Why Families Co-Sleep (Even If They Didn’t Plan To)

Welcome back to the Postpartum Prep Podcast. My name is Ceridwen, I'm your podcast host and your guide to preparing for a smoother start to life with your new baby. Today on the podcast, we are going to be talking about why families choose to bed share, or in some cases, why they accidentally bed share.

For this episode, we've done one of my favorite kinds of podcast episodes I've crowdsourced and I asked a bunch of real moms to send me a quote about why they started bed sharing or why they bed share. And I wanted to make this episode because I think when you are pregnant, the majority of what you're told about baby sleep is that the only way for them to sleep safely is in a crib. And in reality, there are many ways for them to sleep safely, bed sharing, but there are bed sharing guidelines to learn about.

And when we're told the only way for them to sleep safely is in a crib, we might not go to the effort of trying to learn about bed sharing safety guidelines because we might just assume that we're never going to do it. And I want to tell you a statistic from the Lullaby Trust. This is a UK-based organization that researches baby sleep safety.

There's a statistic that says although the majority of expecting families say that they will never ever co-sleep, they do not plan to co-sleep ever, in reality, 90% actually do go on to co-sleep, whether intentionally or accidentally. And it's really that accidentally or the unintentionally side of things that is the most dangerous. When you are intentional about bed sharing, it means you're able to put safety precautions into place so that you can follow all the recommended safety guidelines for bed sharing.

When bed sharing happens accidentally or unintentionally, it's very likely that you might not have all the safety precautions in place and accidents can very unfortunately happen. Now I have an entire episode that I recorded with Katie Fridge from Sleepy Stars, it's episode 19, and it's all about infant sleep safety guidelines. So like I said, that's episode 19, I highly, highly recommend that you listen to that one because it gives you not just all the information that you need to know about how to bed share safely and how to have your baby sleep in a crib safely, but she also explains some of the nuances between what bed sharing is versus co-sleeping, and some of the statistics around unexplained infant deaths versus accidental infant deaths, and while I know that none of that is fun to think about, it is helpful to understand and potentially even life-saving.

So go back and listen to that episode after this one. Start with this one because I want you to get a full picture about why you might actually end up bed sharing. Because I was one of those pregnant moms who I just thought, you know, I wasn't completely opposed to bed sharing, I thought it sounded nice in principle, like, oh just, I had seen an influencer who would co-sleep and I thought that it was just kind of something nice that they did, but I didn't understand actually.

It's a lot more than just a nice thing to do, in some cases it can truly be life-saving, sanity-saving, but my point is, I thought that I was never ever going to bed share, so I didn't really think it would be important to learn any bed sharing safety guidelines. Like I said, actually not knowing bed sharing safety guidelines and unintentionally bed sharing is, or unintentionally co-sleeping, increases your risk of accidents and unsafe sleep, whereas when you know the safety guidelines, you're able to put safety precautions into place ahead of time. Even if you plan on never ever bed sharing, isn't it safer to know the bed sharing safety guidelines so that if you ever needed to use them, you would know them? And I think before I gave birth, it was really hard for me to even understand why I would need to use these bed sharing safety guidelines.

I really thought it was just a choice that you make about where your baby sleeps. When it comes to sleeping in a crib versus bed sharing, I didn't understand everything that actually goes into that decision, and that's why I wanted to share some of these quotes with you today. I thought it would help to paint a picture for you as to why it is so important to understand the bed sharing safety guidelines, even if you do plan to never use them, and try and help you to understand why you actually might end up using them.

Also, I hope this episode can just be some nice positive talk around bed sharing because for, yeah, for so many families, they do end up bed sharing. And it's not this terribly unsafe thing. There's nothing wrong with bed sharing when you're doing it safely.

Bed sharing actually can have so many benefits, and I think this episode is not about me trying to convince you to bed share. It's just, hopefully, just a way to help you make a more informed choice about what might be right for you, and help you to be more prepared for what comes after birth when it comes to your baby's sleep. So the first quote that I want to share is actually the shortest quote that I got, but I feel like it just summarizes everything really, really well.

