Newborn

The moment the doctor hands you your new baby, everything changes. All those ideas formed throughout pregnancy of how life will be with the new baby, how you will feel, everything just flies out the door. The world, and how you look at it, changes completely. It's a difficult moment to explain, everything completely changes.

Then you go home. The nights are long, the screams are loud, and nothing you read to "prepare" yourself seems relevant. "What does she want?!" "Why won't she sleep??" "What can I do to help her?" Just some of the questions running through the new parents head. There's a simple solution that no one told you about. Though not an instant fix, I would not have survived had I not figured it out. Did it cure colic? No. But it did let us BOTH get some sleep regardless.

Step 1: Take a deep breath! That's the most important thing. Do NOT get overwhelmed, your baby will know. Do everything you can to stay calm, even if it means setting the baby down and walking away for a minute. Yes, it's stressful to hear your baby cry. But think about how much worse it will be if your both feeding off each others stress.

Step 2: LISTEN to your baby. She's telling you what she wants, what she needs. I know, there are hundreds of articles and papers about decoding your baby's cry. They're helpful, for sure. But nothing got better as long as I was trying to force things. Once I heard what she was telling me, sleep happened! The new mothers out there know how fantastic that is.

My baby would not sleep in her bassinet. Not at all.The second she left the security of my arms she was awake. No matter how slow I transitioned her, no matter how long I let her sleep, she woke up instantly. I tried getting her almost asleep and putting her down to slip into sleep without needing to be moved. She would sleep for five minutes max and wake up screaming. I thought I would never sleep again. Then I fell asleep nursing her. We slept for 6 hours!

I hated the idea of co-sleeping. Before I thought it was crazy, why risk your baby's life like that? Then I thought about it anthropologically. I seriously doubt that anywhere in the world at any point in our history, barring the United States in modern times, that mothers slept separate from their babies. How inconvenient for everyone. Mom has to wake up and walk to get the baby, go somewhere else to nurse until sleep falls again, then get the baby back in bed without waking her up. Baby also has to wake completely up, her senses are all stimulated, and it takes longer to go back to sleep. Not to mention that all this wakes dad up once or twice too. Dr. Sears explains in detail what happens when mother and infant co-sleep. The mother can sense when the child is hungry and instinctually pulls her close to nurse. Both mother and child stay in a sleeplike state through the feeding, giving everyone the rest they need. There is also a connection between them that cannot be duplicated. My baby, for example, has security issues. I blame it on my stress level during pregnancy. She reaches out to touch my face or arm numerous times throughout the night.If she can't find me, she gets anxious. Studies also suggest the closeness of mother and infant reduce the risk of SIDS. Somehow the breathing pattern of mom regulates baby's breathing. The carbon dioxide released by the mother stimulates the infant to continue breathing. It's also been suggested that the infant's breath regulates the mother's breathing to not dispel too much carbon dioxide. Pretty impressive stuff.

So, what are the risks really? Obviously rolling over on your baby and suffocating them is a huge risk. I don't know how a mother sleeps so deep she doesn't notice. Every time my baby moved I woke up. I also used the Halo SIDS monitor, which beeps if the baby stops breathing. Another risk is the baby suffocating in blankets, pillows, or a soft mattress. Eliminate this problem by sleeping on the floor. Is it ideal? No. But if you must co-sleep and you don't have a co-sleeper bassinet, you want to reduce the risk as much as possible. Finally you risk baby falling off the bed. This isn't a risk if you're sleeping on the floor or with a co-sleeper.

I fought it for a while. I didn't want to co-sleep. I tried for weeks to get her into that bassinet overnight. She would have none of it. Some would say I gave up. I didn't, I just recognized that she wasn't feeling secure. That's something infants need, security. Without it, they can't function. Definitely can't sleep. Once you hear what your baby is telling you and find a solution that works for you both, sleep will return. The nights get easier and the days get happier. The key is figuring out what it is your baby is trying to tell you.