Sleeping together

The issue of sleeping with your child or baby is one of those heated parental issues that are hard to explain to those outside the arena, so to speak. It is sort of like the feeding schedule issue, with breast-on-demand parents freaking out about eating-on-a-strict schedule parents, and vice versa. I once read a book where the author implied that children not fed on a strict schedule would grow up to be criminals. If only it were that easy; we could feed the baby every 3 hours on the dot, and beat the crap out of them in the interim. Get the formula just right and everything falls into place.

Unfortunately, no matter how much parents might insist that “x” is the absolute way to do things (or how much non-parents might say, “I would never do “x”…”), the truth is that, as parents, we generally end up doing what works for us at the time with that particular child. I have long been irritated by the Dr. Phils of this world, with some such “warning” for parents on the dangers of a seemingly innocuous act, such as trying to get our kid to eat spinach, with sobbing adults claiming they now weigh 300 pounds because of that damned spinach. Really? It wasn’t all the pizzas you’ve eaten since?

Anyway, before I go down that rabbit trail and do what I do best (offend people), I want to say that I was slightly amused to see this article in the Health section of the New York Times. (The New York Times: not as fair and balanced as Rush Limbaugh, according to a family member, but still decent.) It appears that most people end up sleeping in the same bed with their children from time to time, despite not wanting to admit it.

I am an unapologetic co-sleeper. I bought co-sleepers for both kids, and I swear by them. I could hardly bear it when Ben went to the room next to us, the one whose door opens directly into ours. The one I CAN SEE INTO FROM MY BED. Maybe I was a tiny bit overprotective, but I just knew he was going to stop breathing one night and I, in my exhaustion, would not notice now that at least 8 feet lay between us. And the world as I knew it would end.

So yeah, I did the co-sleeping thing with Ben. Maya, on the other hand, went to her bed earlier, maybe because she sleeps soundly through the night, and has since she was about 5 months old. I am well aware of how strange and wonderful that is, because that other child I have? He waited until he was about 3 years old to do the same thing.

I know that a lot of people disagree with co-sleeping, but I happen to be a snuggler, and one of the hardest things about watching my kids get bigger is that the bigger they are, the less they snuggle. I’m sure there is a precise mathematical formula for this, such as (age of child)(1/exposure to evil liberal media)=(no. of snuggling years). But however many they are, there aren’t enough for me.

Bill Cosby did a great routine about co-sleeping, wherein the 18-year-old high school student was still sleeping in the bed. “Hey,” he tells him. “Here’s 20 bucks. Go get a pizza or something.”

But this is the real deal: they grow up so fast. And soon Ben will think that I am the uncoolest person in the world. And when that happens…he’ll be the one to pretend he doesn’t like snuggling with mom.

But I know…no matter how old he gets…a mom snuggle is still the best snuggle in the world.

Since she was an infant, my daughter, now in the third grade, has shared my bed and my sleep. I certainly never expected to be a “co-sleeping” parent, but sharing a bed was simply easier when she was a baby still breast-feeding, and getting her out of the bed as she got older has been next to impossible.

In most of the world, sleeping next to your child is a necessity: families of limited means live in cramped quarters. But in the affluent West, the practice is widely frowned on, not just by grandparents and friends, but by the medical community at large.

Still, it is far more common than many people think. Nearly 13 percent of parents in the United States slept with their infants in 2000, up from 5.5 percent in 1993, according to a report last month in the journal Infant and Child Development. Countless children start the night in their own beds, only to wake up a few hours later and pad into their parents’ bedrooms, crawling into the bed or curling up nearby on the floor.

Ask parents if they sleep with their kids, and most will say no. But there is evidence that the prevalence of bed sharing is far greater than reported. Many parents are “closet co-sleepers,” fearful of disapproval if anyone finds out, notes James J. McKenna, professor of anthropology and director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame.