‘I think that children are supposed to sleep with their parents. Many of the sleep problems are to do with sleeping alone.’
Margaret and Phil, parents of James, aged 20 months
‘Thomas went into his own bedroom pretty early on. I think he lasted about two days in our bedroom – we couldn’t sleep. The health visitor had said something ridiculous like six months, but we couldn’t keep to that.’
Sue and Michael, parents of Thomas, two
For 95% of evolution, babies have slept with their mothers. Independent sleep is a relatively recent idea. So which is best – co-sleeping or independent sleep? As yet there’s no clear answer but there is mounting evidence that our bodies are designed for close proximity or contact with our babies throughout the day and night until at least six months. It may be that solitary sleeping in the first few months of life makes too many demands on your baby’s body, and that sleeping and waking within sight and sound of you helps him to adapt to life more smoothly.
The process works like this: it’s not unusual for babies, and especially premature babies, to have breathing pauses, which last anything up to 20 seconds. It’s quite normal. The breathing system is not fully mature at birth. If they happen in sleep, these breathing pauses lead the baby to wake and start to breathe again. Researchers have now discovered that babies who sleep close to mum and dad tune into their parents’ breathing following a breathing pause and join in again at the same pace (McKenna et al., 1994). There is also a suggestion that mothers who sleep with their babies tend to sleep up close, facing their baby most of the time and that this closeness stimulates their baby’s breathing in another way – through the increased level of carbon dioxide they emit (Mosko et al., 1997).
Something similar happens with body heat. New-born babies, and especially premature babies, cannot regulate their body temperature. So they can overheat. And overheating is one of the risk factors associated with cot death. Researchers have now discovered that babies and parents who sleep together work as a thermostatic unit. When the baby heats up, the mother cools down, bringing the baby’s temperature down with hers (McKenna et al., 1994).
Margaret finds another benefit: the rhythm of her waking and sleeping meshes with James’s.
‘James, who is 20 months, has always slept with us, and hardly ever fully wakes at night. When he was little he used to just snuffle around and latch on. If you are waking in the night, your sleep patterns coincide with your baby’s, so you just gradually wake up with them. When they are in a cot you can’t be so in touch, you don’t hear them snuffling around. The first thing you hear is crying and that means you have to wake up quickly and they are already awake.’
All this means that cuddling your new born baby at night is potentially valuable and not a bad habit, so long as you positively want to do it. After about six months your baby will be much better at controlling his own breathing and temperature, and will have cut down or possibly stopped his night feeds. So, this may be a good time to review how he sleeps.
Babies often provide clues about how they want to sleep. After a few months of co-sleeping, Ann noticed a change in William’s sleeping position:
‘He used to sleep right up under my armpit on the left-hand side, but by about eight months he was starting to sleep away from me and to move round the bed more, which disturbed me. I thought he might as well sleep in his own bed, so at ten months we moved him.’
Anthropologists Wenda Trevathan and James McKenna recommend that you plug in your baby monitor the wrong way round, so that the sounds you make can be broadcast to your baby, rather than his sounds being relayed to you.
Their research shows that your sleeping baby can tune into your breathing, your movements and your talk and that this is good for his development.
If you are worried that you won’t hear your baby when the monitors are switched, you could try a set of walkie-talkies so at least you can both hear each other.
But don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you have to share your bed with your baby. Even if you do choose a cot, your baby has ways of ensuring that you cuddle him at night. The average new-born baby probably sleeps in five or six different places during the night: his cot, his mother’s arms as she feeds him on the sofa or the rocking chair, on his father’s shoulder as he paces the floor-boards singing softly, and even the changing mat. In all these places he will receive beneficial contact.
Of course, most new parents buy a cot and then occasionally take their baby into their bed, and the advantages of a cot are fairly obvious. Other parents decide to sleep with their baby as a matter of routine. Others take the middle path of a cot with one side down butting against their bed, or a basket up close to them. You may want to consider the advantages and disadvantages of sharing your bed:
• Less disruption to you, as you can meet your baby’s needs immediately and easily
• Lots of physiologically useful contact for your baby
• Close physical contact can lead to close emotional contact
• Fathers spend more time with their baby – and many surprise themselves and love it
• Baby wakes and feeds more frequently
• Less adult intimacy
• One of you is disturbed by the baby’s small movements or his habit of lying across the bed, or on top of you
• Feeling that you never have a break
‘Sex goes out the window when you have a baby in bed with you.’
Sally, mother of Laura and Annie
‘If we want to get intimate, John just moves her over to the other side.’
