Poll Results: Breastfed Infants Sleeping in Cribs or Co-Sleeping
June 27, 2008 by Angela White, J.D., breastfeeding counselor
Filed under breastfeeding
No poll results have surprised me more than these. I understand that the pool of readers who actually answer the polls here (only a very small fraction of people who visit the blog — I hope more of you vote in the latest poll to help me name my baby!) might be quite skewed, but I still was shocked to find that nearly 2/3 of voters co-sleep with their breastfed infants under age 12 months. With all the bad press and debate about the safety of co-sleeping, I didn’t realize how many families find that co-sleeping works for them!
I didn’t answer the poll because my daughter slept in the bed with us and in a portable bassinet next to the bed. It just depended on the night. She still sleeps in our bed some nights.
She’s a very social child and feels the need to be close to us, and it provides us a chance to bond when we don’t get much time together during the week. I’ve noticed that she sleeps in our bed less on the weekends when we get to spend plenty of time with her, and more during the week when the schedule sucks for all of us.
Oh, she’s two and half now.
I didn’t answer the poll, but we co-sleep as well. We have a AR cosleeper where DS starts the night, but after he wakes up for his midnight-ish feeding, he sleeps next to me.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve done a lot of reading on cosleeping and safe bed-sharing, and I recognize that the “bad press” is conflating several issues. It’s as if they’re saying driving is hazardous and kills people, so therefore no one should drive. We all know that safe driving is possible, and it would be ridiculous to suggest that no one drives because some people seem incapable of doing it safely, or need some education in order to do it safely.
I can’t say this surprised me at all. In just the limited circle of breasfeeders that I know, we all co-sleep for sanity.
oh i always want my baby to be beside me.