If you are a new parent and not familiar with what exactly co-sleeping is, I am sure you are not alone. Co-sleeping is when you sleep essentially with your newborn or infant in the same bed or vicinity. Most times this is regarding the same bed as room sharing is referred to as sharing the same room with a baby. Some people have a special side bed or spot they place somewhere on the bed for their baby to sleep while they sleep.

There are various reasons why some parents feel this is the best option. A main reason is if there is breastfeeding happening the child is close by and able to be fed on demand without having to really move or get out of bed. Convenience would be a main reason for this. Another reason is maybe the parents want to be close to their newborn and build their connections even stronger. After all the baby did sleep inside for 9 months so why not keep doing it afterwards. Instead of getting up through the night to get the baby and feed them they are simply there and you are able to just let them feed immediately instead of taking time to go to them, bring them back to bed, grabbing a bottle or breast, and then burping them and going back to sleep.

When we had our 1st son, and when we also will have our second one, we decided to room share. However we used a bassinet for this. We by no means have a huge bed but a bassinet we felt was a great way to be close if the baby needs us and he will still have his own space and be safely placed. It worked for us until about 6 months when my son was spreading his arms out and would touch the sides, then we had no choice but to switch him to a crib as he was just too big for the bassinet. We never got a fancy one either, this is similar to a portable one and is light weight so we were able to bring it downstairs and in the bedroom if we were up for the day and he was sleeping we could still be near him but he was in his own safe space also too.

I think it goes without saying, and I can almost guarantee that I am not alone in thinking this way either, the biggest reason why I wouldn’t and do not want to do co-sleeping in the same bed is safety. We have a double bed. We have a comforter and blankets even multiple pillows too. For a newborn or infant as small as they are to sleep with us is just not safe in my honest opinion. Especially if you are over tired and fall into a deep sleep. What is preventing a parent to accidentally rolling over on to their little bundle and having some thing unthinkable happen. I am sure if you google the stories you will in fact see tragic accidents of such happening to regular, average every day people. I cannot even imagine this happening in my lifetime either. I just know for me that it makes me feel extremely uncomfortable thinking about having my babies sleeping in the same bed because I cannot imagine actually getting good sleep because the back of my mind would be filled with worry that some thing may happen.

Then you have the other question, as baby grows your bed does not. The longer they sleep with you the harder it may be when or if you decide to do sleep training and having them sleep on their own. This could make things very challenging and difficult. With our first son we started to separate the rooms at about 6 months. Even sleep training at that age was a bit challenging. But I cannot imagine doing this for a year or two and than trying to get your little one to sleep by themselves. I never slept in my parents bed growing up and neither did my partner. We both had our own space and we knew we wanted to do that with ours when we had them also too.

After all this being said, Of course there was a few nights where our 1st son was so little that we were adjusting to being new parents and he had fallen asleep on my chest and I had fallen asleep. This was rare but it did happen. I am a light sleeper and even still I wouldn’t trust myself to regularly have him sleep in our bed. Getting the hang of little to no sleep and feeding takes a toll and when you have him so cuddly on top of you it just seemed to make sense if he had fallen asleep and we were all so tired. It was also never for more than an hour or so either too.

If you are on the fence about whether or not you want to co-sleep, look into all the pros and cons of it. I know for myself and my partner we already knew we did not want to start co-sleeping. We never really talked or discussed this because immediately we were on the same page as one another when it came to this decision. Never were we separated on the issue. And as I had mentioned above, safety was a huge factor for us when we were talking about why we both agreed a bassinet was the safer alternative. This is something that if you and your partner are not on the same page, you kind of have to be, unless you both sleep in separate beds that is. It also may be a good idea to talk about this long before the baby is born in case you do butt heads on this issue and need to really talk about being on the same page.

Are you on team co-sleeping?
Do you believe in the baby having their own space to sleep in?

Let me know what was some deciding factors you had for this decision below in the comments!