Cosleeping, a little like staying up all night drinking, but without the fun.

I have had a lack of inspiration in the past couple of days to write blog posts, do laundry, clean my house, or anything else requiring actual work. It is being sucked out of me.. literally.. by a little 5 month old baby. Who now has teeth  one tooth and one about to come in.

I used to swear up and down that there would never be a child sleeping in my bed, unless there was the scariest thunderstorm imaginable or really bad nightmares involved. And then, I had a child, one that I intended to nurse. It all started so innocently...

We had a bassinet that we found at a garage sale. The lady who sold it to me said it was practically brand new because her sister made the mistake of putting the baby in the bed with her. I scoffed. Pshhh.. that won't happen to us. And then, I had a child.

I read a lot of scary statistics about SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) and it all pointed to scary things like bulky bedding, smoking parents, and (gasp) Cosleeping. So, I said that baby would definitely sleep in the bassinet, with no extra blankets, just a SwaddleMe thing and no toys. And then, I had a child.

When we brought said child home from the hospital, he seemed to want to be nursed to sleep a lot. So, being the completely idiotic the new parent I was who was suffering from a complete lack of sleep (and judgement) I would nurse The Baby to sleep and then carefully move him to his bassinet. There he would stay for 2 hours and then wake up screaming, demanding to eat.

After the first few nights of this rigmarole, I began to fall asleep while waiting for HIM to fall asleep. It wasn't working. So, what did I do? I consulted my expert friends, online community, and trusted com padre: Google. Just kidding. I just gave in. I let the baby sleep in the bed with me after the first round in his bassinet from then on out.

What should I have done? Actually consult friends to learn that I needed to be putting him down drowsy so he could figure out how to go to sleep on his own. What did I do? Sentence myself to a lifetime near future of him needing to suckle to sleep and wanting to be beside us to be nice and cozy ALL. NIGHT. LONG.

Unfortunately, I tried sleep training. That worked until darling Husband decided he missed The Baby too much when he was in his crib. I then made the mistake of learning that actually, cosleeping is not any more dangerous than crib sleeping (and can be less dangerous) due to one golden factor: A nursing mother is "in tune" with her baby's movements and breathing all night. Translation? You NEVER fall asleep enough to forget you have a baby sleeping beside you.

<sigh> So, here we are, 5 months in and the little darling is teething now. This is pretty much the closest thing I've ever seen to "demonic possession". What happened to my sweet, happy baby that would only wake up once or twice a night? He was replaced with an angry, pained, mean baby who NEEDS a lot of cuddling and suckling to ease his pain. And I give in.. because I love him.. and I hate that he's going through this.

So, with shamefacedness, I admit our little cosleeping secret. If I haven't scared you away from it yet, I'm going to give you my formula for determining how much sleep you will get if you cosleep:

Take the number of hours that you want to sleep and subtract that number by the number of times you get up at night to go to the bathroom, etc. Now take that answer and divide it by the number of human bodies sleeping in the bed and you have your answer to how many hours of sleep you will get.

Using that formula I get 2.3 hours of sleep a night. That sounds just about right.. no wonder I often need a 5 hour "nap" during the day. It's like a hangover.. that never gets better. But, oh how I love my little guy, so it continues!