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The Family Bed

by Lauren Feder, M.D.

Do you have any advice regarding children sleeping with their parents? Our 1 year old daughter sleeps better in my husband's and my bed, and so do I.

I'm very much in favor of co-sleeping, as long as everyone is content. Although I find most babies sleep better close to mom, there still are some that prefer to sleep solitary. Both of my children have slept in my bedroom for the first 4 years or so. It has worked well in our family. In addition, as a nursing mother I found it easier to breastfeed. Then everyone could go back to sleep.

I remember shopping around for cribs when I was 8 months pregnant with my first child. At around the same time I was introduced to the book, The Family Bed by Tine Thevenin. Thevenin reminds us that families have always slept together until the time that separate bedrooms were introduced in the past 200 years. The information in her book was very meaningful to me. Needless to say, I never bought the crib!

For further information on the subject of the family bed, co-sleeping and attachment parenting I highly recommend the article, Rethinking 'Healthy' Infant Sleep, by James J. McKenna, Ph.D. and the books Nighttime Parenting by William Sears, M.D. and Sweet Dreams by Paul Fleiss, M.D.

Book of the Month February 2008

Holistic Moms Network

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