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Strollerderby
Is hands-on parenting leading to a drought in the bedroom?
Just last fall, Erica Jong irritated attachment parents everywhere with her assertion that investing a lot of energy in child-rearing equals imprisonment for mothers. Now she’s at it again, only this time she blames breastfeeding and co-sleeping for putting “sexual passion on life support.”
I no longer embrace the “attachment parent” label, but I fit the profile: my five children have been breastfed, sling-ed, and slept next to me until we gave them each the boot to their own beds around the age of two. Yet you will notice I have five children, so obviously there was time, space, and interest enough in there for nookie, too.
I can’t really get too hot under the collar about what Erica Jong thinks about modern motherhood. I just think she’s wrong. Sure, having a new baby in the house equals less sex all around. Is that really anything new? And if it is, maybe it’s a big plus that women no longer feel pressured to “perform” during a time when hormones and fatigue make the whole experience less pleasurable for them. I’d say it’s pretty normal – even biologically designed – for a new mom to feel less-than-crazy about sex. It doesn’t mean that women are using breastfeeding and babywearing as some sort of penis-deflector. Continue reading »
Co-sleeping is awesome. There’s nothing like the delight of drifting off to sleep with your baby nestled safe and cozy in your arms.
If you’re passing out drunk, though, next to you is the last place your baby should be. As one British mom recently learned, drunken co-sleeping can be fatal. The risk of smothering or crushing the baby skyrockets when any adult in the bed is intoxicated.
In general, co-sleeping is a safe choice, and a brilliant move for breastfeeding parents. But if you’re not sober, you’re not a safe sleeping partner for your baby.
We’re not talking about a beer with dinner, here. The British mother who smothered her child had drunk an entire bottle of wine on an empty stomach before passing out with her little girl in her arms. When her husband came home, he found her unconscious with the infant dead at her side.
That baby should not be on a pillow!
Jennifer Combs has made it her mission to end co-sleeping in Broward County, FL. Combs is a nurse who studies ways to prevent infant deaths, and she says out of 45 baby deaths in 2009, six “were sleep-related but had been called something else.” The Sun Sentinel (via the LA Times) notes that, “Added to nine already identified, that made 15 babies dead from unsafe sleep – or one in three. The standard estimate has been one in five.”
Combs is researching infant deaths in Broward County dating back to 2006 “to get firmer numbers to report at an infant mortality conference in September.” She sees a pattern of unreported sleep deaths and wants to be sure adults put babies to bed on their backs in their own cribs, emptying the crib of all soft items. Dr. Khalil Wardak, a Broward County medical examiner who handles infant deaths, says parents know the risks of co-sleeping, but they ignore them. “Older family members slept with their parents and their babies, and they came out OK, so they think it’s OK,” he says. “But it’s not.” Continue reading »
Who's sleeping with you, kid?
Kourtney Kardashian sleeps with her 11-month-old son, Mason. According to The Stir, she was forced to defend the practice while making a guest appearance on The View.
Of course, Kardashian isn’t the only one sleeping with her baby. When my kids were little, 18, 19 months, we had a sitter who knew my kids often ended up in our bed, and she didn’t like it. She’d try not to say anything, but she’d purse her lips, sigh and tsk, tsk whenever the subject of sleep came up. She was 23 and carefree and I’d look at her going all “Oh no you don’t” on me and giggle. Two years later she was a single mom and guess where the baby slept? “I just can’t help it!” She told me. I heard her.
Now my kids are no longer toddlers, but they still sometimes sleep in my bed. And I know I’m not the only one.
My colleague Danielle recently wrote about the practice of co-sleeping with babies. She gives sound advice on how to do it safely. With older kids, the practice of sharing a bed is more widespread than most parents like to admit. Tara Parker Pope wrote about this in The New York Times a few years back. In the article she explains three types of co-sleeping outlined by Kathleen Dyer in an article in Infant and Child Development. They are as follows: (1) Intentional co-sleepers. These are people who plan on breastfeeding for a long period of time and think that co-sleeping will make it easier. (2) Reactive co-sleepers, or people who share a bed because their kids won’t go to sleep any other way or, because of space and money issues, they don’t have a choice. (3) Circumstantial co-sleepers, or “parents who sleep with their children occasionally because of circumstances like sharing a bed on a family vacation, during a thunderstorm or because the child is sick.”
Do you share your bed?
Contrary to popular belief, the term co-sleeping actually describes something most parents do for the first year of life — share their bedroom with their little one before moving him or her into a nursery or separate bedroom.
Co-sleeping does not necessarily mean sharing your bed with your child, although that is how it is often understood, and how Jezebel described it earlier in a post on the “explosive” issue. As evidence of how divisive an issue bed sharing— and/or co-sleeping — is among moms, Jezebel’s Sadie quoted a statement blogger Kirby Desmarais made to the New York Post‘s article on the subject:
Co-sleeping in the U.S. more dangerous?
Co-sleeping with an older child is one thing. But sharing a bed with an infant who can’t wiggle out from under dad’s arm or pull herself free of bedsheets and pillows is quite another. And according to South Australian coroner Mark Johns, parents who do it are risking their children’s lives.
After investigating the deaths of five babies who died while sleeping alongside and adult, Johns says the practice of co-sleeping with infants needs to stop. Continue reading »
The marital bed is an icon in American society, but it’s becoming more myth than reality. The New York Times reports that one in four married couples sleep separately.
Their reasons are myriad: snoring, different schedules, disruptions caused by kids or pets. Ultimately, people are prizing getting a good night’s sleep over sleeping with their spouse.
The numbers are growing fast: builders expect 60% of custom-built homes to include dual master bedrooms by 2015.
Is this is a problem, or a solution?
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