All the quotes to come. So I thought I would just start off with this quote, and all she says when I asked her why do they bed share is, she says, because it feels easier than trying to settle him by himself, and snuggles are the best. And I think that really summarizes, you'll probably see that's like the theme of a lot of these quotes, that it was just the easiest place for baby to sleep, and the most connection centered place for baby to sleep, and it just honestly feels good to sleep with your baby.

And I think that that might be mother's intuition at work in some cases, or maybe in most cases. Just a reminder, also as we get into this episode, it is completely a cultural thing that we don't bed share. In the majority of the world, bed sharing is the norm.

And I don't know, I just wanted to put that context around all of these quotes. These are all moms who are living in cultures where bed sharing is not the norm, but I imagine these quotes would be completely different if we were, if I was asking them to moms in countries where bed sharing is the norm, and is kind of just assumed that that's what you would do. All right, let's get into our next quote.

So this mom says, prior to having my daughter, I did not intend to co-sleep. However, she has always been a sensitive sleeper. So after a few weeks of trying the next to me crib, getting so stressed and being absolutely exhausted, I brought her into bed with me following safe sleep guidance, and we've been co-sleeping for over three years now.

We absolutely love it and have no plans to stop. Co-sleeping and breast-sleeping have been my savior as my daughter is still wakeful even now. Doing this has always allowed us to both get as much sleep as possible, lots of cuddles and extra skin to skin too.

So this is a really great example of what I was talking about, about she kind of mentions she had no intention of co-sleeping before she gave birth, and then she ended up completely stressed and exhausted, but co-sleeping allowed them to get as much sleep as possible, and is really what supported both of them through the very normal experience of frequent night waking. And I love that she mentioned the cuddles and the skin to skin, and that is one thing I think is amazing about bed sharing, is that it does allow you to practice as much skin to skin as you can, especially if for any reason perhaps you have to go back to work and you're not with your baby in the day. Skin to skin overnight can be such a great way to reconnect.

I know that a lot of, obviously depending where you live, if it's really cold you might not be able to practice skin to skin while you're sleeping, but if you're in a warmer climate, that's what I do, and I love it. Actually, not so much anymore, my son has, he's a toddler now, so he's discovered pajamas, and he loves his pajamas, so we're not doing as much skin to skin as we used to, but in the early days I really felt, I really liked that connection, yeah. Alright, this next quote is from my mom, she says, I started bed sharing with my son because I found myself dozing off breastfeeding in the chair, and I was not getting much sleep at night trying to have to wake up and pick him up and take him to the rocking chair to breastfeed.

Co-sleeping changed the game because I was able to safely breastfeed and get sleep. I installed a barrier onto the bed to prevent him from falling, and I also sleep in the C shape. We started breastfeeding when he was one month old, and now he's about to be two, but we've continued to co-sleep even though I no longer breastfeed.

I feel calmer in my sleep being able to feel him beside me and know he is okay, and I also believe having this connection until they are three helps to keep the bond strong. I also love waking up to kisses and hugs. Oh my gosh, so much that I could say about this one.

I think, first of all, she mentions how she started bed sharing because she found herself dozing off in the breastfeeding chair, and falling asleep on a recliner, on an armchair, on a sofa, anything like that, this is one of the most dangerous places that you could fall asleep with your baby. Research from the Lullaby Trust, which is what I mentioned, the organization I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, their research suggests that falling asleep on something like a sofa or an armchair or a recliner can increase the risk of SIDS up to 50 times. That is a scarily high increase of risk, and this is also not an uncommon situation.

This is actually something I hear all the time. The risk of falling asleep on a sofa because you're trying so hard not to fall asleep in the bed with your baby because you've been told never to bed share, so then you go to the sofa or the armchair or a recliner or whatever chair you're using to breastfeed your baby and end up falling asleep in that chair with your baby, which is, like I said, is just so dangerous. So I love that this mom had the insight to learn about safe bed sharing and just move to the bed so that she didn't fall asleep in an armchair with her baby.

