Downsides to Bed sharing from someone who does it

We never intended to co-sleep. We have a pack n play set up next to our bed. X has his own brand new crib waiting for him in his room. My husband never liked the idea of a family bed, claiming it was weird and that our child would end up sitting alone at lunch because of it. I didn’t have a problem with it. I grew up in a very poor family. We slept 7 people in a two room shack. Bed sharing was a necessity and a reality of my life for many years. My siblings and I are very close. I talk to my former bedmate sister almost every day, as we have done for the majority of our lives.

During the first few weeks of having our newborn home, I would fall asleep on our fold down bed while nursing or my husband would fall asleep in his recliner while trying to get the baby back to sleep in the night. Realizing this posed more of a safety risk, I started just pulling him next to me in the bed to nurse and then moving him back to his own bed, or not. The “or not” happened more and more often. One night, X just wouldn’t go down to sleep, so he came to bed with us at the beginning of the night. He has stayed there. I even nurse him down for naps in my bed.  Personally, I love it. I love his sweet little face against my chest and the ease of nursing without waking up. I love his quiet little sighs and even his loud little toots.

However, there are a few downsides. My wrists ache every morning. My husband is a physical therapist and he says it’s tendonitis from bending my wrist around the baby while I sleep. It’s a protective thing, but I can feel the tendon snapping back and forth as I turn my wrist. My neck also aches from constantly looking down at him while my body curls around his. My sleep is fragmented, I wake when I change positions, as my mind is always so aware of that tiny baby sleeping beside me. It gets very warm, as well, especially when X is on the outside and I am in the middle. I leave about 18 inches between him and the side and that puts me quite close to my sleeping furball of a husband. I move him from inside to outside throughout the night so he can switch nursing breasts.

Occasionally, I wake up in a pool of my own sour milk as my breasts sense the baby’s closeness. There really isn’t a way to describe how repulsive this smell can be. I have had to lay a blanket over the wet spot to be able to sleep! I did start putting a puppy pad under the sheet to keep it off my mattress protector (which is a pain to remove, wash, and replace when your infant naps in that bed). As a side note, I bought those puppy pads when I was pregnant and slept on them and sat on them in my car in case my water broke. They were quite inexpensive.

Another downside is the lack of intimacy. While I am all for finding new places to fornicate, at the end of a long day of nursing, diapers, and spit up, it would be nice to just enjoy some relaxation in my own bed. At a normal volume. My desire hasn’t returned to its pre-pregnancy level. I guess that’s mother nature helping with controlling our reproduction.  Still, the times I do want to play, bed sharing makes it less viable.

And so, if I could do it again… I would still bed share. Though I would get him to sleep on his own first and then if he joined us in our bed during the night, that would be just fine.

An End to Bed sharing