There are plenty of articles out there explaining the benefits of co-sleeping with your child. You will also find articles highlighting the risks.

This is not one of those articles.

I am going to tell you the main reason why I co-sleep. I read all the data and research and countless articles. I read about different cultures and their sleeping habits and motherhood. I read everything you could possibly imagine on the subject. I talked to friends about it.

I had decided to not co-sleep. Instead we would have the baby in his crib in the bedroom. My husband was concerned about it because he is a big guy and he didn’t want to accidentally hurt the little bug bear. He is also a pillow hoarder and needs to cuddle lots of things while he sleeps and he didn’t want to smother the boy as that was one of the risks.

You want to know what? None of this mattered in the end. I now sleep with my child in my bed with me.

It boiled down to one thing:

I am lazy.

I breast feed. Because of this, my son gets hungry in the middle of the night. Instead of waking up, getting up and being unable to fall back to sleep, I just brought him into the bed with me and we lay there and he eats.

I do it because I have to work in the morning and because I can’t nap. I have never been able to nap. My husband is a master napper, but I can’t do it. Once I am up, I am up. So, splitting my sleep wasn’t happening. I am pretty sure I was close to a psychotic break by the time I gave up and just slept with him in the bed.

Now, I just roll over and give him boob. Or he squirms his way next to me and gets the boob himself. I may not get a deep sleep while he is doing this, but I am sleeping and I don’t wake up. My husband even joins us in the bed and has decided it is not so bad.

So yes, I co-sleep because I can sleep through my son eating. We both get what we need. This is why I would recommend it to people- so you can get some extra sleep.

Laziness in action.

Next, the adventure will be getting him out of the bed.