I Didn't Bedshare Because I Didn't Want to Crush My Baby
Many moms who don't bedshare with their babies aren't cold or unfeeling--they're just afraid of suffocation!
Bedsharing is so magical! The feeling of waking up to my baby’s smiling face is unlike any other! Why would ANY mother forgo this beautiful experience?
Because I didn’t want to crush my baby!
I’m not shy about being a really neurotic mom, both when it comes to not wanting to traumatize my kids by accident, and wanting to keep them safe, perhaps to a fault. So it should come as no surprise that when they were infants, I consumed a lot of content about ideal sleep—and not just safe sleep, but “biologically normal” sleep.
Surprise! These things are two separate and mutually exclusive things, at least as far as the Internet would have you believe—what’s more is that each camp cannot possibly imagine any reason other than being evil or stupid, that you would choose the other option.
I’m doing a 25% off annual subscription sale for annual subscriptions! Ends after Christmas. Will not apply to monthly upgrading to annual.
If you’re a safe sleep person, the only acceptable way for your infant to sleep is on their back, in a bassinet by your bed, with nothing else inside the bassinet, not even a toy or blanket. It also can’t be too warm—I remember seeing a mom ask on Reddit about what she should do about her inefficiently cooled house in a warm climate, and she speculated, “Babies in equatorial countries must sleep in hotter weather, right?” and the top comment said, “Yes, but…they die.” To warn against accidentally falling asleep with your baby, safe sleep guidelines suggest something that sounds right out of a interrogation technique for a military who wants to inflict as much torture upon a detainee as they can without technically committing war crimes: purposefully sitting up and making yourself as uncomfortable as possible while breastfeeding (they suggest taking off your shirt and keeping your room cold) and setting an alarm to prevent dozing off. All wonderful things for an exhausted mother recovering from childbirth, often with little to no external support.
The “biologically normal” sleep advocates, who favor bedsharing with your infant and nursing throughout sleep, view this sterile, cold (literally) and isolated setup as cruel, unnatural and maybe even downright evil. I imagine to them that it sounds about as absurd as reading your child a bedtime story on Zoom instead of in person, for no particular reason. They might not always blame mothers who opt for it, but they will blame some kind of nefarious Safe Sleep Cabal, who have pointlessly tricked mothers into a cruel separation from their baby and a denial of our natural urges. What’s their endgame? Possibly the hawking of sleep training e-courses, although I find it hard to believe that the American Academy of Pediatrics has a stake in Taking Cara Babies.
Of course, the “safe sleep” setup is about as uncomfortable as it gets, so if you follow safe sleep your baby actually wakes up all the damn time, frequently waking during the dreaded bassinet transfer, and that’s why safe sleep often eventually leads to some form of sleep training. Therefore, I understand why advocates of “biologically normal” sleep aren’t thinking about safe sleep in terms of safety but in terms of a self-centered desire to rid yourself of your annoying and inconvenient baby, or a girlboss-adjacent, unrealistic desire to have your baby sleep through the night at increasingly ridiculous ages (so Mommy, and presumably her “luxury handbags and spreadsheets,” won’t be bothered.) But I feel like these people are missing a big reason that many moms choose not to put their babies in their bed: they don’t want to crush them!
Hey, take advantage of my 25% off annual subscription sale until 12/27!
(To be clear, when I say “bedsharing advocates” in this context, I’m not talking about people who simply enjoy bedsharing and talk about it, but people who seem incredulous that anyone would ever not bedshare, and can’t possibly fathom any good reason for this decision.)
