[git_rancher]

The constant skin to skin contact between baby and mom from cosleeping and breastfeeding is believed by some psychologists to contribute to baby's healthy psychological development. Humans are highly social animals. I'm amazed and sad it's common practice to isolate babies for such a large portion of the day.

We coslept with our first and are now doing it with our 2nd who is still a newborn. We're 3 weeks in and are already close to getting enough sleep each night.

[rdtsc]

> Humans are highly social animals. I'm amazed and sad it's common practice to isolate babies for such a large portion of the day.

It's fun to watch my 1 year old son roll around in his sleep and check to see if mom is there and then roll around around or do an arm swing and feel if I am there all without waking up too much. At first it seemed random and then I noticed the pattern. He was checking if we are still there, it's like a background task running in "low power mode", probably baked in by evolution a long long time ago.

[SiVal]

My wife and I did that, sandwiching our little guy between us, but we put a down comforter over ourselves so his fat little arms would go flumpf in the down as he verified our presence. That allowed us to replace ourselves with big pillows after he fell asleep. He would whack those comforter-covered pillows flumpf, flumpf to make sure we were still there, and we'd be downstairs watching a movie!

[sifar]

My 2 year old does this too every night, uses his arms and legs to feel us. And if it gets a bit cold, tries to cozy up into one of us - feels super awesome.

In the morning, he remains asleep till at least one of us is in bed, as soon as we both are out of the bed, he wakes up.

[steve_adams_86]

When he finds you does he squeeze you a bit? That's my son's thing. Waves the arm, makes contact, squeezes and pinches for a while... Then back to sleep. It's nice.

[rdtsc]

Yap, but mostly when he was younger, now at 1 it is more of a slap.

[war1025]

We have a 2 year old and 6 month old twins. Been co-sleeping since our oldest was 3 or 4 months old. We tried doing the separate room thing with the twins and it was just a nightmare of sleepless nights. Moved them into our bed after Christmas and things got much better. So much easier to just roll over half-awake to calm a baby down.

Also ditto on the oddness of wanting to isolate babies in a different room when everyone is sleeping. One of the things I look forward to most is getting to sleep next to my kids every night, even if I'm busy during the day and don't get to spend as much time with them as I'd like to.

[shaklee3]

That's very weird. Thanks for sharing. Also, you absolutely cannot lump cosleeping with a toddler in with cosleeping in with cosleeping with a baby. The baby people do it because they want to avoid waking up and walking into another room to feed many times per night. With a toddler, there is no good reason.

[veidr]

> With a toddler, there is no good reason.

Um, where are you getting that from? It makes the toddler happier and more comforted, and in this case (and probably most cases) the parent also.

And, even though a toddler or young child won't tend to wake up as much as a baby, they still do a lot — bad dreams, loud noises, earthquakes, etc. — and having a parent right there next to them is a lot different than not. It can be the difference between them going right back to sleep or sitting up and screaming and then being wide awake for an hour.

[shaklee3]

See all the studies linked in this thread. The only reason people do it is to try to get past the hard phase of sleep training your child. Those who give up end up co-sleeping, and will regret it later.

[veidr]

Sorry, that's nuts. That might be why many Americans do it, but most of the world does it by choice, and virtually nobody regrets it. And once your children are beyond the infant stage where there is some (as TFA notes, sub-lightning-strike) danger, there is none.

It sounds shitty when you don't actually have kids, but once you have them and try it, it's just kind of like oh, I see. It is self-evidently great for the kids, and it also doesn't really limit your adult life much (you can just get up when they are asleep, and come back when you're sleepy).

Anyway, avoiding training babies to sleep alone certainly not "the only reason people do it", or even a reason most people do it (although it does have that benefit).

[shaklee3]

I have kids. It's still shitty. Many people who have tried both agree. You are trying to justify how it's not that bad to artificially pretend to sleep until they fall asleep, at which point you continue to go about your business. That's a huge nuisance, and describing it as anything but doesn't make sense.

The rest of the world does it because living conditions typically dictate it, since you aren't living in a large house in the backgroundt area.

[war1025]

An oddly condescending comment. If you read my post again, you will see that we are both types of terrible co-sleeping parents. Both lazy and without good reason.

Maybe you missed it, but we also have 6 month old twins who are co-sleeping with us. We sleep on a futon-style floor bed, and the toddler moved herself to another floor bed next to ours of her own accord just a week or two ago.

Anyway, we're used to people thinking our parenting tactics are odd. Works for us.

[6t6t6t6]

In Japan, co-sleeping is extremelly common, even until the kids are 6 or 7.

The fact that families tend to sleep in futon instead of beds make it even more convenient, because you can just lay out a bunch of futon on the floor at night for all the kids.

[hndamien]

We do this too. Two giant mattresses on the floor! Great to know I’m not a pioneer.

[garmaine]

Another cosleeper here. Besides the benefit to the child, it was also amazing to get a full night’s sleep. When the baby was hungry my wife just had to roll over and help it latch on, then go right back to sleep while feeding. That might not be “sleeping through the night”, technically, but it was just as good from our perspective.

[dingaling]

> I'm amazed and sad it's common practice to isolate babies for such a large portion of the day.

Frankly my wife and I were glad of sleeping apart from our baby. Humans might be social but that doesn't mean we want to spend 24 hours a day with baby or toddler.

[hndamien]

Co-slept with both kids here. Full nights sleep every night. Nobody harmed.