Sleeping with babies

[higgsy]

Clueless new dad needs advice We had twins last w/e, 6 weeks early. One should come home today and the other next week. My partner says they will sleep in bed with her. I want to know if this is the best thing? All advice very gratefully received. Please help...

I would speak to your m/w, and your children's nurses for advice. I can understand why your wife wants to co-sleep, especially if breastfeeding (I have with all four of mine). However, I think with prem/small/weak or sick babies, I believe that you should be extra vigilant.

But please do seek advice from your hcps as they will be best placed to advise you.

The one other thing I would say is that your wife is likely to be extremely vulnerable and emotional just now, so approach all discussion on the matter with extreme care!

And congratulations on your new arrivals!!

Lots of women choose to sleep with their babies. There is lot of advice online on how to do it safely. Are you happy with that decision? Did you discuss?

Not all health professionals are complimentary about co sleeping. In my area it is actively discouraged so do look up info online too if this is important to your wife.

We've co slept for the last year, it's kept me sane. Congratulations on the birth of your twins!

There's no way to know if it's the "best" thing, since it will be very individual to the babies, and different people will have different success criteria.

co-sleeping it no unusual though, and it certainly seems to make breastfeeding at night a lot easier and I imagine it will be similar with twins. However it will also mean there's not a whole lot of room in the beed for the 4 of you, so where would you be and that might impact your relationship too.

A cot that's attached to the bed can increase the space a fair bit and is pretty inexpensive relatively.

It is not reccomended to co-sleep with prem babies (mine were 31 weekers), I can't remember why not now but definitley remember it wasn't. Have a look at BLISS, I'm sure they had some info. When mine came home they shared a cot in our room. We did look into the co-sleeper cots but they wouldn't be able to share it for long and they weren't cheap£

Congratulations and hope it goes well when you bring them home!

I believe it is not recommended for prem babies at all. Not sure why though.

Dept of health says increased risk of SIDS.