Into the Crib

>May 24, 2010

This may come off a little harsh, but bare with me ONLY with an open mind. I don’t mean to offend, I just need to vent…

I don’t get it. Whyyyyyyy do parents co-sleep? The only reason I see where this might be okay is if you are a single parent and/or your spouse is deployed. But I am not here to argue for co-sleeping and those parents.

I keep seeing on message boards and blogs and even a few friends I know of who have allowed their wee one to sleep in their bed. Way back in the day, I took a speech class and a fellow student, a mother, gave a speech about why co-sleeping so so good for parent and child. The moment I learned that parents actually do this, I was horrified of several things:

• rolling onto my babe
• not getting any sleep
• bye bye sex life!
• the battle of transitioning into a crib later on down the road
• weird looks from non-co-sleeping-believers (that would be me…)

…It goes on. I knew from that moment there was no way I was going to allow my child to sleep in our marriage bed. No way. And this, my fellow momma friends, I did not back down on. B supported me. Once we brought Logan home from the hospital and we tried getting him to sleep in the PnP, that was hard enough, hearing all the little sweet sounds he’d make. It was too much for all three of us.

So I did what others may think was too soon: I moved Logan into his crib when he was 4 weeks old and it was the best move we made for Logan sleep wise. He can sleep and nap in his crib comfortably. He can self-sooth himself to sleep. I can lay him down awake and let him fuss until he falls asleep. There has never been any crying, screaming, or headbanging on either of our parts. It was a smooth and perfect transition and I know that if we had waited until he was older, it would have been a lot harder to do.

It is just surprising to me that so many parents co-sleep and are surpirsed when it is very difficult to transition to the crib…

So my advice to all you new mommas, do it sooner rather than later!