One other thing that I really relate to in what she said is how she feels calmer in her sleep, being able to feel him beside her, and I really related to that. I really struggled. I'll share more about my own experience with co-sleeping or moving to bed sharing at the end of this episode, but one of the things was, like, when my son was born, I would have him in the kind of bedside bassinet, but I would have to sleep right up next to that bassinet because I was so, it was so weird to have him far from me where I couldn't, I felt like I couldn't monitor how he was doing and any noise he would make in his sleep, I would wake up and I'd have to be checking on him.

And I remember the first night that we did bed share, how nice it was to just literally, like, I didn't even have to open my eyes to be able to feel him next to me and feel that he was safe and I was able to actually sleep that night for the first time in weeks. Alright, so the next quote is from another mom, she says, I went from fearful and uneducated about bed sharing to absolutely in love with contact naps and contact sleep. Once I learned that there was a way to do it safely, I wanted my babies as close as they had always wanted me.

Now I look at it like receiving the gift of extra hours each day to build their brains and safe attachment to me and ultimately the world around them. Hours that I wouldn't have if they were sleeping separately. So this mom, not only is, not only does she mention how her baby wanted to be close to her, but then once she learned about how to do it safely, she also loved being close to her baby.

She also mentions how the closeness of bed sharing helps to build their brains. If you're not familiar with it, I highly recommend the book, The Nurture Revolution by Dr. Kareer Kirshenbaum, where she discusses how things like contact naps, bed sharing, skin to skin, all of these things help to support our baby's brain growth, which is just incredible. And I think even the mom in the quote before this one, she talked about bed sharing until her son was three years old.

And this, I think, is probably also a reference to Kareer Kirshenbaum's The Nurture Revolution because she talks a lot about how up until age three, our baby's brains are still essentially infant in their development because they are just so significantly less developed than an adult's brain. And I think this is one of the things that I find really cool about bed sharing and why I wanted to include these quotes from real moms is because for so many moms, bed sharing, yes, it starts off being about purely a logistical thing, like you need sleep, your baby needs sleep, and the easiest way for both of you to get restful sleep is to sleep together. That seems to be kind of how it starts for most people.

But then actually, for so many moms, it becomes this thing of the more you learn about it, the more you learn how actually it really can support your baby in so many ways. And actually, a lot of the ways that it supports your baby even support you. For example, oxytocin, which is one of the hormones that supports brain growth in babies and is released through close contact with their caregiver and skin to skin and breastfeeding.

Oxytocin is also releasing you as a mother when you're doing things like skin to skin and breastfeeding. And oxytocin supports your own emotional and mental well-being as a mom. So I think that's really cool.

And yeah, I just love to see how so many of these moms. It's not just about the benefits of the logistics and the practical size and getting more sleep. It's also about that closeness and connection and their bond with their baby.

And I think that's really, really special. This next mom says, We have been exclusively bed sharing since my son was two or three weeks old. Truly is the only way he would sleep for more than a few minutes.

He just never settled in the bassinet and it was just so anxiety provoking for me to lay him in there knowing he'd be awake in 20 to 30 minutes all night long. We quickly pivoted to a floor bed in the nursery and never looked back. It just felt as soothing for me as it did for him having him so close.

I remember just feeling such a sigh of relief the first morning I woke up with him safely on my chest. Two years later, we are still happily co-sleeping with no plans to stop. And I think this is just such a relatable experience.

The second almost, it almost feels, for some parents, it almost feels like the second that you put your baby down, they wake up. And then what do you do if they wake up the second you put them down? Then like, actually, when are you meant to sleep? It's, uh, that's what I mean by it being kind of, in some cases, a logistical thing. But even this mom, she says, she talks about how soothing it felt for her and the relief she felt feeling him close.

But that kind of putting the baby down and they wake up immediately, I think that was the part that I did not understand before I gave birth about why some families bed share. Because I genuinely thought I could put my baby down in the crib and my baby would sleep and I would sleep. I had no idea that some babies, like my baby ended up being, I had no idea that some babies simply do not want to be out of contact with their mother at all.

My baby did not want to be out of contact with me at all. And that is actually extremely normal baby behavior. It is, I would say, not even just behavior.

