10.03.2012

The Family Bed

We never started out planning to bed-share. It was not on my radar at all. I very confidently declared both pre and during pregnancy that my baby would go to her crib after a few weeks, 3 months at most. I would say, That's just how we do it in my family.
And then I met Emine. And winter started. And our house became a cold, windy, unheatable place and the thought of sending Emoş to that cold, breezy, poorly insulated room was just too difficult, never mind how much it would cost us to heat it. So we postponed her moving over there.

In the meantime, she developed a pretty regular night-time routine where she would wake twice to eat and then go back to sleep. I noticed that if I put her back in her bassinet after her second feeding, she would wake up an hour later fussing and whining. I would then take her in bed next to me and she would sleep peacefully for a few more hours.
After noticing this regularly I started bypassing the fussing at all and just putting her to bed with me after her second feeding. Then it started happening after her first feeding. And then suddenly she was both too big for the bassinet and also trying to turn over, which caused the bassinet to rock and sway with an alarming fury.

We talked about moving her to her crib. She was already napping there during the days. Bekir and I decided we wanted to keep her with us for a bit more because A) her room was still an ice-box and B) we like having her with us.

Cut to our wonderful nanny trying to move her crib to our room only to find it wouldn't fit out the door of her bedroom. So then we were faced with two choices: full-time in the crib or nights in our bed. The choice was easy. We love having her snuggle up next to us (ok, next to me!) when she rolls to her side in her sleep. Bekir loves coming to bed late and finding us both sleeping peacefully. And I love when she wakes me in the morning by her sweet cooing, and her gummy smile when I say, "good morning, how are you?"

So for now we have the family bed. Hopefully we are less akward-looking than the family in the picture of this now out-of-print book. But even if we aren't, no one is around to see us anyway!

2 yorum:

  1. KT,
    I read many places that babies sleep with their moms are happier and more peaceful babies and also read about them developing higher intelligence levels because they have less stress. Old school advices about not cuddling, hugging, kissing and taking them to bed with us are wrong.

    YanıtlaSil
  2. It's almost kind of taboo in American culture. Lots of people do it but they don't advertise it around. We're happy with it for now and I only ever read positive reasons for continuing.

    YanıtlaSil