My Experience With Co-Sleeping

   Recently, I had a friend who was asking about co-sleeping with her soon-to-be-born child, and if this was a good option or not. Immediately, she was bombarded by opinion after opinion, and many of those opinions where very forcefully expressed. Co-sleeping is, apparently, a hot topic for some mommies, and I remember the most rabid of those opinion-givers kept repeating that 1) the mother would crush or smother her baby in her sleep, and that 2) if the baby survived, she would continue sleeping with her mommy for the rest of her life, because why would she sleep alone if she was not forced to it?

  I was a co-sleeping mommy, so I want to share my experience with this, but before I do that I would like to state that I am not saying that every parent should co-sleep. Like many other things in life, there is no one way to parent; there are so many options and choices out there, and our jobs as parents are to find the best way of parenting for us as unique individuals, and one mother's way of being a mother to her child may be entirely unsuitable for another. In short, just because I successfully co-slept, that does not mean that I am rabidly announcing to the world that all mothers must co-sleep. Co-sleeping will just not be an option for some, and that is fine. 

   That being said, co-sleeping is neither a death sentence nor the death of all the child's independence. I started co-sleeping almost right away; I hadn't planned on co-sleeping but due to circumstance, it happened. And it worked. My daughter slept better, and while I didn't really sleep that well because my daughter often used me as a foot prop or a head rest, I was more at ease having her right there where I could quickly check on her. There are also things that you can buy now that help keep pillows and blankets off of your baby such as attachable bassinets and such, but I have to say, while I often woke with my daughter on top of me, I never woke on top of my daughter. If you sleep heavily, maybe you should factor that into your decision to co-sleep, but I never had an issue with crushing my infant. Never happened; I was always aware of her position.
   The other issue; getting your child to leave the bed, well, that should also be handled parent-by-parent. As a single mom, I let my daughter sleep in the bed with me until she didn't want to anymore. She stopped sleeping with me about the time she started kindergarten. At that time, she started sleeping in her own bed, but still shared a room with me due to the fact that we were living in an extended family home. Now in middle school, she has her own room and sleeps in her own room in her own bed. Obviously, I did not have any problem with her wanting to sleep with me while she was still in high school. I never had to use any force; she decided when she was ready, so the claim that a child will not leave your bed unless you force them I have found to be false. Also, she is not a dependent child; she very strongly asserts her independence, which sometimes does get her into trouble, being as she is a twelve year old girl and I am mom, therefor, I am boss. So the argument that your child will not learn to be independent is also something I have found to be false.
   To add to this, co-sleeping was the reason that one night, I was right there when she started choking, and I feel that my response was much quicker and maybe even saved her life, because if she had been in a different room, I do not know that I would have heard her distress. My daughter has never been a sickly child. She's, to this day, never suffered from an ear infection, and all of her illnesses have been mild, except for two instances. The first one was a bowel issue that took several years to clear up and required constant attention to her diet. The second though, was a really bad respiratory virus that I at first thought was a case of the common cold. But one night I woke up because I heard a strange noise next to my ear; my daughter. It was the smallest of sounds caused by her struggle to get breath. My daughter was choking. I flipped her over and patted her back, trying to dislodge whatever was in her throat, but nothing appeared to be in there. There had been no blanket in her face, but I could see that she was gagging and struggling with something; she was starting to turn purple. Out of shear desperation, I stuck my hand into her mouth, hoping that I could find whatever was in there an pull it out. I pulled out a mucus plug, that once out of her throat, expanded so that it looked to be the same size as her head. I was horrified, and she was truly choking, so she was not coughing or making a sound, because no air was coming in at all. What I had heard was the rustle of the blanket, and I am not sure that a baby monitor would have picked up that sound. I heard it, and I also felt it, and that is why I woke.
   So in conclusion, I think that you need to do whatever is best for you, but if you want to co-sleep, I have found that the arguments against co-sleeping have not had a true foundation. All of the main arguments against co-sleeping that I have heard; the crushing or suffocation of the baby, the lack of independence, and the child never wanting to leave the parent's bed, have not been issues I have dealt with. In fact, this image that I pulled off of the internet actually details what I found to be the true issue:

  This, at least, has been my experience with the issue. I am not a professional, but I do have a happy, healthy, independent twelve year old who has no issues sleeping in her own room in her own bed. There you have it; my side of the story. If you are considering co-sleeping, then I hope this helps. 

"Boop, boop, boop! Mom, I booped you!"

   My daughter is twelve; since my daughter is twelve and about to hit those preteen years, and is already showing an aversion to all things considered uncool, there are certain things that I just thought we were past. I thought there were certain annoyances that I thought she would not partake in, because they were childish, and heaven forbid acting childish when you reach those preteen years, and you want to be seen as an adult.
    Three days ago, I was proven wrong. Three days ago, my daughter called me to her room, "Mom, can you come here?" So I came, because I thought she was working on homework and needed help. She was working on homework, but she didn't exactly need help. As I leaned over to look at what she was working on, she reached up, bopped me lightly on the nose, and cried out gleefully, "I booped your nose!"
    Apparently the face I made was awesome, and inspired her to greater heights. For the past three days, the kiddo has been sneak attacking me, bopping me on the nose (never hard) and screaming, "I booped you!" Sometimes she manages to bop me a few times before I jerk away, especially when I am doing something, like cooking dinner or emptying the trash. These are prime times to boop me.
  I can be silly at times, but after three days of being booped, my nose is sore. I'm cranky. And so today when she goes into boop overdrive, while I am trying to get ready for work, I snap at her, "Would you knock that off already?" ... ... ... You would have thought she just found out her favorite grandma died. Her shoulders slumped, her head drooped, and she slowly shuffled off to her bedroom, leaving me feeling like a jackass.
  I waited a few minutes, then went to her room to check on her, to make sure she wasn't doing anything that would make me feel like an insanely horrible mom. As I opened the door, her hand flashed out, and she hollered gleefully while bopping me on the nose three times in succession, "Boop, boop, boop! Mom, I booped you!"
   There comes a day in every parent's life when you realize that you are standing on the jagged edge of insanity, and though you are desperately trying to hang on to the raggedy scraps of your sanity, you realize that maintaining that sanity is merely an exercise in futility.