Common sense co-sleeping
I love sleeping with my baby. The whole idea of co-sleeping, when I first read about it, resonated on a really profound level with me. It just seems natural to me to sleep near my child, and in fact I quite literally cannot imagine having her in another room far away from me. I certainly can't imagine anywhere safer for *my* child than to be close to me all night long.
Bella's first night in the world, she spent at least three hours sleeping curled up in a ball on her Daddy's tummy. Most. Adorable. Ever. My husband was glowing. Just wonderful. But then after that, he was snoozing and I had to figure out what to do with this tiny, precious little thing in our bed. I was suddenly terrified of rolling over on her, or pulling the blankets over her, or smothering her, or... well, you know, new mama paranoia.
I think all the hoopla surrounding co-sleeping could be reduced drastically if people who choose to co-sleep would just follow some common sense rules for safe co-sleeping.
The first thing to think about is your mattress. Our mattress was a lovely soft mattress with a delicious pillowtop. Lovely for us, but not safe for a baby to sleep in. Anything squishy that the baby can sink into has the potential to obstruct a child's breathing. If you can keep that basic idea in mind (do not obstruct baby's breathing with ANYTHING), the other things fall right into place. We went and bought a new mattress; this is a luxury and I'm aware that we were lucky to be able to do it. (Paybacks a bitch, though, our new mattress really hurts my back!) If you can't do that, a cheaper option to consider is an Arm's Reach co-sleeper, or side-carring a crib.
Arm's Reach has a new co-sleeper, with mesh panels for walls. Brilliant! Baby Bungalow had the best prices on them when I checked.
Another option to improve the safety of your bed, is a co-sleeping nest like this one. I will be purchasing one of these for my next baby; I think that even though it worked for me to just position my baby up high (so her face was higher in the bed than my face), this could give you a lot of peace of mind during that tiny newborn phase, and it is a pretty inexpensive option.
I wound up doing almost the same thing anyways; Bella slept between us with her head higher than my head in the bed. I still had pillows and blankets but they were far away from her. I cannot stand having blankets (or sheets or anything) near my face, so I knew if her head was higher than mine, there were no worries about having the blankets obstruct her breathing in any way. Another way to improve the safety is to have a separate blanket for yourself and your partner, if your child is sleeping between you. Totally brilliant idea, and something that we could use honestly even now! My daughter is now 16 months old and I don't worry about her breathing so much, but she just hates having blankets over her. She usually winds up kind of on top of the blanket that runs across the middle of the bed. Separate blankets would be easier!
(The very safest way to co-sleep would be with NO pillows or blankets in the bed AT ALL. However that wasn't an option for me personally, and I believe that we can each figure out for ourselves what is the safest path for our families. As long as we remember to keep the baby on his/her back and keep everything far away from baby's nose and mouth.)
The whole Back-to-Sleep campaign is all about the basic idea of keeping babies airways clear, not obstructing their breathing with anything (like a mattress). So that should carry over not only to having baby on their back but having NOTHING that would/could cover up baby's face while she is sleeping. Make sure that if you use blankets, you keep them far away from baby. I chose to use blankets, this might not be the right choice for everyone, it depends on you and your sleeping habits. I can't stand having a blanket anywhere near my face, so as a rule of thumb I knew that if I kept my babies face higher than mine in the bed, she would be away from the blankets. That has worked perfectly for us. But you can also just dress warmer and skip the blankets. Later, you can get two twin blankets for each adult in the bed, instead of one big blanket. (My baby is 16 months now and gets MAD if a blanket is touching her when she is sleeping!) Also I traded in my big comforter for a thin blanket. When I bought it, I put it over my face to see if I could breathe through it; make sure you have something breathable.
To each their own; I know that current recommendations are against co-sleeping, but to me, that is kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, babies can be harmed if parents are drunk, on drugs, or just very sound, deep sleepers. Yes, there are things you can do during co-sleeping that are not smart (like smoking, or having a great big poofy comforter over your baby). But there are also ways to minimize any risk and increase the safety of cosleeping. After all, thousands of children are harmed in cribs every year, but no one talks about giving up cribs, now do they!
