to really not get why people co-sleep?

[LaLaLaLayla]

I really do not understand why people co-sleep. Apart from research telling us how dangerous it is for the baby, I also feel a bit sorry for the poor husbands who are almost invariably turfed out of the marital bed to make room for them.

What is the point? Is there one? Is anyone else as baffled as me by this?

Saffron- I think it's 90% of those sorts of crime is committed by those known to us.

I'm slightly shocked at the mundanity of other peoples sex lives. You people who don't co-sleep can not all be so boring that you only ever shag in bed... can you?

Try perching on the kitchen worktops at least one before you die. That's all I'm saying.

It's not dangerous. Fathers like cuddling their babies too. There are loads of other places/times to have sex.

Next.

Saffron I agree!!

seeker I agree about the fathers...my DH loves as much as I do both of our children snuggled up in our bed...it's what he always imagined having a family should be like.

I would like to ask a question. How do you put a sleeping baby into a cot?

Faithless, it's scary to think what could happen to someone so sleep deprived. I could have easily walked out into the road, thinking I was still in the house, and been hit by a car. Co-sleeping is a minor worry compared to that!

Most co sleepers I know do it out of laziness - how rude!!!

When you are working full time, have a fraught baby, and are sleep deprived, you do what you need to do! Nothing at all about being lazy, thank you very much!

Because it felt natural and suited our family.

When it came to DH we just got creative and had sex somewhere else. He wasn't deprived of his marital bed as such.

Ignorance is something that never ceases to surprise me.

Since this is a bashing thread should we start criticising mothers for their other choices? Bf/FF , disposable/reusable nappies, BLW/purees and the list goes on. Fun isn't it?

I semi-co-slept with DD2 because I was too lazy to stay awake when bfing. She had a cot next to the bed with the side off (post-Moses basket) but it was always much easier to offer her boob, go back to sleep, roll us both over for 2nd boob and go back to sleep again. Then if I woke later, roll her back into her own bed, or if not, we all stayed in the same bed until morning. The extra sleep was invaluable, because DD2 was a rubbish sleeper to about a year old. DH wasn't turfed out, but we have a king size bed.

With DD1 I used to get up and feed her in a chair. Madness! I don't know what I was thinking!

Dueling - with my Ds he could easily be put into a cot when settled, when he is asleep you can move him pretty much anywhere without him waking. Very luckily as when he was little he would only fall asleep being held (which was lovely!)

What an ignorant post, OP.

What is the point? Because it is an entirely natural and normal thing to do all across the world. In fact if you looked at all world cultures, you would probably find that co-sleeping is the default position. In which case I could ask you what the point is of not co-sleeping. I'm not going to do that though because I am perfectly capable of ingesting and understanding the many reasons why people make different choices.

I suggest you do a bit of research if you really want to understand. perhaps start with the reduced risk of SIDS for co-sleeping babies, as well as the advice on safe co-sleeping.

It's cozy and lovely and DH feels the same too. I always think (but never say) that people who dislike it are rather cold.

Just read back over the thread slightly better - some of the anti-cosleeping viewpoints on here are just weird, and Maypole, you're just sounding unhinged. Fucking with DC in the bed? Nice.

Why on earth do any of you care what other people do?

This thread is very reassuring. Because the OP and posters questioning / making ill-informed sweeping statements and inflammatory remarks about co-sleeping are definitely not the sort of people I have want to have anything in common with.

Some of you are are just dickheads plain and simple

DH loves cuddling dd in bed. We're away at mil's at the mo, we have taken it in turns to take her into the bed in her room when she wakes and enjoyed it.

We don't co sleep but dd was in a crib next to our bed until2 months. Then went to her own room. When she has been poorly I have brought her into our bed but she lies there squealing rather than sleeping. She is in a routine and self settles which i think would be harder with co sleeping but not impossible. Really it is horses for courses, and each person can do what they like with their child as long as it brings that family happiness. What has it to do with you OP?

