[ksdale]

We co-slept with each of our 3 kids when they were newborns (which is not recommended by American doctors but is very common throughout the world) and from talking with friends and family I think we got quite a bit more sleep than the average parent of a newborn, and a couple of our kids have not been particularly good sleepers.

I would also add that I agree 100% with the comments about most advice not being particularly useful and also that sleep/nighttime strategy is dictated a lot by work schedule, breastfeeding/bottle feeding, and whether you co-sleep in addition to the differences in each baby.

[rsync]

"We co-slept with each of our 3 kids when they were newborns (which is not recommended by American doctors but is very common throughout the world)"

Remember: all of the statistics and scare stories about co-sleeping are related to alcohol or obesity.

If you are neither drunk nor obese[1], you shouldn't think twice about co-sleeping.

[1] Granted, this does rule out a significant portion of the US population ...

[bunderbunder]

FWIW, the data out there is also a bit muddled by inconsistent use of the term "co-sleeping". Pediatricians often use the term to mean having the child in your room, but not necessarily in bed with you. They'll reserve "bedsharing" as the term for the subset of co-sleeping where the infant's in bed with the parents.

That makes it a bit difficult to interpret the existing literature since you can't always be sure exactly what is being measured.

FWIW, when I was reading it seemed like the majority of the benefit comes from having the baby in the same room as you. It's fine to have them sleep in a bassinet so you can have a bit more room to yourselves. Or just if you don't want to spend all night being kicked by a restless newborn.

[ksdale]

Thanks for the info! We did a little research ourselves and the scariness didn't seem to outweigh the benefits of having the baby close enough to hear our breathing (which people say makes a difference in their self-regulation?) and my wife being able to breastfeed without getting out of bed (this is the big one).

[brianwawok]

I am almost certain that a both non-drunk and non-obese person has somewhere in the history of the world smashed their baby and slept through it.

On the other hand, if you live your life out of 1 in a million fears, your life is not very awesome.

[opo]

>... Bed sharing for sleep when the parents do not smoke or take alcohol or drugs increases the risk of SIDS. Risks associated with bed sharing are greatly increased when combined with parental smoking, maternal alcohol consumption and/or drug use. A substantial reduction of SIDS rates could be achieved if parents avoided bed sharing.

http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/5/e002299.full.pdf+html?sid...

The risk is low, but it is an avoidable risk...

[ksdale]

Thanks for the link! That was an interesting read. For us it was sort of a balancing test. Our analysis went something like - the risk of SIDS is really low to start with, and we don't drink or smoke, we breastfeed, we sleep in a king bed and we're both light sleepers. In addition we take precautions to make sure there aren't pillows or blankets around the baby.

Towards the end the of paper it says, 'One has to ask whether it is worth taking the risk, however small, of losing a baby, when it can be so easily avoided.' I feel like that's the justification for a lot of safety precautions that each seem like a no-brainer individually, but add up to a sterile and unpleasant (and very low mortality rate) way to raise children. But I do think that's how a lot of people look at it, basically just sleep worse and bond less with your baby to take this risk from something like 1 in 5000 to 1 in 12000. But for us at least, it lowered our quality of life to not have the baby in the bed, so it wasn't really that low cost of a way to decrease the risk, especially given that 1 in 5000 starting point.

[toasterlovin]

Somebody who thinks about risk in a reasonable way!

The crazy thing about the scare culture around raising children is that you're expected to make all these sacrifices to your quality of life so that you can eke out minuscule gains in the mortality of your infant. But nobody wants to talk about how crazy it is to then strap your kid into a steel box and hurtle around town at 60+ mph.

[StavrosK]

I don't know, I'm wary of sleeping next to my cat because I might crush her and not realize it, I'm a rather heavy sleeper. The cat can at least flee, meow or claw at me to wake me up, but a baby wouldn't.

[pavel_lishin]

I thought I was a heavy sleeper until I had a baby.

[kohanz]

I have nothing against co-sleeping, since it is great for attachment, which we are big on. I just couldn't do it from a practical perspective: it means one of the parents is going to bed at the same time as the kids, every single night. Our neighbours cosleep and while they had less sleep issues than we did early on, we are now more free at night to have a bit of our own life at night. As anything with parenting, it's different for everyone of course.

Edit: i realize now that you may have done this for the first few weeks or months, in which case it's not a huge deal. The neighbors in my example are still cosleeping with their 2.5 year old.

[protomyth]

My Dad & Mom did that with my nephew and niece and couldn't understand why my brother had such a hard time getting them to go to sleep. I think active grandparents that are willing to take the grandchildren for a night or two often are a blessing on any parents.