On more than one occasion I have talked about colecho and I have told you that my children have always slept with us, in our bed, in a small cot or in a little bed next to ours, completely glued together, so that they could stay there or gradually move on to ours (or sleep with half a body in one or the other) .
It has been 9 years of sharing a bed with my three children and these days we are saying goodbye to it, when the little one is three years old, because we have already passed the bed to the room where his brothers, 9 and 6 years old, sleep. Since at home we close a stage that people consider important, I will tell you what are my conclusions after these 9 years of school.
You start because you have no other left
If it is not that you have read about it and you have it clear from the beginning, most of the parents we collect start doing it because we had no other: pure and hard survival. Now there is a lot of information about it and I think it is more popular, but 9 years ago, when my son was born, you had to go directly to the books or forums that talked about it because there were hardly any publications (or on the internet) that They would talk about the colecho (or if there were any, they were not very popular and the parents did not reach them).
What there were magazines and people who told you that you had to prepare the baby's room and put his crib there, where he would always sleep peacefully. So much that you thought you were going to put it there, I was going to smile at you while you wrapped it up and you would hardly see it until the next morning, when you would have to go see if it was still there, as sleepy as it was going to be.
For the first months, you put a bassinet in the room with wheels, where the baby could sleep and you could go from one place to another in the house while resting.
Come on, they make you prepare the house as if you were going to put a groundhog and when your baby arrives it shows you, with a big slap in the face that makes you feel gilip ..., that you have spent the money and have spent hours riding a crib that you will never use.
You start with the bassinet. The baby cries, she nurses him and then leaves him again in the bassinet. After a while he cries again, the operation is repeated. The third one tells you to stay awake, that he is going to breastfeed because he is tired, that when he has finished, if he falls asleep. And there you endure, you don't know how until it ends and you pass it. And after a while I start over.
One night passes, another and another, and the time in which someone must be awake to pass the baby to the bassinet becomes an impossible. You are able to fall asleep, so it doesn't make sense anymore. One morning you wake up and realize that the baby is there, between the two, because nobody has passed it to the bassinet. And you feel the worst father in the world, deserving of a dozen lashes on the back, because you just put your son's life at risk. But you are surprised, at the same time, because it seems that you have woken up less.
And so the nights are repeated with several failures at the time of passing and you end up finding information about sleeping with the baby in bed that says that there are certain risks that must be minimized, but that It is normal, which in many cultures sleeps with babies and that has been for years, was most common.
And finally the day comes when you say "I no longer spend it to the bassinet" and from that moment you start to sleep all together, and all a little better.
It doesn't seem good to people
That is not that you go around telling it, that people do not care and you are not better off sleeping with your baby. But if it coincides that they are talking about how their babies sleep and ask you, then you answer. Nor should we lie, hey. Well, "sleep with us in bed ..." in fact, they even ask you at the pediatrician. And there are those who prefer to lie there so that they do not lecture him and who tells the truth at the risk of the downfall.
No, that "children have to sleep in their bed", as if it were an absolute truth, as if it were the eleventh commandment of God, that "it is bad for them because parents can crush it", a risk that exists, but that is practically zero if you follow the advice that I have already mentioned, that "it is bad because it shares your sweat", as if I spent the night rubbing with the child (that you do not do it, but that if you did something so absurd nothing would happen either for hitting your sweat ...), that "it is bad because you breathe all together", what man, if the room is a zulo, you close the window, the door and you have plants, well if you run out of oxygen, but if it is not In this case, there are many moments when you will be together and nothing is going to happen ... even in the car you are in a smaller space and you breathe all at once without taking turns to capture oxygen, which "becomes spoiled and terribly dependent", thing that is not true, because you are only doing at night the same as you do for the day, which is to attend to your child, that "you are neglecting the relationship" by having the child in the middle, and then you realize that you do it precisely because you care about your couple relationship, or so how are you going to have relationships, when you still have an entire floor for both of you.
Come on, you learn to listen to criticism and you learn to respond. Sometimes with science: "Well, the studies say that ...", that many people do, but not because they don't care about science. Sometimes with lies: "I do it because the pediatrician has recommended it to me" (although sometimes it is true, there are some pediatricians who recommend it ... few, but there are). Sometimes with bad milk: "Have I asked you your opinion? I don't tell you to judge me." Sometimes with the truth ahead: "Well, you don't know what you're missing, now I can't even imagine that I slept away from me, I couldn't bear to be separated from him." Sometimes simply: "Look, everyone who does what they want in their home. We do it that way and we are doing great." Sometimes with a devastating counter: "Oh but, is it that you don't sleep with the baby? If that's what is recommended now!" And sometimes returning the trial, a look of disgust and a good "go, shut up, you look like my father talking ... well you're not outdated or anything."