You can co-sleep safely. I co-sleep because if DS is in his own cot he wakes up anywhere between 5 and 15 times a night and isn't easy to settle back. I never planned to co-sleep but I was crying from tiredness most days and my relationship was suffering. What do you suggest I do OP??

And you aren't 'baffled' at all, OP. You just don't approve.

In most of the world co-sleeping is just what everyone has always done. It was that way in Britian too for almost all of human habitation until the Victorians.

The Victorians started the trend for having nurseries, but even then their nurseries contained all the children in the household, not just one lone baby. Until that point everyone co-slept as a matter of course. There were a few exceptions, like the Kings and Queens who got a wet-nurse because the Queen was too valuable a trophy wife to be inconvenienced by feeding a child, but they were very rare.

The Victorians started splitting babies and children away from all sources of comfort systematically because they felt it was "character building". We would be horrified today at the best practice examples they tried to hold themselves to. No one would want a return to huge rooms filled with cots in orphanages where babies had been stolen by force from single mothers for their "own good" and then abandoned in a metal cot to scream for hours, with on-the-clock feeds and zero affection. That was how it was right until about half a century ago for many babies. What were we thinking???

The anti-cosleeping sentiment in society at large is still to some extent a hangover from that cold and cruel period. The period that forged the psychopaths who gained Britain an empire by being crueller and worse torturers than the natives.

Babies in cots might be normal now, but don't assume it ever got normal for good and worthy reasons. It didn't. It's a hang over of a past we don't want to repeat.

There is nothing wrong with cots, I am not saying there is. I think mothers have every right to sleep their baby in a cot if they want, indeed my 12 month old has moved to a cot (she chose to at about 10 months) but we as a society could do with dropping the scales from our eyes about why we really do many of the things we do.

The saddest thing is it's totally the other way in reality. Secure babies are actually the resilient, outgoing, balanced ones. That Victorian "toughen them up" mentality actually weakened them. Very sad.

So can we presume, from the OP's two posts on this thread, that she has buggered off taken herself off to read up on sleep-sharing and is now more enlightened? Pretty piss-poor effort to start a bunfight, OP, but never mind, it never really materialised, did it?

I didn't cosleep with DS1 more than a handful of times because I was terrified by the scare-mongering. And our bed was too small.

DS2, on the other hand, was born at home and tucked up in bed with me within a couple of hours, and has never left in ten months. I sleep, DH sleeps, DS2 has boob access and cuddles. He is a baby: babies love and need close proximity to their parents. They can get used to it without, and be perfectly happy, as DS1 (mostly) was, but it's how they're wired from birth. Seemed normal and natural to me, so I did it. That answer your question, OP?

OP? OP? Helloooo?

SucksToBeMe, there is no need to be so fucking nasty.

When I had my DS 6 years ago all the advice on not co-sleeping was based on the theory that overheating was the main cause of SIDS. Now I am considering having another DC and I was quite shocked to read how many parents co-slept. Not only that, but I have read a couple of threads on here where posters were talking about their DH's resenting being usurped by the newcomer.

I just wondered why people did it. My question is genuine. No need for such an abusive response.

LaLaLaLayla your OP does not sound at all like you're wondering, it sounds ill informed and judgemental. While I agree that some of the responses were probably a bit OTT, telling you to do some research and talk to people who embrace it is not abusive.

It seems common sense to me that being able to shuffle a baby over in the night and attach to boob is far less disruptive to me, dp and baby then me having to get up, find glasses, fall over some stuff, turn on lights, get baby out of cot to feed and then put them back again and then try and get back to sleep would be. Surely this is both better for me and dp as we have less hassle and better for the baby as it makes as little fuss as possible when they wake thus helping them learn that nighttime is for staying in bed not for getting up.

And if you were to ask him dp would much rather I wasn't staggering about the place in the night trying to feed a baby and keeping him awake far longer then if the baby was close to hand.