Co-Sleeping: Good or bad?

Note: I wrote a few articles for the Mom and Me blog that has since been shut down. I am re-posting those articles here just to chronicle my writing endeavors.

I recently read a news article about the sad demise of a 2month old baby boy who was co-sleeping with his mother. The mother fell asleep while nursing him. I haven’t been able to shake that terrible tragedy from my mind.

Some of us believe that co-sleeping is the best option and some of us don’t. Basically it is just a matter of individual opinion and preference. My husband and I co-slept with our first-born and also with the second one for the first 2 or so months. They both slept better after we moved them to their own beds, and so did we. Both our daughters have turned out to be individuals with good sleeping habits so I don’t know if it affects them either way. But there IS a safe way to co-sleep with your baby if you want to. 

• Get a co-sleeper that attaches to the bed or at least has a rigid structure to keep the baby inside a safe space and stop an adult from rolling over accidentally. We used a three sided rigid plastic box with 6 inch high walls. It had a padded, slip-on cover and a clip-on light. It was our sanity saver the first two months. We kept it between us, near our heads – that way the baby only reached up to our chest and there was less chance of one of us rolling over her.
• Make sure you have enough room on the bed to accommodate the baby. Ours is a spacious king sized bed. If we had been using our old queen-sized bed, I definitely wouldn’t have co-slept.
• Make sure the bed is not cluttered. Put away extra pillows and blankets. We didn’t even cover the baby with our blanket. We used her own blanket to cover her. That way there was no risk of us smothering her.
• A FIRM mattress is best for co-sleeping, even with a co-sleeper. A soft or plush mattress makes it easier for an adult to roll over the baby or for the baby to roll under. Even if death doesn’t occur, a hand or a leg could get trapped and result in discomfort or injury.
• If you are taking medication that can induce drowsiness or if you are severely sleep deprived and might fall asleep while feeding or holding the baby, DO NOT COSLEEP!
• DO NOT breastfeed the baby with him/her lying next to you. It is VERY easy to fall asleep in the perpetual sleep-deprived state of new parenthood and it is VERY EASY to smother a child by just pushing up the breast against his/her mouth so that the nose gets blocked.