More on sleep

Another piece on infant sleep from Mothering magazine (a source I'm going to have to go "eh" on because of their vaguely anti-vaccine stance. Not cool):

One of the biggest crises of confidence that new mothers face has to do with sleep. Mothers feel responsible for their babies' sleep. Others ask mothers if their babies are sleeping through the night, as if this is something the mothers can control. Mothers lie to one another about whether or not their infants sleep through the night. And everyone lies about not bringing their babies into bed with them.

We lie because our society has unrealistic expectations of babies, and therefore we have unrealistic expectations of ourselves as mothers. Our expectations for babies' sleep simply do not coincide with babies' actual capabilities, or with the normal behavior of our species.

Yeah, I think we all lie. Or we probably should if we're tired of questions about how our babies are sleeping.  Mine still doesn't sleep as well as she used to, but I've stopped grieving the loss of my uninterrupted 5-6 hours and moved the hell along to whatever gets me enough rest to be coherent the next day.  Lately, that's been allowing Fidg to sleep next to me in bed. Or more precisely, allowing me to sleep next to her.  Safely.

I'm pretty sure this is safer than what I had been doing before: arranging myself with the nursing pillow and promptly passing out, only to wake 4 hours later and find both of us at odd angles.  The other night, she straight up fell of the pillow, landing with a soft plop on the mattress.  That's far more dangerous than consciously making the decision to allow her to sleep latched on.  She falls face down and I don't wake up for 4 hours . . . or worse, she rolls of the OTHER side of the pillow . . . . . Scary.

Also unhealthy, for me and her at this time, in my opinion, allowing her to just cry it out in the other room.  Forget the wisdom of the CIO method or Ferberizing your child, I know with a near certaintly that my child wakes in the night because she needs to feed because I don't pump adequate milk to stuff her full during the day time.  Kid's gotta eat sometime.

I need to just relax and let biology rule for a bit longer.  This time won't last forever.  And in some ways, despite me thinking this notion was stupid as hell a month or two ago, that extra time we have together at night makes it easier for me to be gone all day - especially now that she's beginning to notice when I leave.

(Okay, mom?)

Co-sleeping isn't bedsharing

I never much considered the distinction, but apparently, scientifically speaking, you co-sleep just by having the baby in the room with you, in a crib or bassinet, etc. So we've been co-sleeping with the Fidg since birth.

Lately, however, there's been some bedsharing as  well.  Waking every two hours to feed her was a bit of a drag and moreover, felt unsafe as I couldn't stay awake once I had her on the nursing pillow in bed with me.  If she's on the bed surface to start, she's not going to roll there and land face down or, worse, roll off onto the floor.

I'd prefer to get her back in the crib, but so every so often, she ends up in bed, and routinely ends up there after her 5 or 6am waking since there's just some dozing to be done between then and work.

The above linked article is pretty interesting and worth a read.  I especially like this part which academically chuckles over the paradox created by our cultures relationship with its ethics rules

It remains a curiosity of western cultures that we are largely unable to study prolonged mother-infant separation in a laboratory setting, even though our culture in the US provides us the perfect “natural experiment,” with thousands of neonates and infants being left to sleep alone for long periods of time every night. However, it is reasonable to at least suggest that solitary infant sleep represents an evolutionarily anomalous setting for human babies. As a result, infants may experience a physiological stress response that puts them at risk of energy depletion and immunological depression, while placing undue strain on their developmentally immature respiratory, cardiac, and neurological systems.

 Here's more on the definitions:

Definitions are important here. The term cosleeping refers to any situation in which a committed adult caregiver, usually the mother, sleeps within close enough proximity to her infant so that each, the mother and infant, can respond to each other’s sensory signals and cues. Room sharing is a form of cosleeping, always considered safe and always considered protective. But it is not the room itself that it is protective. It is what goes on between the mother (or father) and the infant that is. Medical authorities seem to forget this fact. This form of cosleeping is not controversial and is recommended by all.