I have a confession: I don’t like co-sleeping. Jack, on the other hand, is a big fan. When he sleeps in the bed with us, he sleeps great, for long periods.
Me, not so much. I feel cramped and uncomfortable, my shoulder and neck ache. Every little sound and movement wakes me up.
I don’t have anything against the idea of co-sleeping; I wish it did work for me, because we’d all be getting more sleep. When I bought the co-sleeper, I thought we’d be getting the best of both worlds: Jack would be close to us, but I’d still be able to sleep.
Lately however Jack hasn’t been happy in the co-sleeper. He had been waking up constantly, and even though we could often soothe him without picking him up, during the second half of the night he wasn’t getting back into deeper sleep. He was waking up every 15 minutes, which wasn’t good for me or Jack.
Last Friday, after the week of getting him to nap in the crib, he started turning himself onto his stomach to sleep. He did it in the co-sleeper too, and I started to worry he wouldn’t have enough room to flip himself back if he wanted to. So, we decided to try having him sleep in the crib in his room that night, and he did ok! We tried that for a couple of nights, but he woke up around 3 or 4 and couldn’t be soothed back to sleep, so we brought him into bed with us, and he slept great and I didn’t.
Finally, I decided to go back to nursing him in the middle of the night, and try putting him back to sleep in his crib, and that is actually working out ok. I don’t think he really needs to eat then, because of the fact he sleeps fine when he’s with us, but it does calm him and it means we can all go back to sleep.
I have to say, I feel guilt about not enjoying co-sleeping more. I’m a firm believer that you should do whatever works best for you and your family, but I feel like something must be wrong with me when I hear other people talk about how much they love it.
Sleeping, crying, breastfeeding; these issues really bring out strong feelings in people. If you look at the messages on sites like UrbanBaby.com, the amount of vitriol is astonishing. Someone posts that they let their baby cry a few minutes, and people start responding that she is a horrible mother, how dare she have children, didn’t she know Hitler’s mom let him cry and look how he turned out?
I wish people would just realize that different things are best for different families, and just do what works for you and yours.
(By the way, I’m not posting this in response to anything anyone I know has said to me: my friends/family have all been very supportive and no one’s been criticizing me or laying guilt trips. It’s more a feeling about all the conflicting advice out there and how difficult it is sometimes to not let it get to you.)
