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To practice Ferberization or share a family bed is a question staring parents in the face as ritualistically as their baby’s cries. Do we let our children cry themselves to sleep as we wait in agony outside their door? Or do we bring them into a family bed?
Pediatricians seem to be split down the middle when it comes to giving advice about this issue. Many believe sharing a bed with baby will instill bad sleeping habits for both you and the baby, while others think of it as something as natural as breast-feeding. Either way, it seems the decision is ultimately left up to the parents.
“Isolated sleeping is not natural for the human infant,” says Dr. Melvin J. Kooner, a psychiatrist and anthropologist at Emory University, in an article for the Boston Globe. “In all known human societies other than our own Western industrialized culture, the mother and infant sleep in the same bed,” he notes. “The same is known for our closest non-human relatives: monkeys and chimps.”
“Don’t sleep with your baby or put the baby down to sleep in an adult bed,” Ann Brown, the Federal Consumer Product Safety Commission’s chairwoman counseled parents. This was followed by a study presentation proclaiming sixty-four children under the age of two dies each year as a result of sharing adult beds.
The debate lives on. Something known as historically natural in the child-rearing world is being banished under numerous case studies. What about the rest of the world? These family bed-sharing practices go on without a second thought. So, why the hang-ups now?
Specialists in pediatrics have argued that strict bedtime routines will impact your child’s behavioral development tremendously. They state by allowing your child into your bed, you are letting structure and limitations, something these children need, fall by the wayside. They further declare that by not allowing your child to develop nighttime independence, that you are inhibiting them.
The flip side to this is other specialists concede it is a waste of time and energy to let your child scream and cry every night. They believe this time and energy could better be used for more positive developmental practices. They are also strong in the belief that rather than developing independence, they are feeling abandoned.
So, what do you do?
Follow your judgment. If you cannot stand letting your child “cry it out,” don’t. If you feel it is no problem, continue. Your pediatrician will advise you as best they can, but what really matters is your instinct and feelings surrounding the matter.
Should you choose to incorporate the family bed into your lifestyle, make it as safe as possible:
- Remove any heavy bedding.
- Remove extra pillows, shams and extra blankets.
- Do not sleep with your child if medication or another substance alters your mind.
- Keep your child in their bassinet at your bedside to achieve closeness until weight restrictions for it are met.
- Take one side of their crib off, lower the mattress until it is flush with your bed, push them together as tight as possible, remove the wheels from both structures, secure the legs together with rope, and place mattress tape along the crack between the mattresses for an added measure of safety.
- Do not sleep with your child if you have a waterbed.
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