Co-Sleeping, Sleep Training + My Story

This is a piece that has been asking to be written for a long time.I have been wrestling with a lot of feelings and judgments about the way I have chosen to approach sleep with my babies. I’ve alluded to my experience and shared snippets of my thoughts but in light of the co-sleeping vs “sleep training” debate going on I felt like it was time for me to come out on this subject. I am laying it all out on the table at the very real risk of being judged harshly and inciting a lot of activation from other mothers on both sides of the debate because I do not fall into one category or the other. And trust me, no one could judge me more harshly than I have already judged myself at times. This is where I’ll begin: what has worked for my family’s sleep lies somewhere in the middle of co-sleeping and sleep training. I will say first that I am a proponent of doing whatever works to get a family’s basic needs for sleep met. So this is not some diatribe about what you “should” or “shouldn’t” do for yours or your baby’s sleep. I am simply sharing my experience and what has worked for our family. I am doing this because there are places I wish I had felt a little more softness and room for nuance in the collective for the incredibly painful spots I’ve been in as I’ve opened to concepts, I thought I never would, to get our family’s sleep needs met. And this is my first tenant I would like to share: sleep is a family wide need and should be considered as such. Every member of the family needs sleep. Mamas need sleep as much as babies need sleep. Papas need sleep as much as mamas. Babies and toddlers need sleep. Everyone needs to sleep to be healthy, grounded and sane. And everyone’s sleep should be valued. When Alma was born I was under the impression that babies would simply sleep when they are tired. I didn’t get all the stress about sleep. I was going to do it like our ancestors and just sleep when my baby slept and with her and it would be all be cozy and wonderful. This actually worked pretty well until about 6 months. At 6 months all of the sudden Alma was waking up 20 times a night to nurse and because nursing was how I got her to sleep I would be waking up and flipping her from side to side all night. long I wasn’t putting her down for intentional naps and I wasn’t asking for help.I found out I was pregnant with Maya at this time. By the time Alma was 8 months old she had stopped napping during the day other than little 20 minute cat naps at the breast and continued to wake multiple times an hour at night. She was beyond over tired. I was bone deep exhausted and the prospect of having another newborn baby in 7 months made me feel like I might die.So we made one of the best decisions of our parenthood journey and hired a sleep coach to work with us on Alma’s sleep.Working with the gentle sleep coach meant we committed fully to a set nap schedule for Alma. This meant every day our top priority was getting Alma to sleep at certain times. My husband and I walked for hours and hours daily just to get Alma to sleep in the carrier or stroller because she would not sleep any other way for months.We also started the process of night weaning and having my husband put her down for bedtime and being the one to comfort her when she woke up in the night. As her naps became more consistent and her system started to relax and she wasn’t so overtired, she started sleeping better during the night too. When Alma was around 12 months she was sleeping on her own in her room on a floor bed for 12 hours a night. We did zero “cry it out” and we never left her by herself while she was awake. We would lay with her until she fell asleep and then leave. We still do this. We sit in the room and sing until she falls asleep. If she does wake up in the night and starts crying, we go over to her room and comfort her until she goes back to sleep. She is 2.5 now. I’ve heard it said that sleep training is for the convenience of the parents, but that is in no way true for us. We did this gentle and committed form of sleep training for our family. When she was only napping for 20 minutes at a time and waking up 20 times a night, that wasn’t good for anyone in our family’s sleep. We committed to this gentle form of sleep training which was actually really creating a very clear rhythm for her days which allowed her nervous system to relax and unwind and let go into sleep. more and more easily. As much as our bodies and development are evolved to function best in a hunter gatherer like society; we do not live in one. We live in a world with constant nervous system stimulation from blue light to traffic to pesticides in our food.Modern mamas and babies nervous systems are no where near as regulated as a mama and baby living off the land, rising and sleeping with the sun, spending most of their days in nature, and being surrounded by helpful tribe and family members. So this is my second tenant, it may be completely evolutionarily appropriate for babies to bed share, but if the mama’s nervous system is severely unregulated by modern life: blue light, stress of a job, taking responsibility for a disproportionate load of the child care duties, pesticide ridden food, nutrient poor food, etc and then you add lack of sleep on top of all that, it’s not going to go well for either mama or baby. Mama’s nervous system is what regulates baby’s nervous system and baby’s nervous system is very sensitive.In the book Hunt, Gather, Parent the author talks about how she hears very little crying in Mayan community she is visiting, even though there are many, many babies around. She talks about how in an Inuit family she spends time with the only time she hears crying at night is when there has been a new baby born and the mom is weaning the toddler.We do not live in hunter gatherer societies and to put pressure on ourselves to feel like we need to live and thrive in the same ways hunter gatherers did isn’t leaving room for where we are actually at. It doesn’t allow us to be fully honest with ourselves. If