Co-Sleeping

I am 100 percent for making your child sleep in their own bed. I was the first to announce that I was never going to co-sleep with my child. Whether they were 6-months-old or 5-years, it wasn't going to happen. Let's all laugh at that statement together. This—if you're a parent, for obvious reasons—didn't happen. I held true for a bit, but eventually, like I'm assuming most parents do, I caved.

My daughter is now 2-years-old. This morning, as she was sick and coughing and crying for me at four o'clock in the morning, I pulled her into bed with me, turned on Elmo on the TV in my room, and we fell back asleep for another two whole hours. This is very much not the first time this has happened. It's also not the last time it will happen. I've let her nap in my bed, but I'm usually not in it. It's more of just a treat for agreeing to take a nap without fuss. The co-sleeping really early in the morning has been a thing for quite a while, though. I'll probably continue to let her co-sleep on occasions like this. They're fairly rare and sweet moments.

This was obviously not my first thought when thinking about co-sleeping. I love my sleep very much. My sleep is greatly important to me. I have twelve pillows on my bed and three blankets. I like my comfort. In the first about eight months of my daughter's life, I barely slept. I also very strictly enforced the no co-sleeping rule. That was for other reasons, though. Mostly because although she kept me awake pretty much every hour of my life, I was still very afraid of rolling over her in my sleep or her suffocating under my hundreds of pillows and blankets. At that young of an age, it just seems so dangerous to me.

However, I also believe there are dangers now that she's older too. Not so much the rolling over her and suffocating. She kicks me in the back and the ribcage enough that I know not to get close to her when she wiggles her way into my bed. It's more that I worry about how attached she's getting. I know, I know, I'm her mom and attachment isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I worry about how she's been screaming lately when I drop her off at daycare. She's excited to go to daycare but freaks out when I leave. I love when she runs up and hugs me when I come to pick her up, but the constantly holding onto my leg instead of playing with other kids at the park freaks me out a bit.

I'm no psychologist. I don't know if co-sleeping is actually the reason she's doing these things. But the two started taking place around the same time. I love that my daughter is close to me. If I'm being super honest, I love that she crawls into bed with me early in the morning and we watch cartoons together. It's more when she tries to sleep the entire night in my bed that my concern really springs up. I want her to be reliant on me a bit, but I also want her to be independent. I want her to feel comfortable sleeping in her own bed, by herself.

I am in no way trying to bash the parents that co-sleep all night with their kids every night. I don't think it's healthy but, again, I'm no psychologist. I'm simply saying that in my family and my opinion, based on what I've seen from my own daughter, I don't think co-sleeping constantly is healthy. I will say, that in about the first year of life, I really don't agree with co-sleeping. I don't think it's healthy and I very much don't think it's safe.