Does anyone else do this? My wife and I, after much reading around before our child was born, made a conscious decision to do this.
We have encountered much criticism for the choice (not from health professionals), although ironically we often find that with a bit of digging you find that the person criticising you did it as well...... There just seems to be some sort of taboo about it that people feel the need to lie about the fact they did it. I, on the other hand will quite contently tell people we did this.
At six months we did start putting our son into a cot alongside our bed, he does quite well with this so no real problems there. And right now he is sleeping soundly in bed after being put up by his mother, so some of the usual criticisms like 'they'll never learn to sleep on their own' aren't necessarily true.
Does anyone else do this? Or even disagree?
We co-sleep occasionally when our daughter is having problems settling down, although we simply don't trust ourselves not to roll over and suffocate her in the night, so we don't do it often! She does seem to sleep better between us, so there's clearly something in the concept, but I'm not sure that justifies the risk. At the moment my daughter is co-sleeping in bed with my wife while I sleep on the sofa...!
... all of which brings me to my latest tale of woe...
After 5 days of fever and snot, my 7 mo daughter's body-clock is totally our of whack and she's getting up every hour and a half to play/feed/talk ( cue sleep deprivation ). General tiredness and the lack of any detectable reason for these nightly periods of wakefulness makes me snappy and irritable with my daughter ( cue feelings of guilt from me and anger from spouse ). The last two nights, my wife has sent me to the sofa about 3 AM so I'm not completely knackered the next morning ( cue more guilt at leaving her to deal with difficult child on her own ). My wife and I are bickering and arguing constantly, which we never used to do - we've always been a good team. Old arguments re-surface like why my wife resisted a dummy when my daughter is clearly now using her as a human dummy? Should we give her a bottle of formula before bedtime to knock her out, since breastmilk clearly goes through her like sh** off a shovel...? ( cue anger at spouse - another barrier to sleep ). Of course, I'm now feeling like the world's worst dad for having all these thoughts ( guilt, guilt, guilt - I should just turn Catholic now, and get it over with...)
So... co-sleeping?
If it works for you and the baby, do it.
Are kids worth it?
Current opinion: no. But get back to me when she's sleeping better...