They are just hardwired for that biologically to seek closeness to their caregiver. Of course, it's different for every baby. Some babies are more sensitive to separation than others.

But truly, I mean, if you, it's truly like a protective instinct for babies to want to be close to their mothers. If you imagine thousands of years ago, it would have been a really unsafe situation to leave your newborn baby in another cave while you went and slept in a different cave. And your baby would have been extremely vulnerable to predators.

And of course, it makes sense that they would be hardwired to cry out for connection and feel soothed when they're near their caregiver because it would have been the most protective thing for them to keep them safe. Of course, there's a lot of other things going on for babies. Like, for example, they have literally never been so far apart from you as they have been after you give birth to them.

They have literally been living inside of your body for the past nine months. It's an extremely big transition to be even on the outside of your body, let alone not even in contact with your body. And all of this is just stuff I just did not know before I had given birth.

So I did not have a safe space set up in advance. And my baby was sleeping in the bassinet for the first few weeks. And those first few weeks, neither of us got very much sleep at all.

And I was an anxious wreck and an exhausted, tired mess. So these are the things. Yes, these are the things that I did not understand before I gave birth.

And that's exactly why I wanted to share these quotes on the podcast for you to hear before you give birth. And hopefully to help you, to encourage you to at least think about how you might go about setting up a safe bed sharing space in your home. All right, the next quote, she says, and considering I'm asking, why did you bed share? This mom says, gosh, the thought of not bed sharing gave me so much anxiety, especially when they were tiny newborns.

They have no idea that they are separate beings than us at that stage of life. So keeping my babies close when we bed shared at night brought us both such a beautiful sense of ease, regulation and attachment. After nine long months of us sharing one body, it also eased my wild postpartum anxiety and terrible thoughts of something bad happening to my little ones while they slept.

They were always within reach. Was a win-win in those early days. It's just a natural state of connection and love.

I also just think it's wild that we put these weird adult expectations of babies sleeping alone from day one, when I don't even like to sleep alone at age 42. I slept directly with both babies in my bed for about three months each, but in the years since they've grown, I have definitely had my kiddos come into bed with me when sick or from a nightmare, etc. It's such a lovely way to help them feel safe and secure, and sometimes we now end up back in their bed.

Whatever works when you're tired. And I think, yeah, this mom explained exactly what I was trying to say about how after nine long months of sharing one body, it's pretty mind-blowing that we expect a baby to be ready to just sleep by themselves, especially when so many of us don't even like to sleep. I mean, I really hate sleeping alone, and I can't even imagine how it would be for a baby who's never even experienced, who's never even had the experience of being alone at all yet in their lives.

And talking about adult expectations, I think a lot of people say, well, you need to start teaching them. Yeah, they might never have experienced it, but you need to start teaching them how to be independent. And actually, the reality is, independence is not taught through separation.

It's taught through connection and helping them to feel safe enough to eventually, when they're ready, have a bit more separation. But it's always connection that comes first. I think this mom, again, I know we've had a couple moms mention about how it helped them to feel calmer.

She says about how it eased her postpartum anxiety and terrible thoughts of something happening to her baby while they slept because her babies were always just within reach, and she could just tell that they were okay. And I think that there's, you know, a couple of moms have mentioned a similar thing. And I think that there is also something instinctual in us as mothers where we instinctively want to be close to our babies because we do have such amazing attunement to our babies, even from day one, where we just have such a sense for whether our baby is okay or not.

But I think we are driven to have our babies close to us so that we can use that sense because when our babies are apart from us, it's much harder to have that kind of intuitive gauge of our baby's okayness when we can't even feel them or see them next to us. This next mom says, We sleep trained our son at five months, but teething and illness got him right back to depending on nursing to go to sleep and back to sleep. And it never sat right with me that we sleep trained.

I have a lot of guilt over it still. At nine months, he got hand, foot and mouth, so I had him sleep on me to elevate while sick. Then we traveled for six weeks, and he didn't take to the travel crib, so we kept bed sharing.

