Erin, Steve & Willow

In our society, so much emphasis is placed on how babies sleep.

One of the first questions you are asked of your baby is generally, “How is he/she sleeping?” or, “Is he/she sleeping through the night yet?”

There are countless books on sleep training and getting your baby to sleep through the night and parents frantically search Google for answers on the subject (in fact, Googling “getting my baby to sleep through the night” wielded 6,890,000 search results).

For my husband and I, we don’t place emphasis on how long Willow does or does not sleep. It’s not to say that we didn’t… when she was first born, a lot of our updates on Willow were based on how much (or how little) she slept the night before. It was like we were equating her sleeping patterns to her worth and presenting her with little awards for every hour she tacked on through the night.

Until we realized how wrong we were.

Babies aren’t designed to sleep through the night. In many other cultures babies and their parents bed-share or co-sleep so that the baby can do what babies do: get up through the night, have access to food when they want it and feel the comfort of knowing their parents are right beside them. Babies, when they are physically and emotionally ready to sleep independently, will adopt their independent sleep patterns and will sleep for longer periods but until then, babies will do what babies will do. And we encourage that.

Willow is not placed on a rigid sleep schedule. Generally speaking, she is up somewhere around 8-8:30am, naps somewhere around 10-11am, naps again around 1-2pm, naps again around 5-6pm and is in bed between 8-10pm. We don’t push her into a schedule, she just adopts whatever naturally feels right. We watch her cues (thumb sucking, rubbing her eyes, getting a bit whiny, etc.) and we help her to sleep — generally by nursing her.

Allowing Willow to cue us as to how she feels means that we are listening to her and setting a foundation for good communication early on. If she decides to wake in the night to nurse and be close to us, we let her. She’s telling us, in that moment, that she needs us and as her primary caregivers, we respect that need and honour it. If we did not honour her needs and instead let her cry-it-out, we’d be sending her the message that we want our life to remain unchanged from pre-baby state and we expect her to conform to that old life.

Willow was an amazing sleeper. We did the same routine night after night… changed her diaper, swaddled her, turned the lights out, turned on her noise machine and I nursed her until she was fast asleep. We would transfer her to her bassinet and she’d sleep 8-10 hours at a time. She started doing that at 8 weeks. Then we moved in with my parents and she got a cold. Between the new atmosphere and feeling sick, she needed us. A lot. So, she started getting up between 2-4am to nurse (I just pull her in bed with me and side-lie nurse her) and then she’d remain in our bed until morning.

The truth is… I love feeling needed by her. I love the fact that I can make her feel a sense of security in an ever-changing world. I love that while someday she will have to learn that the world can be a harsh place, right now it is sweet and tender and loving. I love that she is so content when she is lying beside us and when I wake up, it is her face and tiny hands I wake up to. I love that I have been blessed with the honour of raising her.

In short, I don’t mind that she doesn’t sleep through the night and I won’t hold her to that expectation. I love that she is learning that she can communicate a need and it is responded to — respectfully and lovingly. She is only this tiny once in her entire life and soon I won’t be able to nurse her back to sleep in the middle of the night. This too shall pass and when it does, I’ll mourn this moment a little bit.

I love her. Night wakings and all.

Before I had a baby, I thought the concept of bed sharing was a bit strange. The thought of putting a teeny tiny baby in the same bed as two ginormous adults just seemed weird. Before I had a baby, I thought co-sleeping and bed sharing meant the same thing. Now that I have a baby, I realize how wrong I was on both counts!

Co-sleeping is when the parent(s) and baby sleep in close proximity to one another as opposed to a totally different room (for more info, see this Wikipedia link). If your baby is in a bassinet beside your bed, that is considered co-sleeping.

Bed sharing is when the baby shares the same bed as the parents. There are conflicting views in the research that you will read on bed sharing. Some, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, believe that it is a dangerous practice that can increase the risk of SIDS. Others, especially those who practice attachment parenting, think bed sharing is completely okay if done safely.

Let me tell you our story.

When Willow was first born, we spent three days in the hospital (she was there a little longer due to having jaundice and needing to be under the billirubin lights for awhile) and those three days were long and tiring. I was getting up every two to three hours to nurse her because she had dropped 10% of her birth weight and in order to clear jaundice in babies, you need to nurse them often. Needless to say, we were exhausted.

Willow was also born with a bit of fluid on her lungs and the doctor had advised that as much skin to skin contact as possible would help clear up the issue. Due to the fluid on her lungs, Willow had two episodes of coughing up and choking on mucus. At one point, she turned completely blue and four nurses rushed into our room after we pulled the emergency pull cord. Needless to say, being fearful of that happening again left me wide awake and fixated on my baby.

To comfort Willow and make nursing easier, I would put her in my hospital bed (with pillows up against the hand rails) and I would lightly drift in and out of sleep while she slept beside me. It made those early days much more tolerable as I was able to at least rest and not be sitting up staring at her in her bassinet.

Once we came home, we would put Willow to sleep in her bassinet but after the first night feeding, we would swaddle her, push all of the blankets and pillows away from the center of our bed and we would place her in the middle. We have a large, king-sized bed which affords us this option. The peace of mind that I had, knowing that if she had a choking fit I would be right there to get her quickly, made it so much easier to sleep and it kept my stress levels down.

Now that Willow is 8 weeks old, we have slept with her in our bed more times than I can count. We have always done it safely and have never pulled her super close to us, unless I am nursing her while lying down. When she sleeps in our bed, she sleeps better and she sleeps longer. At six weeks, she was sleeping six hours a night. Now, at eight weeks, she sleeps anywhere from 7-8.5 hours at night.

My friend Alison Kramer, owner of Nummies Bras, used the term “family bed” at one point in time and that has stuck with me ever since. Our bed is a family bed. We share the space with our daughter, safely, because we want to promote a sense of security for her and the bond that we create now will shape her future.

For a few other interesting reads, here are a few links to posts that were written by friends of mine:

Annie, PhD in Parenting – Benefits of Co-Sleeping

Annie, PhD in Parenting – Co-Sleeping Safety

Alison Kramer, Yummy Mummy Club – The Real Dangers of Co-Sleeping

Erin, Steve & Willow

Living Life Online & Out Loud

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