Despite most governmental and medical warnings against bedsharing - WE HAVE BEDSHARED FROM BIRTH with all of our children 👶🏼
💜 Please note: As with all my posts, this article is not telling you how you should parent. It is to share information to those that sometimes need a bit of reassurance in their parenting choices.
Having bedshared with my teens when they were babies and moving to floorbeds in their own room as toddlers ...I thought having Bonnie 14 years later that I would try to do things differently! But why I felt the need to, I have no idea!
We had a carry cot in the lounge, set up a cot in her nursery, and had a next to me crib set up in our bedroom.
The first night we brought Bonnie home, I went to put her in the Next to me. It just didn’t feel right and I cried my eyes out. Tom (hubby) asked “Why are you putting her in there? Bring her into our bed.”
I was relieved to know that Tom felt exactly the same. So from newborn we have also bedshared with Bonnie. When she started to be able to roll over (around 4 months old) we set up a floorbed for me to share with her. Now at 25 months we still bedshare on the floor in our room. A couple of times I have settled Bonnie in her own bedroom, and she has slept fine. But it’s me, I cannot sleep a wink without her next to me (even daytime naps she sleeps on me, unless she’s fallen asleep on a car journey).
I plan to still bedshare with Bonnie and our new baby due in December. Especially as I will be breastfeeding - and SLEEP WINS! for a calm baby and a well rested mumma!
The fact is, ever since humans came into existence babies have been carried, held, cuddled and kept close. All over the world and through time. Even at night. But the western world have created this unnatural feeling of making our babies independent from the day that they are born!
Often news stories talk about “another baby dying while cosleeping” but they fail to distinguish between what type of cosleeping was involved and, worse, what specific dangerous factor might have actually been responsible for the baby dying. Such reports inappropriately suggest that all types of cosleeping are the same, dangerous, and all the practices around cosleeping carry the same high risks, and that no cosleeping environment can be made safe.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
When done safely, mother-infant bedsharing saves infants lives and contributes to infant and maternal health and well being.
In Japan it is the cultural norm to bedshare, breastfeed and vaccinations aren’t given to infants. The rates of the sudden infant death syndrome in Japan are the lowest in the world.
For breastfeeding mothers, bedsharing makes breastfeeding much easier to manage and practically doubles the amount of breastfeeding sessions while permitting both mothers and infants to spend more time asleep. The increased exposure to mother’s antibodies which comes with more frequent nighttime breastfeeding can potentially, per any given infant, reduce infant illness. And because co-sleeping in the form of bedsharing makes breastfeeding easier for mothers, it encourages them to breastfeed for a greater number of months.
Breastfeeding and Bedsharing studies:
https://www.laleche.org.uk/bedsharing-breastfeeding-risk-sids/
Useful guidelines to safe bed sharing;
http://www.gentleparenting.co.uk/kc/safer-bedsharing-guidelines/
I hope you found this article helpful 💜
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