After checking out the stunning and superb blog Lap of Luxury, I followed a link to Danielle Bean where she had a post on cosleeping.
While her main point is loving and kind, I am interested in pursuing two of her incidental points. For example, she mentions her husband's ability to sleep through the various gyrations of breastfeeding and crawling toddlers. I am overjoyed to find out that I am not alone in the "sleep of the dead" category. I just recently earned a rebuke from Jen for not adjusting the thermostat when she was cold and asked me. But I was in the temperature zone and so tired!
A second incidental point is that her nursing child is "spoiled" because he nurses on and off throughout the night. I think she mentions it mostly in jest, but I have difficulty telling such things in an on-line format. Research indicates that the woman's body is more sensitive to prolactin at night, therefore milk is produced more easily. Also, babies have small stomachs so it is natural that they eat more frequently. Why then this stigma over spoiling a child when physiology seems to dictate this pattern?
I guess I'm one of those "political" people she mentions, since I believe cosleeping should be the norm in the U.S. as it is the norm in so many other countries and cultures. However, maybe I'm just remembering the comfort of those many nights as a child when my parents let me sleep in a sleeping bag on their floor. I think all children deserve that comfort, especially the comfort of a comatose father snoring away.
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2 comments:
I don't think anyone would say it's wrong to feed a young baby at night if they are hungry, would they? I think the thing is that by 3 months they truly do not need to eat that frequently, and the criticism is not of feeding a hungry child, but feeding a child who is waking just because they are waking, not because they are hungry. There are many reasons for night waking, only one is hunger.
You raise a valid point with the age issue. However, the criticism that I've heard or experienced seems to be far less distinct. It is more general, along the lines of, "you might as well live in the Bates Motel."
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