Bed of Roses

By Stephanie Nakhleh

Cosleeping was no fun at first. Instead of the nighttime bliss I'd been promised by attachment-parenting enthusiasts, my baby often acted like a nocturnal animal—prowling the sheets in the wee hours, howling for no clear reason. I felt cheated. Where was the state of harmony everyone had told me about: those sweetly synchronous sleep patterns, the magical ability to sleep through midnight nursings? Almost everyone else in the world did this, right? Why was it so hard?

In exasperation, I talked my reluctant husband into trying to train our baby to sleep through the night in her crib. After 20 minutes of listening to her escalating screams, he strode past me with a glare and rescued our sobbing, shaking baby from her wooden prison. This felt absolutely wrong to him, he said—didn't it to me? Looking at my baby, her little fists clutching my shirt as if for dear life, I had to admit it did. So we became a dedicated, if not ecstatic, cosleeping family.

There is no foolproof way to guarantee a good night's sleep when you have young children around—to be the parent of a young child is to be tired. Cosleeping is a skill that when mastered can minimize the inevitable exhaustion. As with any skill, it takes time and practice to get the hang of it, and talking to other masters in the field—that is, other parents with cosleeping experience—can give the tired parent creative ways around the common roadblocks to happy family bedding. I interviewed parents around the world to find out how they had overcome the nine most common obstacles.

Obstacle 1: Will I squash my baby? When Kris Placke and her husband, Ben, brought their infant son into bed with them, they were terrified of rolling over on top of him. "So I would push him up as far toward the top of the bed as possible, and we would scoot down," said Placke, who lives in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. "That lasted about a week. Then I realized I was disturbing him more this way when he needed to nurse. I talked to my midwife, who had incredible advice. She said, ‘How often do you fall out of bed at night? You don't, because even when you're asleep, you know the edge is there. When you are asleep, you know the baby is there, too—it's much more intense than knowing the edge is there.' "

"One thing people are always afraid of is overlaying," said Meredith Small, professor of anthropology at Cornell University, author of Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent, and herself a cosleeping mother. "Which is funny, because worldwide, babies sleep with an adult. If this was a problem, all those babies would be dead, and they're not." Small added that overlaying is extremely rare, and generally associated with certain risk factors, such as smoking, drinking, and drug use. (See sidebar, "Family Bed Safety," for more information.)

Obstacle 2: How do I keep up my love life? "This seems to be one of the biggest misconceptions about the family bed," said Rhonda Ploubis of Allen, Texas, who shares sleep with her husband and two-and-a-half-year-old son. "If you are cosleeping with a baby, how do you manage to have a fulfilling sex life? Well, it's a no-brainer, really: just take the sex out of the bedroom! Where is it written that sexual intimacy only comes at the end of the day, in the dark, in the master bedroom, on the bed?"

Lynne Hoskins, a mother of two from the state of Washington, said that from toddlerhood on, their family has used the "modified family bed," in which the children start in their own bed in the beginning of the night and join their parents later. "This, I think, helped us stay intimate with each other. We could talk, read, and cuddle with no kids in the bedroom—although we did have sex even when the baby was in the sidecar. We were quiet!"

Aletha Solter, a developmental psychologist and author of The Aware Baby, said that one important thing both partners must realize is that a woman's sex drive is often greatly reduced after having a baby—with or without cosleeping. "Life is not going to be the same after the baby is born," she said. "Many cultures have a postpartum sex taboo, which is in part to prevent another pregnancy, and also in part to protect the male ego. It can last between six months and two years, depending on the culture." Dr. Solter said that both partners have a responsibility: For the man, "don't force a woman to choose between the baby's needs and your own needs. If it comes down to that, the man needs to think about why he's so desperate to have his wife all to himself." Women also have to be careful—in their case, not to neglect their partners. "Mothers tend to put the couple's relationship on hold after having a baby, and that's a mistake, too," said Solter. Both partners need to work to schedule in regular couple time—which doesn't always have to include sex.

Obstacle 3: How do I handle the squirming? This issue was one many mothers found the most difficult, and certainly was my own biggest hurdle to overcome. (My husband can sleep through a riot.) For us, buying a king-size bed was key. One friend of mine had an even cleverer solution—she put a camping mattress under her side of the futon that she and her daughter slept on, which put them on different levels; that slight difference not only helped with the squirming but also alleviated the all-night nursing (see Obstacle 5).

Other families found other ways to increase the square footage of their sleeping space. One mother added a twin bed next to her queen-size bed; another moved a crib next to her bed and removed the side rail. "Instant relief," said Vickie Queen of Decatur, Georgia, who tried the crib option, also known as a sidecar. "I wish we'd done it a year earlier."

For some families, squirmy babies are simply part of the cosleeping territory. "We are still dealing with that," said Kris Placke. "Nigel is everywhere. It's something you just get used to! Nigel hates covers, and occasionally we wake to find feet in weird places. What I've come to realize—and this extends beyond sleep—is that parents really must constantly strive to raise their tolerance levels. It's true with anything. How long can you stand to hold your child while he turns the light switch off and on? It's a matter of accepting the child's behavior as age-appropriate and increasing your own tolerance level."