By the time we got home, I realized it was the best rested that baby or I had been in months before I would be up sometimes four to five times a night settling him back to sleep. And also it just feels right. So it sounds like this mom has gone really from one end of the spectrum of navigating baby sleep to completely the other where she started off trying to sleep train her baby, which obviously I don't know.

I don't have any more details about in her case what that experience was like, but usually sleep training means your baby would be sleeping alone in their own crib. And now she's at completely the other end where they ended up sleeping together and continuing to. And one of the things that she does bring up is about sickness being a case where they got started with bed sharing because her baby had been sick and then they were traveling.

And these are actually two very common cases where parents do end up bed sharing even if they're not normally bed sharing when your baby is sick and when traveling. And actually in both of these cases, it becomes a higher risk situation because like in her situation, they were not already a bed sharing family. Often families who don't bed share will end up bed sharing during things like teething or sickness and illness.

And what that means is that these families who are not normally bed sharing probably don't already have the bed sharing precautions, the safety precautions in place that families who typically bed share would. And that's definitely something to just keep in mind because like I've said before, it's the situations where we're bed sharing unexpectedly that can be higher risk because we're not already set up with those safety precautions. And so I think her experience is a really good reminder, especially for those families who really are set on not bed sharing.

It's a really good reminder about some of the times where non-bed sharing families do end up bed sharing, like teething, illness, travel. And that even in those more unexpected situations, it's still so important to practice safety precautions and possibly even more important to practice the safety precautions and to understand because if you're only bed sharing in these special circumstances, you're probably not as used to it and as comfortable and as experienced with those safety precautions. So that's just something to keep in mind.

Honestly, I think it's just having your bed set up for safe bed sharing should just be a standard thing, even if you never use it, because it's exactly situations like this where it's unexpected. Your baby might be nine months old and then suddenly really sick and now suddenly you're having to bring them in the bed with you because it's really the only way to get any sleep. You honestly really want to be set up for safe bed sharing in that kind of situation.

In general, I mean a lot of families, I think the first time that they bed share is probably often a middle of the night decision. And at 3am, I don't think that you're going to be getting out your safety guidelines worksheet. I think you're going to want to already have your bed set up, prepared at 3am to bring them into bed with you.

That's just my two cents, but obviously that's kind of the whole point of this episode. The last quote I have from my mom, she says, we bed share because it gets us all the most sleep. It was so helpful when nursing, but even now that we've weaned my 2.5 year old, my two and a half year old still does best if I'm close in the night.

She goes right back to sleep if she reaches out and I'm in the bed. I know at some point we will shift away from it, but I'm in no rush. I did the same with my five year old and he sleeps in his own bed now.

He still likes cuddles when he's falling asleep though, and it's such a sweet way to end every day. And I wanted to end on this quote because I think there is such a, you know, one of the most common things I think bed sharing parents get as kind of like a passive aggressive criticism is people will ask like, well, is he still going to be in your bed when he's 18? Or like, what are they going to do when they go off to college? And I'm like, I have a newborn right now. I'm really not thinking about when he's 18.

And also just because I sleep with him right now does not mean that we're gonna be sleeping together forever. And just like this mom says, her five year old is in his own room. And just like I said before, I think the more we can meet our baby's needs for dependence when they are expressing those needs, the easier actually it becomes to transition to more independence when they're ready for it because it wasn't forced before they were ready for it.

Obviously every baby is different. Some babies, I know some babies genuinely come out of the womb happy to sleep by themselves and they kind of are like that essentially for the rest of their lives, but that's very much not the norm. And I'm hoping that you will have understood through this episode.

I hope that it will have painted a bit of a picture, a clearer picture for you about what to expect after birth and why bed sharing and why understanding bed sharing safety guidelines is so important. Like I said, episode 19 with Katie Fridge from Sleepy Starts, she gave us the whole lowdown on baby sleep safety guidelines. I wanna end this episode by telling you about my own experience of why we started to bed share.

But before I get to that, I would like to give a moment to highlight this episode's sponsor. If you're listening to this episode, then I'm guessing you're hoping to navigate baby sleep in ways that help you and your baby feel well rested and connected. If that's you, then I can't wait to tell you about this episode's sponsor.

