And the claws come out…

Case in point: a new study apparently showing an increase in sleep related accidental suffocation in infants. OMG co-sleeping with your baby will kill your baby! And of course the claws come out on both sides, with accusations flying, and name-calling from both sides.

Um, no. Not necessarily, not if you do it right.

There are risks to co-sleeping, to be sure, but those risks can be minimized, and really, there are always risks in life. Babies die in cribs too, or have people forgotten?

I thought, before I got pregnant with Kyle, that being a mother was a special club. Once I got pregnant, and started reading up on things, I began to realize that mothers are quicker than anybody else to tear another mother down. Yes, I sleep with my kid in my bed. I have since he was four days old, and he’s still alive, and kicking (a lot), and he is perfectly fine. I plan on co-sleeping with this second one too, though there will have to be adjustments, such as getting rid of my heavy blanket, and excess pillows, and putting the bed up against the wall, hopefully. To me, the benefits of co-sleeping outweigh the risks. If that’s different for another mom, that’s fine, whatever floats her boat.

But, really, I guess it is a wonder to me how mothers, who are theoretically supposed to be so supportive to one another, can be so mean sometimes.

Science changes, opinions change, parenting advice from “officials” change. Some of what Kyle’s pediatrician tells me 100% contradicts what my mother has told me to do. So, I go with my gut. I mean, I’m alive, so my mother must’ve done something right when I was a kid. But at the same time, it’s my turn now, and I can only do what I feel is right, and not what other people think I SHOULD do.

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