Sleep or not sleep – that is the question. Someone says that children do not belong in the bed of adults, but someone proves the opposite, talking about the exceptional benefits and convenience of collective sleep. Let’s try to figure out who is right.
I lost the first battle for separate sleep in the hospital.
“Today we will not leave your son, we will bring him at 7 in the morning,” said the nanny on the very first night of his life. “You need to recover from the anesthesia.”
The door to the ward opened at six in the morning. “I woke up the entire department,” with these words I was handed a disgruntled bag. I wanted to sleep like hell. Contrary to all maternity ward bans, I put the child at my side. In five minutes we were both asleep like marmots. But, alas, not for long.
“Into the cradle!” – the neonatologist commanded in a disgruntled tone, finding this outrageous picture.
After listening to a lecture on how dangerous sleeping together is, for the next four days I honestly tried to put the baby in a separate bed. In response, Timofey behaved just awfully: he slept in his arms, on a soft pillow, on my chest, in the end. In general, anywhere, just not in your bed.
“Never mind, we’ll teach you at home,” the husband assured. Ha! He had not yet spent a single night with this comrade and simply did not understand what awaited him.
They wrote us out on Tuesday. On this occasion, the husband took a day off. On Wednesday he had to go to work. And in the evening a young father suddenly woke up in him.
“Sleep, I’ll go to bed myself,” he suggested to me after the evening feeding.
Oh my hero! You gave me what I dreamed of for several days …
… I woke up from the fact that someone was shaking me by the shoulder.
“I can not do it anymore. – The eyes of my husband were exactly like those of the cat from “Shrek”. “I’ll only rock my body, I’ll just start putting him in bed, he opens his eyes.”
Six o’clock! It took us exactly that long to understand: happy parents are well-slept parents. A minute later, the child was sleeping between us, in our bed. I swear he smiled maliciously and proudly in his sleep.
The son slept with us until about two years old. The infant bed with bumpers all this time perfectly fulfilled the function of additional storage space. We “resettled” him in two years without any difficulties. Now he periodically comes to us at night, and this is normal for a six-year-old child. But overall, I think sleeping together was good for us.
True, my friend from the playground Inna categorically disagrees with me. “The third extra”, as she herself puts it, she and her husband do not need in bed. From the very first days of her life, her daughter slept not only in a separate bed – in another room. A baby monitor with a video camera guaranteed her a quiet tete-a-tete with her husband.
“Even if she whimpers, I don’t come up right away,” Inna shared. – I’m waiting, maybe she will calm down. Well, out of the corner of my eye I look to see if everything is all right. “
Interestingly, even scientists have not yet come to a consensus whether it is harmful or beneficial for children to sleep with their parents.
Here, for example, fresh statistics from Britain: in 2017, 141 children died during joint sleep, a year earlier – 131.
“Most often tragedies happen if at least one of the parents drank before going to bed or was just very tired,” warns Francis Bates, a member of the Association for the Prevention of Infant Mortality in Sleep. – And even more so if he took a drug. In an unconscious state, crushing a baby, especially a premature baby, with a low weight is very easy. “
And one more argument against: they say, a child in the parent’s bed interferes with marital relations. What kind of sex if a child sniffs at your side? Anyway, then excommunication from the common bed will be an impossible task and stress for him.
And here is another opinion, and also authoritative: a child should sleep on his mother’s breast for at least two weeks, and next to her – up to three or four years. Dr. Niels Bergman, a pediatrician at the University of Cape Town, has done a lot of research and now claims that a child sleeping separately from his mother develops more slowly and his nervous system is under constant stress.
“His sleep is less deep, he wakes up more often, he has a rapid heart rate,” says the scientist. – And this negatively affects the work of the brain. The lack of close contact with the mother can negatively affect the child’s behavior in a few years, as well as affect his mental abilities. “
Nils Bergman does not deny that there are risks in sleeping together. But he emphasizes that mainly death occurs due to poisoning with toxins from alcohol and cigarettes, large pillows or dangerous toys.
But what if we exclude all the disturbing factors? Make sure that the baby does not fall off the parent’s bed, that he is not strangled by a blanket or pillow. In the end, to lose weight, so as not to put all your weight on the child.
“In this case, the parents’ bed is the safest place for the child,” Bergman is convinced. – He tosses and turns less, feels more confident and calmer, sleeps better.