A pretty good reason to sleep with your kids

I explained nursing, how it brought me into my own as a mother. Now I’ll explain co-sleeping.

With Connor I had the crib, the expensive bedding, 2 mobiles, the works. I had the crib in my room at least. My sweet boy however had a rotten latch, so he nursed every 90 minutes for 45 minutes at a time. All I DID was nurse him! I’d set him in the crib and he would wake up right away. I was having trouble recovering from my c-section, so every time Connor needed me Chris had to get him. So we used the crib for a couple hours, but I didn’t want to wake Chris to put the baby back or get him out again. I managed to struggle into a position to nurse him on my own. When he finished I just slid him onto the mattress and went back to sleep. So began our co-sleeping adventure. It was nice, easy, convenient. But not a major *impact* on us. Just a thing we did. Skye came along and we added her to our bed. It was nice, but again I think it helped us to be closer etc but I don’t think it changed our family in any tangible way.
Then we had Trew. We had sold the crib by then, and knew exactly how he would fit into our family. He had his own ideas and spent his first 5 days in Special Care just to prove he wouldn’t be told what to do. I was able to nurse him though (he was on IV’s initially but they let me nurse), and he did come home with me, though I had to stay the maximum c/section allowance to swing it. He had some breathing issues in the Special Care and was on O2. When we got him home he was often stuffy/wheezy. He snored from day 1. He didn’t grow as well as my other kids. He had pneumonia FOUR times his first year. They tested him for cystic fibrosis, but he was fine.
Meanwhile Chris had surgery to relieve his sleep apnea. I swore Trew had sleep apnea, but nobody would listen. At one of Chris’s ENT appts I scheduled a consult for Trew. I described the snoring/stopping/etc Trew had and the ENT agreed it sounded like apnea. Still, Trew was SO young (1.5) and so LITTLE (still not 20lbs), and *I* was terrified of surgery to fix it. So we did a sleep study. I drove him 45 minutes away to spend the night hooked to wires in a strange bed. I was pregnant with Lochlan. I told the Dr Trew slept with me and he kind of hinted I couldn’t. But the technician was SO sweet and said of COURSE I could. They watch with video cameras and there are a gazillion little wires. He hated the wires. It was hard to get him to sleep only because he wanted to rip off the wires. But finally I laid down and nursed him to sleep.
Fifteen minutes in he had an apnea episode. During the night he had hundreds of apneas. His oxygen levels consistently dipped into the 60’s (in special care at NINETY-SIX they would start freaking out… 60 is BAD news). Sometimes the O2 dropped and his heart rate would freak out too. When I was sort of awake I would WANT to reach over and touch him when he stopped breathing- as I had done every single night of his life. But I didn’t want to mess up their study. But I was pg, exhausted in that bone-deep tired pregnant women know so well. So sometimes I was too damn tired to think first and instinctively I’d pull him closer, tuck him in against me.
The technician in the morning spoke with me. “That was beautiful, that was the most amazing sleep study I’ve ever done” she said, eyes brimming with tears “it was like a ballet” she continued “a dance, a beautiful dance” I could tell she was moved… but all we did was sleep. I was baffled. “Your son has apnea” she told me “its severe, I’m not supposed to say this to you, but the Dr’s report will confirm it all. Your son is in danger. But when his vitals were terrible and I was ready to come in and save him, you would pull him to you and he would stabilize” She was crying now. When ever he was in danger you disrupted the apnea. When he slept against you his rhythms would stabilize, but to an ADULT rhythm, not a pediatric one. You weren’t wired, but I know that if you were we’d find that his breathing and heart had matched yours. I could zoom in and see you synchronized. Thank you so much for letting me see this. Don’t let that little boy out of your bed until his surgery. His life depends on you”

So co-sleeping, yeah, co-sleeping has had an impact. A dramatic impact on my family. Without it, we could have lost Trew.