Hey, what a great article, We don't co-sleep very often, unless he is sick, or he climbs in bed with us through the night, or he gets in bed with me every morning but majority of the time he is in his own bed. I also lay with him of a night while he goes to sleep and love that. I am all for co-sleeping but have found it just is not for us as an everynight thing.

karen

As for us, we have our 7 1/2 year old still in bed with us.  After reading all the other comments here I guess we sound like lunitics.  We thought  there were others like us out there but apparently not without major problems.  We adopted our son from birth & started him out in a bassinet  right up against my side of the bed.  when he out grew that we tried to put him into a crib in his own room but it just didn't work for us.  Neither of us slept good as we were so worried about how the baby was sleeping.  He ended up in our bed after only 2 weeks or so in the crib & here he still is going into the 2nd grade. 

Our sex life is great!  My husband has no issues with our arrangement & I'm pretty confident he is not going to cheat on me or leave me over this.  We could use a bigger bed, but thats just a matter of going out & spending the money on one. 

Josh (our son) is in no way shape or form a freak.  He has no issues sleeping in his own bed on the bottom bunk shared with his older brother who sleeps up top in their own room if we ask him to or if we move him there to have alone time.  He also does GREAT on sleepovers with family & close friends who have children his age.  

We dont sleep well when he is not there.   We didn't do this with our other two kids (10 year old twins).  But it is working well for us with this one.   Josh is well liked by all his peers, he is smart, outgoing, & a kind, caring person.  We dont hide our co-sleeping from others & he tells all his friends very proudly he has 2 beds & explains the situation.  I'm sure people frown upon us behind our backs!

Joshua is free to move onto his own bed when he is ready.  Our son is a confident child & we are confident in our parenting.  We are pretty sure he wont be going through all of his pre-teen changes & still sleeping with us.

Looking forward to reading all the comments you all have.

hey izzy, this is a great article,i too have had people put me down for having my little girl sleep with me from 2 mths old. Those words"she will never get out of your bed"...what rubbish,she is now nearly 16mths old and sleeps in her own cot!! I am so glad i had her sleep with me all those mths as they are little for only a little while....so nice snuggling them....

na xxx

excellent advice, i also co-sleep with jake, it means i get more sleep and he goes back to sleep after a feed more easily, during the day he sleeps in his cot so im not worried about him being attached to sleeping with me and if he does ill deal with it then, like u said its a sainity thing

xoxo

Co-sleeping works for us!

Ya know Izzy - I was never a fan of co-sleeping and you've mentioned all the reasons why I wasn't....but one thing I had not considered is the sanity of why people do allow it. Thank you for the eye opener....

While reading your article I began considering all the other things parents say 'don't do' over and really it boils down to one thing....what works for you. No one has the right to preach to another about what they should and should not do with their children.

We ALL do things to keep our sanity and to make life a little easier when it comes to our children. Some parents choose to allow their children to have bottles right up 'til they're about to go to pre-school and sometimes after - Why?  Because of sanity issues. Some allow night time nappies up and after this same age and the list can go on....

I allowed my son to have a dummy (pacifier) a lot longer than I really would have liked and I did so because I needed to be able to keep my sanity. It was a choice I made at the time. I had people tell me about the problems it may cause with his teeth, how the weening off stage would be a great deal harder and all the other problems I I would have to go through because of how long he had his dummy for- I  can roll my eyes at people now as it wasn't hard to take it off of him - I just needed to wait a little longer than most as HE wasn't ready to give it up and I wasn't ready to take it....and I was able to avoid the crying, the pleading and the long nights - we were a lot happier too than what we would have been if I had have taken it from him earlier....

Co-sleeping isn't for everyone - just like breast feeding isn't for everyone and methods and ages for toilet training may differ from parent to parent - but at the end of the day the most important thing of all is to make sure that your child is happy, content and that you are giving your all to them.

Izzy, I know heaps of people that didn't do the co-sleeping thing and still have issues with getting their child into a big bed or getting their child to stay in bed. So co-sleeping or not, these issues still surface....

Great article matey - you've opened my eyes!

Cheers and more power to ya!

Hugs

OB

great article thanks for sharing xxshar

When i had my son i was paranoid about sids i got very little sleep as i woke at every sound even though he was in the crib right beside our bed, but he kept waking the moment he was placed in the crib so i tried putting him in the rocker bedide the bed it worked for 10 mins. so i decided to put him in bed with my husband and i and we slept much better it was easier to feed and we both woke happier and were happier during the day.  he is 1 yr old and i am still breat feeding so when i think the time is right for him to move back to the crib or a single bed then we'll work on that but untill then our sleep and happiness is the best thing, but he's defintley not sleeping in my bed at 6 yrs old.

I don't believe in co sleeping. I believe the child has a bed / cot, depending on how old they are etc, and they have to learn to sleep on their own in their own beds. When adults go to bed, it's there time, and the child has to learn this.

