Moms! Need advice asap! Can't decide.
Daycare vs. Staycare at 18 months?
1. Bright Horizons, 20 min drive each way, fresh meals cooked by in-house chef, 1:4 ratio, 12 class size, great outdoor facility, all same age kids, $3400/month.
2. Staycare with a preschool teacher neighbor. 1:6 ratio + part time helper, meals, 10 min walk each way, beautiful classroom and decent outdoor space + our housing's big community park & playplace. Kids: 20 months, 2.5, 3, 3, 4 in age. $1500/month.
Mentor
I wasn’t comfortable with it. An ex boyfriend of mine was a paramedic and went on too many calls where the moms killed their babies mistakenly.
We also never wanted to create the habit of him sleeping with us. We get lots of cuddles without co sleeping.
I would rather take a beating than cosleep. My bed is for my husband and I to talk, sleep, and have sex. I did Babywise with my child and he slept through 7p to 7a at 8-10 weeks. He’s always loved his sleep and is in the 90th for height and weight, so I didn’t starve him. I also know he’s a unicorn so I didn’t have any more children.
Subject Expert
If by cosleep you mean not having the energy to take a toddler back to their bed at 3am then yes, we all cosleep 😂
THIS!
Co-sleeping is very common in Asian countries.
I did it with both of my kids. My 2 year old still sleeps with me. My 5 year old sleeps all night long in her own bed in her own room now and we never had to sleep train or force her.
To clarify, I never coslept with my kids when they were newborns, only after 3 or 4 months when they started to roll over.
I love co-sleeping with my babies, when they were really tiny we had a bedside cot, because I was always worried I’ll roll over. When they’re a little less fragile, I let them sleep in… tiny cuddles are the best! My kids typically transition at 5 years and still sneak in for snuggles sometimes.
Yes my newborn would cry in her bassinet all night and she could only sleep when next to me. So i got better sleep as a result therefore i didn’t mean to co-sleep but it kinda happened. I have no regrets. Feels like we almost bonded better too but maybe thats just my imagination.
This! I understand the concerns but no one was sleeping so we did what worked.
Mentor
Co-sleeping was amazing. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. We only stopped once baby was able to roll over out of fear of her falling off the bed. But I have such lovely memories of co-sleeping with her.
I jokingly say that my husband and I discovered we were doing attachment parenting after the fact. There is much written about co-sleeping (and attachment parenting in fact) so many safe practices and techniques are described incl. newborn co-sleepers, etc. I am so glad we did it the way we did it. (Pretty sure every parent says that irrespective of their approach but for what is worth I would do it again).
My 2 1/2 year old sleeps in our bed. He didn’t sleep in our bed when he was a baby. I think it is more common in the toddler/preschool years than the baby period.
This — did not in infancy, then around 2, we had a scary flu episode where I let him sleep in bed so I could monitor his breathing and fever. Covid happen a week later so I wasn’t very strict immediately after, on getting him back in bed in the middle of the night. The nail in the coffin was taking crib sides off….now, @ 4yo, we don’t even attempt to start him in his room. He goes down faster and actually sleeps through the night in our room. We joke after when he’ll start sleeping in his room again. I assume it won’t last forever, but the reality is that it’s the path of least resistance that makes it what works for everyone right now.
I did with my kids. A lot of the cosleeping studies and info a while ago made judgements that it was unsafe based on mothers who also practiced other unsafe cofactors like smoking, drugs, drinking alcohol, sleeping on a chair or other unsafe surface with too many blankets etc. and those things weren’t isolated from the cosleeping to study. There is some safe cosleeping guidance that can be practiced (easily found via Google search). And it is done in many cultures as a practical matter. I know some feel very strongly about it but I think it’s a reality that should be surrounded with good information rather than judgement and secrecy.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/05/21/601289695/is-sleeping-with-your-baby-as-dangerous-as-doctors-say
I coslept with the first one. We took all the blankets off the bed, neither of us is large, no drinking or medication. I was comfortable with the safety and we all slept better. Second kid I had in a bassinet that attached to the bed, so even lower-risk. Same thing -- much easier to do nighttime feeding that way, had an easy time transitioning to the crib and doing sleep training when it was time.
Obviously different things work for different people. But especially if you're nursing and exhausted and falling asleep like that, it is much safer to acknowledge this and create the conditions to do it well. Much safer to fall asleep with the baby on your blanket-less bed than on a couch. That was why we got started -- we were accidentally cosleeping anyway.
Subject Expert
I’m not a bedsharer but I think you’re hitting on something critical - if people are going to do it out of sheer exhaustion they should be aware of anything they can do to reduce risk like removing covers and pillows, etc. The abstinence-only education isn’t entirely effective here imo.
Subject Expert
I am the lightest sleeper ever and the times that we do let our toddler sleep with us (traveling or sick, usually) it’s miserable. I love the before bed and early morning snuggles but cannot cope with being woken up every 5 minutes due to toddler sleep movements.
For an infant I’d never cosleep because it’s not safe and I don’t care to sacrifice my comfort to implement safer practices to bedshare. Newborns go in the Snoo right by the bed.
Mine sleep in a dock a tot or boppie in the middle until 4-5 months when I sleep train.
I'm with you, OP. I understand how it can happen out of desperation but I was adamant we are not doing it. In fact, our baby slept in her room in her crib from day 1.
I didn't co-sleep with my oldest because I was paranoid, plus he was a decent sleeper. My middle one wouldn't sleep in the bassinet or crib, no matter how hard I tried. The ONLY way he would sleep was laying on top of me. I was too exhausted to be paranoid, so we co-slept. My youngest was also a good sleeper, and slept in her bassinet and crib.
My youngest is 7 now, and my SO has been away for 3 weeks on business. She's been in the bed in his spot the entire time. So, there is that.
I didn’t plan to do it, but my LO hated his bassinet and refused to sleep in it. We coslept until he was 3 months old, because it meant both of us were going to get more sleep (and it made night feeds a breeze). He has slept exclusively in his crib since then.
I have a 10 month old and we’ve been cosleepibg since she was 4 months. There is a lot of research and recommendations set by WHO and UNICEF on how to safely do so, I just read a paper by the Alaska Division of Public Health stating babies can safely cosleep if they follow certain guidelines. I’m not originally from the US and nearly everyone back home cosleeps. Both my husband and I don’t drink, smoke, take drugs, etc. The only thing I’ve had to give up is my pillow. I breastfeed and I wake up well rested because when she wants milk she now knows how to lift my shirt up and latch. I’ll most likely cosleep with all my babies.
I pretty much followed everything the experts recommend. No cosleeping, keep them in the room for a year. Blah blah. I couldn't wait to get her in her nursery. Once that happened life went back to normal and she was able to nap for hours uninterrupted. I did have the snoo though and I felt that really helped her get to sleep from day one.
Becoming more and more common in Western Civ but has been practiced for centuries safely in other parts of the world.
Many EBF find the only way they sleep and meet their babies nutritional demands are through cosleeping. When EBF it's so difficult to share the night labor with the other parent, so some moms find it saves their sanity.