so nobody else was woken up. He also really seemed to need the close physical contact.

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