Staying close to the adult's body helps the baby remain at a more stable body temperature. Physical contact, in close cosleeping, helps babies to "breathe more regularly, use energy more efficiently, grow faster, and experience less stress," says McKenna.
Studies have shown that extended co-sleeping can improve long-term emotional and mental health. Self-esteem, anxiety, happiness, and behaviour problems can all potentially be positively affected by choosing to practice extended co-sleeping.
Studies show co-sleeping can help increase the duration of breastfeeding, as moms who co-sleep can more easily breastfeed at night, and are more likely to continue long term. With other people in the bed, there is a chance babies can be injured by parents that move or roll over in their sleep.
A pediatrician said co-sleeping should not happen before 12 months and should stop at prepuberty. Co-sleeping can disrupt sleep for both children and parents.
Other concerns with co-sleeping involve the delayed development of infant independence and sleep issues. For example, an infant who falls asleep with its parents in the same bed has been observed to have more sleep problems associated with shorter and more fragmented sleep.
Co-sleeping enhances an emotional attachment between parent and child. Co-sleeping makes nighttime breastfeeding more convenient. Co-sleeping makes it easier to soothe an infant back to sleep in the middle of the night. Studies suggest the mother's sleep becomes more in synch with her infant's sleep.
Breastfeeding mothers and babies sharing sleep is a biologically normal behaviour, while formula feeding and separate sleep are departures from the norm. It is these behaviours that need to be shown to be effective and safe, not the other way round.
After 12 months, there is no proven risk of harm. There is no evidence that bed-sharing produces children who are more spoiled or dependent. Proven harm to parents. Several studies have shown that more than half of the children who sleep with their parents resist going to bed and awaken several times during the night.
It increases the risk of SIDS and suffocation
Parents or objects (like pillows or blankets) may unknowingly roll onto the baby at night, leading to injury, suffocation, or death. The AAP says co-sleeping is especially dangerous if the baby is younger than 4 months, was born prematurely, or had a low birth weight.
Although some parents see benefits to co-sleeping with their child, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) does not recommend it. It's much safer for your infant or toddler to sleep alone in their own bed.
Bed-sharing means sleeping in the same bed as your baby, or sharing the same sleeping surface. Co-sleeping means sleeping in close proximity to your baby, sometimes in the same bed and sometimes nearby in the same room (room-sharing).
For example, co-sleeping during the school-aged years has been associated with problems initiating sleep, less nighttime sleep, more daytime sleepiness, more bedtime resistance, increased nighttime awakenings, and greater levels of sleep anxiety (Blader et al.
Countries such as Sweden, Egypt, and Japan value a child-rearing model of interdependence and hold beliefs that co-sleeping is developmentally beneficial to children.
more common in the U.S. than most people believe. Cosleeping is practiced in a variety of ways around the world. In Latin America, the Philippines, and Vietnam, some parents sleep with their baby in a hammock next to the bed.
Early childhood co-sleeping is associated with increased risk in multiple preadolescent behavioral problems, including anxiety, depression, withdrawal, attention, and affective problems, even after controlling for individual differences in early childhood behavioral problems.
If you've found that your baby sleeps better in your bed, there are several reasons for that. Here are the most common: Your baby feels safer and more secure, making it easier to fall asleep. Your baby recognizes your face, voice, and touch more easily.
But another, more recent, said the opposite: co-sleeping, the researchers found, is linked to anxiety. Researchers at the University of Houston found that higher numbers of anxious kids co-sleep than non-anxious kids.
Co-sleeping- a way to give children security
Others claim that co- sleeping can make your child more secure- with good sleep as a result. It is not unusual that children in different ages sleep uneasy and they can sleep more calmly by sleeping nearby their parents the whole night, even when they are a little older.
We found that the average age that a child stops sleeping in their parents' bed on a regular basis is over 7 years old, and that many parents lie about the situation to friends and families. Overall, some 87% of our 2740 respondents said that their child had slept in the parental bed at least once.
A survey of over 3,400 new parents, carried out by The Lullaby Trust, has shown that 9 in 10 co-sleep with their baby.
A vast amount of scientific evidence points to the role of co-sleeping in the evolution of infant sleep regulation, as co-sleeping is part of an ancient behavioral complex (including breastfeeding) representing the biopsychosocial microenvironment in which human infants co-evolved with their mothers through millions of ...
Increased happiness & energy
When you sleep with the person you love every night, your body releases dopamine, which makes you feel pleasure (when released in large quantities), and serotonin, which is known as the "happy chemical." So, sharing a bed literally makes you a happier person.
If you're loving every minute of co-sleeping (or if you've been forcing yourself to sleep separately), you can relax. Despite the myths and false information, co-sleeping will not make your baby clingy.