Planning to co-sleep is the safest thing you can do

Truth #10

I’m going to share something that might shock some people.

I don’t sleep in the same bed as my husband. Instead I snuggle down on a giant floor bed, playing musical mattresses with my 6 year old, 4 year old, and 16 month old.

I never thought that this would be the way we would sleep. When my eldest was born, we dutifully set up the bassinet, and then the cot, and then spent hours and hours every night pacing, rocking, patting, shushing; trying to make him sleep alone in his own sleep space, because that’s what we thought you had to do.

With my youngest, we never even set up the cot. By then I knew that we would co-sleep from the start.

Co-sleeping has allowed all of us to get so much more sleep. Bedtime doesn’t involve watching a timer while my baby cries or popping in and out every few minutes. Night time wake ups don’t involve me grumbling out of bed, walking down a hall, and escorting toddlers and preschoolers back into their own beds. Instead, we just cosy up in bed together. We lie down on the floor bed at bedtime, snuggling together until the children are asleep and I can sneak out to have some time to myself or with my husband before it’s my own bedtime. Then during the night, when someone has a bad dream or just wants to know where mum is, it’s as easy as rolling over to give a cuddle. And when my toddler wants some milk, I can just whip out a boob without even opening my eyes.

Having a shared sleep space is how humans have slept for millennia. The idea of baby sleeping alone is a relatively new idea. And in general, babies aren’t thrilled about it.

For babies, having access to a responsive carer at any time of the day or night is part of their evolutionary blueprint. Throughout most of human history, having the whole family in one shared sleep space was not only the norm - it was the only option. Having many bodies packed together was the only way to stay warm when beds were little more than a strip of fabric on the hard ground. It wasn’t until the Victorian era that the upper classes started bisecting their houses and family members were assigned their own rooms. From there, the idea that communal sleeping spaces interfered with privacy and fostered the spread of disease trickled down to the lower classes. Within a few decades, the ideal of solitary sleep had spread throughout America and Europe, and became a defining feature of “whiteness”, morally separating colonisers from the “savages” who continued to sleep huddled together. Then along came the rise of Behaviourism and John Watson in the 1920s, who argued that children needed to sleep alone as early as possible to avoid being coddled. In order to enforce solitary infant sleep, behaviourist training methods were implemented, and the baby’s instinct to cry out when alone was extinguished by repeatedly ignoring their cries. From there, some rather dodgy scientific studies were conducted emphasising the SIDS risk of co-sleeping, in a case of science being conducted in a way that supports the values of a society (studies which unfortunately didn’t control for safe sleep surfaces, whether the baby was exclusively breastfed, and whether the family was in a position of economic deprivation and health stress). Finally there is the push built up from years of advertising and, more recently, social media influencing to have a perfectly set up, colour-coordinated, themed nursery, adding extra pressure on parents to use that curated sleep space. All this has led to the narrative of a baby sleeping alone, uninterrupted throughout the whole night, as being the ideal to strive for.   

But it takes more than a few generations to change our evolutionary behaviour. While our society has changed profoundly over the last 200 years, babies haven’t. They still expect to sleep snuggled next to their attachment figures. And throughout the world, co-sleeping is still common. In Brazil, 45% of children co-sleep at 12 months. In China, 37.6% of school aged children were still sharing a bed, and in India the number of co-sleeping school children is even higher at 93%.

Not only does sleeping with a parent provide comfort and reduce overall wake times for both the mother and the infant, it also helps babies regulate their temperature, breathing, and heart rate. There is also a growing body of evidence demonstrating the positive psychological benefits of co-sleeping on self-esteem, healthy sexuality and overall life satisfaction.

“If anthropological evidence on infant sleep and development were integrated and used as a starting point to inform infant sleep research, there is no doubt that the question we would be asking is not if it is safe for an infant to sleep next to its breast feeding mother, but rather, is it safe not to!”

-Dr James McKenna

I understand that co-sleeping isn’t for everyone. You might have reasons like wanting to keep your marital bed free for marital activities (wink wink). Or maybe you are worried about what others might think, particularly in our culture that highly values independence. You might have SIDS recommendations in the back of your mind and be terrified about the risks of bed sharing. I would never presume to tell you that co-sleeping is something that you have to do.

Yet even in Australia, 50% of 3 month olds had shared a bed with their caregiver sometime in the last 2 weeks. I think the number is likely far higher. I’ve heard the number is closer to 80% or even 90% of families will co-sleep at some point. And from my own research, many families are silently co-sleeping, not talking to their health professionals about their true sleeping arrangements for fear of being castigated or shamed. The dominant narrative around co-sleeping is simply don’t do it.

The result is that many families go into parenthood without planning for safe co-sleeping. They assume that since baby has a cot, baby will sleep in the cot. Then when they bring their baby into bed because they’re exhausted and ‘give in’, the environment isn’t safe. Or they try so hard to not bring baby into bed that they fall asleep while holding their baby on the couch.

Unplanned co-sleeping is where the danger lies. Because while mothers and babies evolved to sleep together, they didn’t evolve to sleep in the sleep spaces we sleep in now.

So even if you don’t plan on co-sleeping ever, plan for it. Know what safe co-sleeping looks like.

The research shows that from about 4 months old, bedsharing with any non-smoking adult is just as safe as sleeping independently in a cot or bassinet. However, before that time, there are seven steps you can take to eliminate the risks of bedsharing and co-sleeping. La Leche League’s Safe Sleep Seven are: non-smoking parents, no alcohol or drowsy medications, exclusively (or at least primarily) breastfeeding*, healthy full-term baby, baby on their back, lightly dressed and un-swaddled baby, and a safe sleep surface (no pillows, heavy blankets, cords, or super soft mattresses). Also remember that a couch or armchair is never a safe sleep surface, and to be mindful of cracks where baby can get stuck and the fall height from the bed to the floor. Having your sleep space prepared in a way that it can also be a safe sleep space for your baby is an easy step you can take, even if you don’t plan on ever sleeping with your baby.

However, if you do decide to intentionally co-sleep, take courage in knowing it is one of the most natural things you can be doing. And while it may seem unusual, if you gather up the courage to talk about it, you’ll probably be surprised to discover that most other parents you know are also co-sleeping or have co-slept at some time. In reality, co-sleeping isn’t unusual… talking about it is.

Becoming intentional about co-sleeping is one of the best parenting decisions I’ve made. I love the closeness it promotes, the ease with which I can breastfeed throughout the night, the way I can quickly respond to my childrens’ needs throughout the night.

And this.

I love the morning snuggles.

Beck xx

*One of my favourite pieces of research around the interaction between breastfeeding and co-sleeping comes from Professor Helen Ball. Using infrared video recording equipment, she analysed the sleep positions of 20 co-sleeping families. She found that breastfeeding mothers automatically assumed a characteristic position when sleeping with their infant – facing towards her infant with her knees drawn up under the baby’s feet and her arm positioned above the baby’s head. This position not only facilitates easy access for breastfeeding, but also ensures that the baby can’t slip down under the covers or wiggle up towards the pillow and ensures that she can’t roll over onto her baby. Contrastingly, non-breastfeeding parents do not adopt this protective position.