This episode is brought to you by my friend Katie Fridge at Sleepy Starts. Yep, that's the same Katie I recorded the sleep safety episode with. Katie is an infant sleep and development specialist, and I love that her approach to baby sleep support is all about holding your connection with your baby at the centre of everything. She's also a friend of mine, which is why I trust you'll be in good hands with her. Katie's Connected Sleep Foundations Bundle is made for expecting and new parents who want to understand infant sleep without separating it from biology, development, or connection.

Inside, she walks through things like what's actually normal for newborn and infant sleep, how night waking supports feeding and regulation, and how to think about sleep setups with intention and to move away from fear-based messaging while still thinking about your baby's safety. And for families who want more personalised support, Katie also offers one-on-one consultations. Her education calls are ideal if you're overwhelmed by conflicting advice and want to understand things like normal sleep patterns, night time expectations, breastfeeding and sleep, and how to create rhythms that support both your baby and your mental health.

If you're parenting an older baby who's waking frequently, her night waking assessments gently explore possible contributors, like feeding patterns, sensory needs, circadian rhythm mismatches, developmental stages, or tension. And if you're facing a transition that feels impossible, like moving away from chest sleeping, navigating daycare, introducing another caregiver, or returning to work, her transition strategy calls offer attachment-rooted guidance without any sleep training. And because this episode is all about bed sharing, I especially want to mention that Katie also offers a free bed sharing basics guide to help you get set up safely for bed sharing.

And yes, you heard that right, her bed sharing basics guide is completely free. You can find all of her guides and more at sleepystarts.com, and I'll be sure to link everything in the episode description and show notes so you can find it all there when you're finished listening to this episode. Now, let's get back to it.

So, let me tell you now about my own experience. Why did we start bed sharing? I think I've given little bits and pieces throughout this episode, so you might already have been able to get the idea by now. But essentially, when my son was born... Actually, let's take it back right to the hospital.

The first time that we co-slept, unsafely actually, was in the hospital. He was born in like 8pm the night before, so then this would have been like the following day. But I basically... Actually, let's take it back to when I was in labor.

When I went into labor, it was 6pm. Then the following day... So I was laboring overnight, so I didn't get any sleep that night. Then the following day, I gave birth at 8pm.

Then because I'd just given birth, I didn't get any sleep that night. So then by the next morning, I'd been awake. I'd maybe had four hours of sleep in... What would that be like? I don't know.

Two and a half days, I'd only had four hours of sleep over two and a half days. So I was probably almost delusional with sleep deprivation at this point. It's the first full day of my baby's life.

We were breastfeeding, and I was sitting up in bed breastfeeding with him. Of course, it makes sense that I closed my eyes and fell asleep. Luckily, nothing happened, but we were sitting up and just not at all in a safe position, especially with a newborn who was less than 24 hours old.

I'm just very glad that nothing happened in that situation. But cut to that night. This is, I guess, technically my son's second night of life.

The first night, when he was born at 8pm, then that night, he actually slept through that whole night right after he gave birth. But then the next night was... He just wouldn't go in the crib. They had that little bedside bassinet thing.

He just would not sleep in it. And I was losing my mind because at this point, it had been... I'm on day three of maybe... I'd slept six hours by this point. It was just unbelievable exhaustion.

I asked the midwife for help. I couldn't understand why he wouldn't just go in the crib, in the bassinet. So I asked the midwife for help, and she was like, you are just... You need to get some sleep.

I'm just going to put him in the bed with you. She set us up to sleep in the C-curl position, which if you don't know what that is, go and check out. I think we talk about it in episode 20, which is also with Katie from Sleepy Starts.

She talks about the C-curl position in episode 20. There were definitely things about this bed-sharing situation in the hospital that midwife put us into that I would say weren't very safe. She rolled up a towel behind his back so that he wouldn't roll onto his back away from me.