Melissa, mother of Jessie
It is important to agree sleeping arrangements with your partner. If you choose to co-sleep, do so routinely, not just once every so often in desperation. If you do sleep with your baby, think about how you could give yourself more space. Ann and Simon kept their double bed and placed two chairs up against their bed while they waited for a Bed-Side-Cot to arrive. (A Bed-Side-Cot is a purpose-designed cot with one side completely removed which abuts your bed so that you and your baby can each have a space to sleep; you under your duvet and he under his sheets and blankets – yet within easy reach of each other. See page 152 for suppliers.) Alternatively you could push a single bed alongside your double one to enable everyone to sleep undisturbed – and to accommodate an extra sibling. Babies who co-sleep seldom choose to sleep in their own bed before they are two or three, and often much later, by which time you may well have another baby snuggling in too, although there is nothing to stop you moving them to their own cot or bed when you want.
If you are worried about the safety of co-sleeping use this checklist.
• You cannot smother your baby by rolling onto him in your sleep unless you have taken drugs or are drunk.
• The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths recommends that, until your baby is six months old, he sleeps in a cot next to your bed, close enough for you to hear him at night but without the risk of overheating under your duvet. They also recommend that you:
• Place your baby in the ‘foot to feet’ position with his feet to the foot of his cot so that he doesn’t disappear under his blankets during the night.
• Use blankets and sheets for a baby under one, rather than a duvet, because it’s easier to adapt them to the right temperature (18°C/64°F).
• Feed him in bed if that’s comfortable for you but put your baby back into his cot once you are both ready for sleep.
• Do not co-sleep if you smoke, even if you do not smoke in bed. Smoking raises the risk of cot death.
Of course, there are many variations on the theme. Some couples, like Clare and Chris, not only sleep with their children but stay awake as a family until everyone is tired, going to bed all at the same time. Other parents lie with their baby as he falls asleep in their bed and then get up and go downstairs again, returning later to sleep with him. Julie, who is single and the mother of Ross, aged three, did this.
‘I felt I really wanted to give him as much time as I could at night and in the evening. I had to work all day, so we needed to be together at night.’
Other parents co-sleep for part of the night, putting their baby to bed in his own cot and then lifting him into their bed when he cries. Some dads, and it usually is dads, end up sleeping alone just so that they can get enough sleep and their baby can co-sleep.
‘Pete’s been downstairs on the sofa bed with a sleeping bag for the last year. Occasionally he makes a joke of it and says he’d like to sleep with me again, and I’d like him to as well. He’s very patient.’
Kim, mother of Camlo, five, Evie, two, and Eden, nine months
In some societies babies are not expected to sleep alone. This difference has a lot to do with how different cultures see the role of parenting. In Britain most parents see their job as helping their baby to become a separate individual. Most mums feel that at birth their baby is tied to them and that their role as a parent is to help their baby to develop, slowly and progressively, a sense of autonomy and separateness. Giving the baby his own bed and his own sleep space recognizes his individuality and will help to promote his independence. Every child needs to learn to be independent to survive in British society, so the theory goes, and therefore sleeping alone is in the child’s best interests.
In other countries there is a very different set of assumptions based on what will help the child best adapt to the society into which he is born. The Japanese, for example, have a wonderfully evocative word for the utter dependency of the new-born baby. They call it amae. Amae means the baby’s need to be protected and enveloped by his mother’s unconditional love. Feeling the need to be protected and receiving this complete protection will have lasting effects on the baby. He will learn that we are all interdependent and that he has to harmonize with the group. A Japanese mother sees her new-born baby as separate, vulnerable and unprotected; her goal is to encourage her baby to become totally dependent on her. So Japanese babies sleep in company usually with their parents, sometimes with siblings or grandparents.
Most Japanese children sleep with their parents. About a quarter sleep on a mat beside the futon, the others lie between their parents. The Japanese have a word for the baby lying between his parents – kawa. Kawa is the Japanese character for a river flowing between two banks. The child is seen as ‘flowing’ between the two supportive parents. The imagery is powerful. What is a river bank without the river, and what becomes of the river without the banks?
Some parents interpret their baby’s waking at night as a signal that he needs them. They take him to their bed as a way of meeting that need. Others feel that night waking simply means that their baby hasn’t yet learnt to go to sleep alone and that if they just encourage him a little more, he will. Most of us occasionally abandon reason and will do anything if it just means we can sleep.
Some parents choose to share. Here’s Julie, lone parent of Ross, again:
‘Ross and I have developed a very warm and tactile relationship. I love him coming into my bed and snuggling in. My only worry is that I may make him more dependent on me, but I think it is countered by my lack of time with him generally, because I work full time. Ross does appear to be fairly secure.’
