Of Mammals and Marsupials
An article in the Sunday New York Times today has prompted me to do two “Warm and Fuzzy” posts in a row, so bear with me as I talk about something near, and dear to my heart. Co-sleeping (families, including babies, in bed together) is the way I found best to nurture my youngest child. I wish I had discovered it with the first 2. But, even if I had, would I have had the strength to stand up to the “Powers that be”?
A study in 2004 showed that 47% of infants in Britain bed-share with their parents for at least part of the night. And since I came out of the co-sleeping closet, more and more friends have confessed. But for every positive reaction, there’s an equal and opposite one: my health visitor barely concealed her disapproval; a local nurse made clear she refused to let her own daughter-in-law co-sleep under her roof; and lots of parents who don’t co-sleep just looked appalled. Despite the 47% who’ve done it, co-sleeping seems to be as socially unacceptable as dogging, swinging and wearing a hoodie.
New parents spend a large part of life worrying about their baby and the myriad ways they could harm it. Our parenting instincts are besieged by government bodies and gurus offering advice. If we feel something is right but people with letters after their names tell us it isn’t, it’s very hard to stick to our guns. And co-sleeping is right up there on the Long List of Gruesome Ways to Kill Your Baby.
It took me 3 babies to get parenting right, and that was because of my introduction to the local La Leche League. La Lache League is an International Breastfeeding support organization (which has morphed, over the years to even more than that, providing support, education, promotion, legal assistance and advice, etc to the breastfeeding family) and has chapters all over the United States. LLLI is a promoter of “the family bed”. With LLLI’s support and encouragement, I was able to research this practice myself and make an informed decision regarding how I wanted to parent my children.
James McKenna, an anthropoligist from Notre Dame University has done numerous sleep studies examining the dynamics of the co-sleeping diad. He has found that babies and mothers sleep better when together, babies respond to mom’s breathing patterns and are prompted to continue to breath, therefore, potentially decreasing the risk of SIDs.
Nils Bergman, a pediatrician from Cape Town, South Africa, who coined the phrase “Kangaroo Mother Care”, also shares this belief and states that babies should NOT be separated from their mothers at all:
“The very best environment for a baby to grow and thrive, is the mother’s body,” says Dr Nils Bergman, a doctor specializing in Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) in South Africa. “When placed skin-to-skin on the mother’s chest, the baby receives warmth, protection and food, and its brain can develop optimally. Not feeding the baby often enough and leaving it to sleep alone after a feed can result in the baby getting colic”, he adds. “The mother’s skin is the baby’s natural environment, and both physically and emotionally the healthiest place for the baby to be”.
His “Protest, Despair Response” information is worth a read.
Well, my son is 15 years old now and doesn’t sleep with me anymore. He has no attachment/dependency problems and is loaded with confidence and self-esteem.
People do not accept what they don’t understand and until more people learn to stop being afraid and listen to their own instincts and do the research required to buck the system confidently, instead of buying into the popular culture authority figures, we will still be in the minority and we will sleep with our babies, but we won’t tell anybody, because we think it’s a terrible thing to do.
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Excellent post. Read Dr. Spock for more information about attachment parenting, the way to go, in my opinion.
I’ve done it too. No big deal.
We did this with our children as well, just because we trusted our instincts. We’d read several places that we were going to roll over and smother the child. BS, I say. Roll over on an infant, and not know it’s there? That’s like rolling out of bed because you don’t know the edge is there, something I haven’t done that in years…
army42, did you mean Dr. Sears?
I was wondering that too, William Sears is the attachment parenting guy, but I do think Dr. Spock was ahead of his time, too.
Thanks for coming out of the closet guys!
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