Izzy, I would have to agree 100% with you on the co-sleeping issue.  My son at around the same time (5 mths) was nursing every 2 hours throughout the night.  I was extremely exhausted and it got to the point where my husband would have to go and get him - obviously making him exhausted.  Ever been around a home with 2 exhausted parents?  Not a pretty picture!  Well, we decided to start co-sleeping.  Well, as he got older (around 7) we started putting him in his own bed.  Oh, and I stopped breastfeeding him at 6 months!  Things were going really well - until one day about a month ago he would just not sleep in his crib.  I should say, he would not nap in his crib and at night he would only sleep in there for about 3/4 hours and then end up in bed with us.  I have become extremely frustrated over this because now that he is 13 months, he is kicking and moving all over the bed and I have started to lose sleep again.  After trying everything that has been offered or reading books and websited, I just do not know what else can be done!  I do not mind the co-sleeping but when it is causing me to lose sleep it starts hurting our daily routines of playing and having fun because I am so tired - any suggestions on this?????

I had to stop my son from sleeping with me the same time I stoped brest feeding.... I'll admit I loved it too. And as you say for us it did not stop the intimacy.. (There are other places in the house).  And even now sometimes when he takes a nap I'll take one with him... But when I stopped breast feeding I had to stop him sleeping in my bed because he still wanted to breast feed... Which would have been fine if he did not have the teeth....  I would bring him to bed with me to breast feed and I slept much better for it. But when he stopped breast feeding he was not aware that meant no more boobies... I woke up one night to an amazing pain in my nipple only to find my son had some how managed at the age of 8 months work out how to open my button and find my nipple for a drink.. Trust me when I say that is not the nicest of wake up calls.. From that moment I had him sleeping in his own bed.....   He now only sleeps with us when he is sick. I also fear that because he moves a lot if I am really tired I may not wake up and he might climb off one side of the bed and sneak off and hurt himself...

But in the end I believe it is up to the parents what they do.... If it helps them then so be it.. It helped me keep my sanity for 8 months......

I have never been a fan of co-sleeping. Like most new moms I did do it at times, out of complete exhaustion! Never more than two nights in a row!  I didn't want it to become a habit, for my daughter, or me.

My daughters friend, 6, just graduated into her big girl bed on her own. At six years old!! Yikes. It cost the parents a lot of money... the deal they made with her... if they bought her new furniture, decorated it her way... she had to sleep there, not in mom and dads bed. Ok it worked!!  In my opinion, it shouldn't have been put off that long. The best of it....they have a 3yr old in their bed also!!!

Parents think it's an easy adjustment for the child. It's not. Good luck!  You're going to need it.

Co-sleeping is not a habit to get into. A childs room is the childs room, the parents is just that the parents bed. If you stick to a routine and go without sleep for a period of time the child will sleep on their own. I have had three couples we knew try this and I will tell you the outcome.  All three husbands started sleeping on the couch or in a different room, husband and wife going to bed at different time to accomadate the child. One divorced after 2 years, one separated 4 years,, one still living together child wont leave the bed, husband having a affair.  If you dont take care of your marrital bed you cant take care of the family unit.... . Illness or nitemares are a different story,, ask your husbands how they realy feel about sharing the bed. If they tell you they dont mind  they are lying or afriad of you..... I'm not trying to be rude the %'s arnt good for the marriage working.

I am an advocate too. It saves my sanity as well. Why would I make life harder for myself?

Natural parenting might seem like lazy parenting. But  why make life any harder than it already is?

Isn't parenting a hard enough job?

hi

I totally agree with co-sleeping. My daughter slept in our bed until she was almost two and started putting her in her own bed because she wasnt getting a good sleep anymore. ( just not enough room for three in the bed) But anyways she now jumps into her bed and sometimes we have to sit with her for a few minutes but she sleeps all night and wont sleep with us unless she is sick.  But i had alot of people say the same thing about never being able to get her to sleep in her own bed. And i did it and i think everyone would sleep alot better if they tried it too.

christina

My daughter slept in bed with us until about 8 weeks of age. The first few weeks she actually slept ON one of us as it was the only way to calm her. From about 8 weeks, she was sleeping so well that she didn't wake to come in with us. My son, however, sounds very similar to Matthew. He ends up in bed around 2am every night, and I just wake up occasionally after that when I feel him grabbing for my top!

I noticed an article recently about this from the Sunday Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2179265_2,00.html where a leading mental health expert advises children to co-sleep until age of five. It makes interesting reading and also backs Mrs Lunar in her article http://www.minti.com/parenting-advice/303/Controlled-Crying-Crying-It-Out-How-why-when/

I think co-sleeping helps with me getting extra sleep, but I have to say that Nick finds he can't sleep as well and is now sleeping in another room. Still, I won't be carrying on this practice until Nyle is 5 - maybe another month or two and then he'll be in to his own room, hopefully, because he seems to get easily disturbed by us coming to bed.