Some parents want to share but have a baby who likes his own space:
‘We took our oldest son, Robert, into bed with us because he wanted to be held the whole time. (He was induced two weeks early and we’ve been told that induced babies like a lot of holding.) When number two was born we assumed that this was how babies went to sleep, so we took him to bed with us. Jonathan hated it. He went back to his swinging crib. Even now at two-and-a-half, when he comes in for a cuddle he wants just five minutes and then to go back to sleep in his own bed. It’s nothing to do with us, it’s to do with the child.’
Cathy and Adam
Some parents want different things from each other:
‘Eventually when Sam was 16 months old I put my foot down with daddy and took Sam into bed with us when he woke and was difficult to settle because I was a total wreck and couldn’t cope any more with waking every hour.’
Roslyn
‘My husband would be having them in bed with us, but I won’t. He’s softer. He was the one who was very soft with the first one, but then we were both tired and cross.’
Liz and Adrian, parents of Hester, five, Bruce, four, Joseph, three and Isobel, 14 months
Some, like Catherine, begin to share as a matter of expediency, and end up loving it:
‘I started off when Rosie was born saying that the one thing I would never do was sleep with her. In the end it was completely obvious that it was the only way I was going to get any sleep. At three months she woke every hour in the night. Sometimes I’d feed her in a chair by her cot, but sometimes I got so tired I got back into bed. The book said it was OK to sleep with your child only until four months, so I decided I had to start to put her back in her cot, and I did it for two weeks, but then I collapsed and was very ill. I thought it was something I was doing, but now I think that it was just that her sleep maturity came later. I came to the conclusion that she was just not a naturally good sleeper. In the end I just had her in my bed with me and now I can lie down with her and it only takes five minutes for her to fall asleep. I came to the conclusion that it was good for us and it helped our closeness and eased a lot of tension. She has an inner security, I’m much more relaxed and I feel very fulfilled – it’s made me feel much more womanly. Having done it once I’ll want to share again with the next child.’
And still others have to share, and are relieved when they can stop. Brenda and Dave lived in a one-bedroom house when Mark was born:
‘He didn’t get his own room until he was three years old. He never had a cot, we didn’t have the space. For a long time his night waking did not bother us greatly because tending to him did not involve us getting up ourselves. But after some time we did start to feel cramped and disturbed by Mark’s presence in our bed or nearby. We were relieved when at the age of three we moved from our one-bedroom house to a three-bedroom house.’
Many babies who co-sleep like to lie on one or other parent’s chest. It is likely that they are listening to the heartbeat, feeling the rise and fall of the chest as their parent breathes, and keeping warm all at the same time – something that will help them to regulate their own heartbeat, temperature and breathing in the first months.
Your sleep goal may be the same as others, but your journey to it may not. Ultimately most parents probably want their child to sleep in his own bed readily and with the minimum of help from them. For some parents it is important that the goal be achieved quickly, while others are happy that the process takes years and that the child will tell them when he is ready, and many more want to keep their baby with them at night early on and move him away when they all seem ready. Keep your goal in mind.
‘Our ultimate aim is for India to sleep in her cot. But she is a brilliant sleeper, and I have no qualms about having her in my bed. She sleeps from 8.30pm to 8am. If she wakes then I’m there. I’m sure that she is happy to go into her cot awake because she is secure that we will go and get her if she cries.’
Judy and David, parents of India, aged seven months
Sue wanted Charlotte to sleep independently from the beginning:
‘Charlotte slept in a Moses basket in her own room at the start. The Moses basket was then placed in her cot from when she was about six weeks old. At 12 weeks of age she went into the cot and her sleep pattern didn’t change.’
Sam wanted Milly to be close for the first six months and to sleep in her own room after that:
‘Milly sleeps from 8.30pm to 8.30am with two or three awakenings for her dummy each night. We consider ourselves fortunate. She was “sleeping through” like this from around ten weeks. I had her in bed with me for the first six weeks, then in a Bed-Side-Bed until six months. I think this helped establish a good routine and security for her.’
• Put him down relaxed but awake.
• Make sure he is sleepy before you put him down, as he may be worried lying awake on his own. Delay his sleep if need be, and gradually bring his sleep time forward a few minutes each night, to fit in with your schedule.
• Be confident that he is able to manage on his own; it will rub off on him.
• New parents who are shown how to settle their babies to sleep alone and who believe that this is the best thing to do are more likely to have children who go to sleep alone and stay asleep all night.
• Discuss it with your partner first.
• Only do it if you want to, not as a last resort.
• Don’t feel guilty if it’s what you want to do.
• Do it every night and be prepared to do it for several years.
• Lay down with him when you have plenty of time to remain with him. You may find that when you remain with your baby while he goes to sleep, he initially takes a long time to settle because he is stimulated by your presence.