Co-sleeping

Pregnancy, birth, postpartum, motherhood, parenthood. Birthing a baby is the holiest and most profound thing I have ever done and becoming a mother has brought me more love than I ever thought possible.

The chapter of becoming parents is maybe the biggest yet most natural thing anyone can experience. The absurdity and fascination of this new reality still lingers within me daily, coexisting with the certainty and normality of it all.

There’s many aspects of early life that becomes even more apparent when you have a baby. For me, one of them being the importance of skin to skin and closeness. For a baby, the transition from inside the belly to outside the belly, is already a big one. Imagine then also being separated from the warmth of skin. Laying in a stroller, baby nest or otherwise placed somewhere even in close proximity; is an enormous change for someone who only knows of life inside the womb. Closeness with mom, and also with dad, after being born, is therefore a natural need and something we should strive to accommodate.

Humans evolved to sleep together and entire families slept together in our evolutionary past, and even in our recent past. Babies especially never would have slept apart from their parents. Solitary infant sleep is a western practice which is quite young in terms of human history. In many cultures they still practice co-sleeping, with babies seen as natural extensions of their mothers for the first one or two years of life, spending both waking and sleeping hours by her side. Co-sleeping is taken for granted in such cultures as best for both babies and mothers, and the western pattern of placing small infants alone in rooms of their own is seen as strange.

If we consider nature, no other mammal puts their baby to sleep in a separate room or in a separate area away from them. Your child is simply not meant to be away from you.

Close contact with a mother’s heartbeat and even her respirations are believed to help regulate a baby’s nighttime heartbeat and breathing. Babies learn that sleep is safe and pleasurable and feels good, which will serve them for life, even after they no longer want or need to share their parents’ bed. It also increases the oxytocin production, in baby and in both parents. After giving birth we know how incredibly important oxytocin is, and in how many ways it benefits us.

For us, baby is always on our arm, chest or lap and in the night we co-sleep. Sleeping with her between us is my favorite thing and it makes night feedings effortless. I’m nursing laying down and none of us has to go through the many stages of waking up. This is not to say that sleep is easy. It certantly isn’t. Nor should it be. At least not the way we define as easy. Night wakings and sleep deprivation are parts of life for parents as they help a baby to navigate a new reality. A newborn has no ability to regulate themselves and are totally dependent on our nervous systems for regulation. I find that co-sleeping is supporting this.

Providing as much care and safety as possible for a little growing life is maybe the most important thing you’ll ever do.