Whereas actually, I would not recommend putting anything to prevent your baby from rolling onto their backs, because ideally, your baby will go onto their back once they have finished breastfeeding. The other thing was the fact that I was so insanely tired. First, my husband wasn't allowed to stay at the hospital with us, so I was taking care of my newborn on six hours sleep in three days.

That probably was just not even a safe situation in itself. My point is, normally, if you were that significantly sleep deprived, we would not consider it safe for you to be bed-sharing. Obviously, if you're very tired, there's a difference between being very, very tired to being literally you've had six hours of sleep in three days, and the level of sleep deprivation you would be at that point.

But in this situation, it's all about pros and cons, and that is motherhood. Also, I didn't know anything about bed-sharing safety, and also, I was completely desperate. So yes, we bed-shared for the first time semi-intentionally, because obviously, it was intentional that we bed-shared, but it wasn't at all informed, I would say.

The first day that I woke up, actually, after we did, I had the best two hours of sleep in my life. I woke up two hours later and felt actually more refreshed than I had in days, and I woke up with my babies. All right, there is a guy on a lawnmower outside my apartment, so I'm really hoping that I'm going to be able to edit it so it's not super loud in this.

But I need to finish this episode before I have to go pick my son up from preschool, so I'm very sorry if you can hear the lawnmower. But I think I was saying, the first day when I woke up after we bed-shared for the first time, and my baby's face was just in front of mine, and it was the first time that I had really been able to let it sink in a little bit. The fact that he was here, and he was born, and I just have this... It's going to be forever imprinted in my mind, just waking up and seeing his face in front of mine, because that was just really the moment I was like, oh my goodness.

I'm smiling so hard right now recording, just going back there, because it really was the moment that I was actually conscious of the fact that my baby was born, and here he was, and oh my gosh, how perfect is he? And just getting to actually just stare at him was unbelievable and magical, and just made me so happy. Okay, moving on though, because we're actually trying to talk about bed-sharing right now. So when we brought him home from the hospital, we actually moved one week after he was born.

So when we first brought him home, we were in our old apartment, and our old apartment had a bed that was just really, really soft, and I knew from the little amount that I did know about bed-sharing safety, I knew that a really soft bed was not considered a safe place to go to sleep. We did bed-share in it like one day for just like a nap. I made a choice there.

I would not recommend that choice, but let me go back a sec to it. When we got back home to our old apartment, I had him in the bedside bassinet. It was the kind where you could kind of pull the bassinet over your bed, and we would sleep, I would sleep like right up next to that bassinet, because I just felt it felt wrong to not be sleeping with him.

And I guess in this, he was in the first week after birth, he slept really well at night. Like I could have just slept and woke up every few hours to feed him, but like other than that, like as soon as he would be done with the feed, he would go down and back to sleep, and I would have been fine to just sleep next to him, but I could not sleep, even though I was so tired. I think it was like a combination, sorry you might be able to hear the lawnmower, um I think it was like a combination of like adrenaline and like hormones after birth, also mixed with like it feeling wrong that my baby was not touching me.

And I found it yeah just really hard to not be able to see him easily through the mesh of the bassinet, so I'd have to like physically sit up and look over the bassinet to check he was okay. And like I think as a as a mom, we underestimate like how many times we try to check on our baby to make sure that they're okay. Um like it's really just instinct to try and make sure that your baby was okay, and it made it really hard for me to check on him, and even harder for me to do that while trying to sleep myself.

And it was just it was a bit of a mess for that week, but I still did not actually intend on bed sharing. Even once we moved to our new apartment, I still had him in the bedside bassinet for probably another week, and then by the third week, then he stopped wanting to sleep in the bassinet. He was just like I think around the second week that they do tend to just gain a little bit of awareness.

And when I would feed him and put him down in the bassinet, he would inevitably within like 10 minutes he would start waking up. Um I remember I would literally take him for walks around my apartment complex at like two or three o'clock in the morning. There was one night where we saw the moon.

We live um on the basically on the ocean, and so there was one night where I took him for this walk around the apartment complex and the moon was a full moon over the ocean. And like it was absolutely a magical moment, but that's definitely a magical moment I would have given up for the alternative of like being able to sleep. So I was like yeah just getting more and more miserable, more and my mental health was like getting worse and worse by the day as well.

