Co-sleeping: Man's best friend

Probably the most controversial topic we encountered was when we told people we were going to co-sleep, i.e. have the baby sleep in the same bed as us. Everyone thought that the baby would either; be crushed by his 300 pound dad, keep us up all night, or become an insecure mother-dependent transvestite.

First of all, unless you make a habit of passing out on your bed after a night of binge-drinking there's no way you'll roll onto your baby. Your brain knows darn well that he's there, and if you even get close to him alarms will go off in your head. It means a few nights of fearful slumber while you adjust to this alien critter sleeping right next to you, but you eventually get used to it.

Second, if you're not a fan of the "cry it out" method of child neglect-- er, child rearing, then having the infant right next to you is great when he starts fussing in the middle of the night. If mama is breastfeeding then that's even better, since she can reach over and stick him on a boob without even waking up and dad can sleep through the whole thing. I shudder to think of how many nights I would have had to get up to comfort the rug rat if he was in his own crib.

Third, co-sleeping doesn't make kids clingy. Some fear that they'll still be bunking with you when they hit puberty but they will reach an age when they're sick of daddy's snoring and mom's night terrors and demand their own room. If you want them to leave before they're ready then by all means wean them out of it, but better to give them some months or years of family closeness than deprive them of it from day one.

This last argument is also heard quite a bit with breastfeeding, which baffles me. I agree that a five year old demanding a boob is creepy, but there's a middle ground between that and using formula from the start.