Hellobee Boards

We’re part time bedsharing with Baby #3 who is now four months old and have bedshared with both older kids at some point when they were babies! Eloise goes to bed in her cot and I attempt to resettle her in the cot after she wakes and nurses but she usually ends up in our bed at some point in the early morning. I secretly love sleeping with her snuggled up to me but I also like that she at least spends some of the night in her own bed...

My daughter slept in our bed pretty consistently from 4 months - 1 year. I also said I'd never let my kid sleep in the bed but she wanted a boob in her mouth ALL NIGHT. The only way we both got decent sleep was with her in bed... I also loved the baby snuggles and it made me feel less guilty about being away from her during the day.

Thankfully she outgrew it on her own around 12-13 months.

There are some cultures like Japan where bed sharing is very high and rates of SIDS and infant death are very low, relative to anywhere else in the world. They do it safely, sleeping on a hard surface (often mats on the floor), no blankets or anything that could be a suffocation risk, traditionally the men sleep in another room. So just to say, if co-sleeping is done with careful attention to safety, it does not have to be dangerous. Rock n play - and many places where babies are likely to actually sleep - is also rated not safe for sleep. As an aside, I would not put a 6 month old in a bassinet, as once they can sit up and roll this can be dangerous.

I co-sleep part-time with our son. He had horrible reflux and was a terrible sleeper initially who simply would not sleep anywhere else. He never slept more than 20 minutes in a bassinet. I tried several bassinets, without luck. I was on the verge of hallucinating, and falling asleep with him in a chair, which is much more dangerous than cosleeping. We did not use blankets/pillows, have a very firm mattress, I was careful about what I wore so it also would not pose any suffocation risk, and for the first six months my husband slept in another room (and still does sometimes). He would have regardless, as he's a very light sleeper and needs his sleep for work - there was no point in the baby waking him up, since all my kid wants in the middle of the night is the boob. We still cosleep after the nighttime feed. LO is a tortuously slow eater in the middle of the night, and I just can't make myself stay awake while he spends an hour feeding/dozing/feeding/dozing on the boob...

My view is you have to assess what works for your family and then minimize risks. If your kid won't sleep elsewhere and you are a walking zombie, that is often going to be less safe than co-sleeping done safely. I also enjoy co-sleeping, I get the sweetest cuddles

My son is coming up on 2 1/2 years old, and he has been in bed with us every night since the 2nd night he was home from the hospital. It started because his bassinet was lower than our bed and I had a c section so it hurt to bend over to get him in and out. Then it was because he was all about the boob, and I needed some sleep. My husband moves a lot in his sleep so I would sleep with my back to him and my son in front of me because anytime I move/switch positions at night I wake up.

Now I wish he would sleep in his own bed, and it not be so much of a fight. I tell myself I will sleep train the next baby, but we will see.

We are a bed sharing family! Bed shared with both our girls from birth. DD1 is almost 4, and DD2 is almost 2. When they were young we were very careful and at their ages now I don't really see any risks. We don't feel guilty at all and we love it. It works for our family. They are not going to be in our bed forever and we treasure this time in our lives!

I'm going to give a little perspective on bedsharing statistics. A lot of the infant deaths are attributed to SIDS or from bedsharing, but almost every SIDS case my husband has responded to mom and/or dad were strung out on something (or sometimes something they were genuinely prescribed or OTC) and smothered the baby. Very rarely (at least in my scope of experience) does a baby die from bedsharing if mom or dad is 100% clear of any substances.