Um and we also struggled a lot in the beginning with breastfeeding. So like it would take me like an hour just to give him a feed, so it was just it was it was a lot. And um and keep in mind that they feed you know he was feeding like eight to twelve or more times a day, so that's eight twelve to twelve or more hours a day that we were spending feeding.

And like it was just it was getting pretty miserable. And so I don't I don't I don't remember what it was that like was like the final straw for me, but I do remember there being some kind of final straw where I was like that's it, I'm done, tomorrow night or tonight we are gonna uh bed share. And so I kicked my husband out of bed, I set the bed up as well as I knew how.

I had a book about bed sharing, so that really helped because it had like a little quick guide like um you know if you're just gonna be bed sharing on a whim like here are the most important things you need to know to set your bed up for safe bed sharing as quickly as possible. Um so I did that and then kind of the next day I think and kind of onwards I like learned a lot more about bed sharing, how to make it safer, but it wasn't really that there wasn't really actually anything else that I really needed to do in our situation. Kind of the bed was already pretty safe for bed sharing.

And then yeah, so now we're moving on to almost coming up to three years of bed sharing now. The lawnmower is coming, sorry. Um we're coming up to almost three years of bed sharing now um and we kind of had an intention to maybe try and stop.

I did buy him another a toddler bed that we now have in our bedroom. This was about two weeks ago I bought him this toddler bed. The first night he went to sleep in it um and I did manage to resettle him into it once, but then, but that was before I fell asleep.

He woke up again when I had already been asleep and by that point I was like get into bed with me I'm not coming to resettle you in your own bed again because I did not want to have to get up and physically resettle him. And um then the next day he got sick and we've been sick now for like two weeks so we have not tried the toddler bed again and actually what I've realized is I have no intention of trying it again until we're further down the line because we are breastfeeding. There's a reason that you know we talk about um Katie in her episode episode 19 she talks about breast sleeping and how bed sharing and breast feeding really just go hand in hand because sorry the grass the lawnmower is over here again um but breast feeding and bed sharing really go hand in hand because it just it's one system.

Katie explains it much better in um the episode so like I said go listen to that one again but so yeah we're not ready to start bed sharing yet. I wanted to try and get him into his own bed because there's not enough room for him and me and my husband we're all kind of like splayed out sleepers and so there's just not enough room for all three of us in our bed and I do miss my husband but I also know at this stage we're at right now it's the only way for us to get enough sleep sorry the lawnmower is coming the only way for us to get enough sleep as a family is for me and my son to bed share and my husband sleeps in another room and I know that this won't last forever and so we're just rolling with it right now. I don't know if I should have included that in this episode because I obviously don't want to put you off from bed sharing if you're a first time pregnant mom and you're suddenly now you're hearing I'm still bed sharing at three years old and I miss my husband and I don't want that to put you off it's just kind of the reality and I've got to be honest about all sides of everything but I also think you know there are there are pros and cons to everything and it's always going to be about figuring out what works best for you and your family and the point of this episode was not to convince you that you should bed share the point of this episode was to just enlighten you as to what the reality of having a baby can be like when it comes to navigating sleep if you have any other questions about bed sharing or baby sleep I'm always happy for you to message me on instagram at mother baby well-being and I highly recommend you go and check out katie from sleepy starts and check out all her amazing resources I love katie I love her resources and I know that you'll be in really good hands with her all everything you need to know will be linked in the episode description and in the show notes so be sure to check those out thank you so much for listening today your support is really appreciated if this is your first time listening to the podcast please make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss future episodes and if you want to leave a podcast review that's always very greatly appreciated because it's really what helps this podcast to grow and to reach other new moms or expecting moms who might benefit from this kind of information and it is my dream to keep this podcast free and accessible for everyone and growing the podcast is really the best way to help support me and support that dream so your support through following subscribing and reviewing and commenting is so greatly appreciated you can also share this episode with another expecting mom or or new mom who might benefit from hearing about why families bed share thank you for joining us today and I will see you in the next episode bye for now