Co-Sleeping: Dangerous?
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My grandmother was none-to-thrilled when she found out that I was co-sleeping with my first baby. I hadn’t planned on co-sleeping, but it turned out to be the only way I could ever get any consistent sleep. To my grandmother, co-sleeping was bizarre and dangerous. I think this type of thing was relatively unheard of back when she had babies…she told me a story about a friend of hers who came home from the hospital, put her baby in a crib in the living room, and then went to her bedroom to get a full night’s sleep. That wouldn’t fly nowadays.
I justified the co-sleeping in a few ways:
1. It guaranteed me a few hours of sleep at a time.
2. It was a really cool bonding experience.
3. People have been co-sleeping all over the world since humans roamed the world, haven’t they?
Yet another warning has been issued about the dangers of co-sleeping. According to the article, the chances of accidentally smothering your baby is just too great a risk, and instead the baby should sleep in the same room as the mom…but not in the same bed.
Believe me, if I could have figured out a way to get my baby to sleep as soundly in her own crib as she did next to me in bed, I certainly would have. I understand the risks associated with co-sleeping, but I also understand the desperate need for some sleep during those exhausting first couple of weeks (or months).
If you don’t want to co-sleep then my advice to you is to never try it to begin with, even for a quick nap. If you get a glimpse of how well a co-sleeping baby can snooze, you may have a hard time not trying it again.
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