Co-sleeping

Every night, I lay in bed with my husband on my right and the baby who is snuggled up against my left side, my arm draped between him and the wall. He lays there nestled into my side with one hand up towards his head, his right leg draped securely over my left. Every now and then I can feel his fluttering movements as he drifts off to sleep, and the regular sound of his breathing as he passes out for the night. He's unimaginably soft, snuggly and luxuriously warm.

Did I think I was going to be sleeping with the babe in my bed every night? Not really, but from the moment he was born, he made it clear that he preferred to sleep in the same comforting proximity that he enjoyed for the previous 9 months. For the first month or so, he literally would not sleep anywhere except ON me. If I tried to move him, he would wake up and complain loudly. Co-sleeping became the obvious solution. Some people have tried to warn me that I'll come to regret it, but considering how much easier it is, I doubt that.

For one, I didn't want to deal with all the crying and hassle of trying to "train" a baby to go to sleep by himself (at a time of day where my patience has worn razor thin). By the end of the day, the very last thing I want to do is try to sell sleep to a reluctant baby. For my own sanity, I wanted bedtime not to be a super stressful thing. He didn't take to sleeping in a crib, so I didn't push it. I figure sleep should be enjoyable. Bedtime is actually mostly hassle-free, and I don't have to go through some complicated routine punctuated by tons of crying. Instead, when he starts acting tired (around 8 pm most night), I just give him a quick bath, put on a new diaper, feed him, and we drift off to sleep. It doesn't take very long, and once he's asleep, I can slip out of bed and stay up for a few hours (and climb back in bed when I'm ready).

The best part about sleeping with the babe is that it's much easier to respond quickly to a baby who's right next to you in bed, at the early stages of waking (before they fully wake up). If they're going to wake up at night, they're going to wake up, regardless of where they're sleeping. Since he's next to me, I can feel him starting to get restless and take care of the problem before it results in fussing and crying. There's nothing worse than trying to put a crying baby back to sleep at 3am. If they're right next to you, you can often get them back to sleep before they wake up enough to fuss.

He's never shown any signs of dropping his late night feedings, so not having to climb out of bed and turn on the lights is very appealing. I don't have to go looking for him in the dark, he's right there. All I gotta do is turn so I'm facing him, and he takes care of the rest, and drops right back to sleep. Maybe that's super lazy of me, but at this point, I'll go with it, because the end result is that I'm way more relaxed at night, and not worrying about how long it will take both of us to go back to sleep.

I doubt all the intimate contact and closeness will do him any harm. Especially since I had to go back to work after 12 weeks, it was my main way of reconnecting with him at the end of the day. I worried a lot about how securely attached he'd be after months of full-time daycare, but everyone says he's a very happy and content baby. It's especially nice now that he's older and doesn't want to be held quite as much. During the day, he's a much more active critter, but at night, he turns back into a snuggle-bunny. Gotta love that.