bed sharing and co-sleeping is working for you and your family’s sleeping needs are met, that is wonderful.I can’t say how much I yearn for and deeply wish this had been the case for our family.When Maya was born my eyes had been open to the importance of naps and sleep routines; so we let her sleep whenever and however for the first 3 months or so and then moved into the 3 naps a day routine. At night she slept in a bassinet next to me or right up against me in bed. This worked well until about that 6 month mark again, when she started waking up more and more frequently at night. Again we got to a point where she was waking up every hour and unlike Alma, she was not easy to nurse back to sleep. She would scream and cry and refuse the nipple and only fall back asleep in motion.When Maya was around 8 months I night weaned her hoping that this would stop some of the constant night wakings and screaming. And also around this time was when my insomnia started flaring up. Any little noise would leave me awake for hours and hours. The screaming in the middle of the night left me raw and wired. And it was just a terrible feedback loop. The more fried I felt the more agitated Maya would get. My husband spent a lot of nights walking aimlessly around with Maya in the carrier in the wee hours of the morning or sitting up in the bed, half asleep rocking her, while I tried to sleep in the guest bedroom.Alma would still wake up at least once each night at this point and had started roaming around the house or just coming over to our room. The days were spent putting the family’s sleep before everything else. Each day was just a moment by moment approach to getting by. The exhaustion for all of us left us feeling exposed and tight. My husband and I worked very little and rested during the day a lot. I had acupuncture, chiropractic, naturopathic medicine, and more appointments and started working on down regulating my nervous system as if it was my job. It was the most important thing to me. We tried bringing Alma back into our room. She would wiggle around the bed and wake up every 2 hours, waking my husband and I and Maya up.We moved Alma back to her room as one wake up a night was much better than multiple wake ups.We started gentle sleep training with Maya where we put her in the pack and play and sit next to her while she fell asleep.The first few nights we did this she would scream and scream and it would feel like it was ripping my heart in two. I would lay next to her and pat her and sing and imagine our hearts connected together by a string. I would cry with her until she fell asleep. And the thing was, she started to stay asleep through the night. She would wake up and cry a little, but go right back to sleep with some pats. This was not in any way shape or form convenient for me, nor was it easy. It might be one of the most painful things I’ve ever done. If I could have slept with her next to me in my bed without being woken up 20 times (or even just being woken up 4 times) I would have. I want to sleep with her.But it most definitely was better for her sleep and for my sleep and for our family’s sleep.And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve made a terrible mistake. Maybe there was/is something else I should have tried. Maybe I haven’t read the right books. What I do know is that my girls are deeply loved and cared for. I do know that I would inconvenience myself to the max if it meant they would be better off. I do know that getting sleep is one of the most important ways for me the regulate my nervous system. I do know that having a mother with a regulated nervous system is what is in service to my entire family. I know that the health of my family is one of the most deeply held values I have. Now; the girls sleep in their own room together. Alma sleeps on the bottom bunk and Maya sleeps in her pack and play next to Alma. Bedtimes are easy and involve very few tears. Most nights they sleep through the night and sometimes my husband has to go into their room and sing one of them back to sleep. My sleep is regulating. I can sleep for 3-4 hours at a time normally and go back to sleep relatively easily after I’ve woken up. And it really is a chicken or egg conundrum: Am I sleeping better because the girls are sleeping better? Or are they sleeping better because I am? I think it’s probably somewhere in the middle. We are connected. And we always will be. And I’ll make mistakes; big ones and small ones. So will they. And I can’t think of any more important lesson I could impart to my girls than modeling how to love and not abandon yourself through the places that feel shakey and unsure. The older I get and the more experiences I have the more I really find there is never one right way. As mothers, we need to give ourselves more grace to find the ways that work for us and our families. To find the ways that allow us to be all the things we desire to be. To not get stuck in ruts and righteous crusades, but instead, to give each other the space and the trust to find our own way. Valuing the mother isn’t about having every mother mother the same way in the future, it’s about trusting our inner mother to lead the way, right now.There are currently 3 Ways to Work with Me:* HOME BODY sessions | one hour with me guiding you into your body as your home + 15 minutes of digestion $222 | Message me to book.* 1:1 Alchemical Journey | 12 months with with guiding you to connect to your most resourced self during big life transitions eg divorce, motherhood, death, etc. | Message me to book a free connection call about this.* Trust the Magic Writing Workshop | A workshop leading you through my medicine writing process to allow digestion of life through writing. Read more here. | 10.1.22, 10-1pm MST | $111 | Reply to this email to sign up. * If you are interested in joining FED for the next round starting in 2023. Just hit reply and let me know and I’ll keep you on a list to be the first to know when applications are open again. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe