Yep, we did, pretty much doing it the same way that the blogger above describes. We stopped cosleeping when my daughter no longer woke up for a night feeding (around 14 months, I think). As she always had started the night in either her Moses basket or her crib, it really wasn’t much of a big deal to move from one thing to the other. That’s pretty much the way that the women of my family do it so I never thought that it was strange.

Not on purpose. Thee Girl is the only one of the kids that ever wanted to sleep in our bed. She used to when her dad was on the road. The boys never did.
I was always scared I’d roll over and smush them. One time though, when the Manchild was a baby, his dad was on the road and apparently, I had gotten up in the middle of the night and got him out of his bed and put him in mine. He must’ve been crying or something, I still don’t know. Anyway, sometime later in the night I woke to a thud and a holler cause the Baby Manchild rolled off the bed.

No, I had my son in a crib in my room for the first seven weeks. After that, he slept through the night (lucky me!) and we started putting him in his own room.

Heh. We were evil incarnate: we Ferberized. We bottle fed. We circumcised. We even spanked for a while.

OMG, we were evil…

Ours were in their own rooms very early on. And never in our bed. Now if they’d just kick in on the rent a little.

We were going to use a cosleeper, which attaches to the bed but isn’t actually part of it. Once we found out we were having twins we had to revise that because there isn’t space in our bedroom for anything large enough to hold two babies.

I suspect one or both will sleep in with us occasionally, but only if they’re sick or something.

Haven’t there been all sorts of studies and warnings about the dangers of squashing the baby when you do that?
I also heard warnings about the kid slipping between the bed/couch and the wall.

Just wondering.

Don’t hve any kids but I do co-sleep with a 7 yearl old dalmatian named Layla. She’s my bitch.

We have had all four of our kids sleep with us at various stages of their pre-toddler years. We haven’t squashed them.

Now, all four of my boys know they are loved and are relatively well-adjusted. Personally, I don’t like giving up my bed space so I keep getting bigger beds. We have a king now and the 8 month old is on his way out.

My rule is that when they are long enough to kick me in the balls in the middle of the night is when they are old enough to get their own bed.

(if you think I am a pedophile, see the next post)

Since the majority of the world co-sleeps and historically has done so, one can use a little common sense to deduce that it isn’t that risky. There are studies that show that you shouldn’t co-sleep if you’re using narcotics or drink heavily, but as Sista says, ordinary kids can holler pretty loud and that gets parents attention if they aren’t drunk or stoned.

“Now, all four of my boys know they are loved and are relatively well-adjusted. ”

This is only possible if you co-sleep???

dammit! - note to self - do not get sucked into parenting flame war, do not et sucked into parenting flame war…

I am a very selfish sleeper. It’s part of why we have a king size bed. The kids have slept w/ us only on rare occasions (like illness or to save my sanity from getting up multiple times to calm them or entirely too early wake-up calls). I put my son in his crib, in his room from the day we brought him home from the hospital. When he needed me, he let me know and that worked just fine for us.

Like all facets of the parenting wars, it’s all about what works best for each parent and child! There’s really no right or wrong in these things. Actually, what’s wrong is criticizing someone else just because they don’t do it “your” way.

Well, Bridgett, I have no quarrel against kids sleeping with their parents. But slightly tipsy parents squashing the kids as they slept (overlying or overlaying, as it used to be called) is a concern when that is the practice. Is it a bigger concern than the chance that a child might get his/her head stuck in crib bars, or tip a basinette over while bouncing around, or whatever? No, and probably greatly outweighed by the benefits. But when something was common enough to develop its own terminology and case law (at least in Europe — it was almost always considered a terrible but nonculpable tragedy), you can’t conclude that it wasn’t risky.

My kid has started waking up three or four times a night just for the hell of it.

He doesn’t wake up every godless hour on the hour when he sleeps between us.

Experts be damned. I need my sleep. The kid needs his. Everybody is happy.

I crushed my first two. I was hammmmmmerred. Thankfully, the authorities never found out. I learned my lesson, and my remaining kid sleeps in a crate.

[…] at Music City Bloggers there is a post about co-sleeping that thankfully hasn’t erupted into a full-on war over what is right and what […]

My daughter slept in the bed with us from the time she was about 6-8 wks old — when I read Katie’s book, Attachment Parenting — til she was over a year….about the time her nursing really tailed off. She woke us very little in the night when she was in our bed, unlike when she slept in her crib. So that was an easy choice. She was in her own bed before 18 months.

I adopted my son, so I did not nurse him. He slept on his own from the time he came home at 7 1/2 months because he slept through the night on his own, and not when he slept with me. THAT was an easy choice, too.

I missed sleeping with him, though. As Katie says, it was nice to have the physical time with my daughter since I was at work all day. Babies really need human touch.

For everyone worrying about people squashing their kids- it’s the same sense that keeps you from rolling out of bed that keeps you from squishing your baby. If you regularly fall out of bed or your partner regularly reports that you thrash around all night, then co-sleeping is not for you.

And parents who have been drinking should sleep on the couch or put baby in the crib (if it hasn’t turned into a toybox the way mine was!).

As Malia said, it’a ll about what works for the parents and children.

I love research-based sarcasm.

The only reported incidents in the US of trauma from cosleeping are when the parent is impaired (the drunk father in Hendersonville last year, for example, who rolled over on his daughter). Generally speaking, inebriation and parenting don’t mix well.

Attachment Parenting International has its home here in Nashville… if you’re interested in more information on cosleeping or attachment parenting, they’re the best place to go. I discovered the model because I was following my instincts, and was really delighted to find out that it was also sound practice. (My instincts, alas, don’t always turn out so well.)