In the end they stop bothering
The good thing is that in the end they get used. They assume that none of their absurd opinions are going to make you change your mind and when they see that the child is 3 or 4 years old and not only remains in bed, but you have no intention of taking it out, they keep quiet. Because many believe that you do it only because of what they wake up ... but of course, if at 3 years of age they already sleep alone, why are they still in bed? Then you tell them that it is no longer a matter of sleeping better or worse, but it is a matter of wanting or not wanting, and there they are left with nothing to say. If you sleep with your children because you want to do it that way, because you prefer it, because you also want to share that time together, because even if you take a kick or a header, you almost smile when a foot is placed on your leg or a little arm on your chest, when does the end come?
Well, that does not come, they do not imagine it, so stop bothering yourself with that ... stop wearing out, "you will find it", they think, and they consider you impossible.
You can school with two children
At first you don't know if you could do it. You don't know how to do it. But you just let the baby arrive and decide. We test with the bassinet, as with the first, and if it turns out that he sleeps well? But no, of course, babies usually prefer to be accompanied than alone, so we immediately change the bassinet for the colecho cradle. Good invention, although with expiration date. It is small and after 7 months of the baby, sometimes before, sometimes later, the baby is able to crawl, get to your bed, go down to the feet, and there it is unprotected. If it spins, it falls to the ground.
So, either you accompany it with a railing that goes to the side of the cradle, to the feet, or you do what we did, remove it and put a bed. One of those as a child, which are shorter and narrower than usual, attached to ours. At the same height (because the colecho cot, the crib, the bed or whatever you are going to attach must be exactly the same height as the large mattress, at least as long as the child is small).
In the end each family finds how to do it, because there are many solutions, but it is perfectly plausible to sleep with two children in the same room.
I can't recommend schooling with three children
I don't say it can't be done, but I personally cannot recommend it because in our case it was a mess. We no longer knew how to put ourselves, because we were mom, the 6-year-old boy, the 3-year-old boy and dad in the 1.50 m bed. and the baby in the bed. The first days we threw away, despite the lack of space. But then something began to happen that we did not expect: the baby woke up the eldest. The 3-year-old was still in that age that, once asleep, a tornado may come that you are still sleeping, but the older one already had a lighter sleep.
He woke him up, we told him to sleep and he did it again, but those several awakenings did not let him rest well and that was how we suggested sleeping alone in his room. It seemed like a good idea and that day he went to his room not to return.
It's great when you read professionals say it's positive
You don't need it, you don't need anyone to tell you it's good because you do it the same, but it's great to hear professionals like Margot Sunderland say that children should share their parents' bed for at least five years or Nils Bergman To say that we should at least sleep with them until 3 years. It's great to know that children eat more and are breastfed for longer. And it's great to know that every day there are more pediatricians and more nurses who do not hesitate to suggest to the mothers, when they explain that they spend bad nights, that they can sleep with the baby, that it is not bad, which is normal in many countries and That is even recommended.
Actually, it doesn't seem important to us
And all this to say, in the end, that sleeping with babies doesn't seem important to me. That is to say, it is not something we have done for everything we have said: so that they develop better, so that they eat more, so that they are smarter or have better emotional health or ... we have done so because in their day we saw that we slept best and we liked having the baby close. We felt safer, more capable, closer to him because we could respond to his demands before and that we liked so much that we repeated with the following. It happened that we felt so good that then, when by age they might have slept alone, we didn't even want to try: what if we tried and really went to sleep in their beds and didn't want to go back? We would have felt alone, both together in our bed and our son alone in his, in another room, so far away. So close yet so far.
So we have done it even when we have been told that it was the worst, even when studies have appeared that said it was something terrible and when others have appeared that said it was the best. Nothing has changed our opinion, because the reasons for sleeping with our children were ours and have not responded to any recommendation or prohibition of anyone. We have always done it because we wanted.
Now I explain it as an anecdote. We have not done anything special to stop collecting. Neither a farewell party, nor a celebration, nor have we discussed it too much or anything like that. We said so, we told Guim, it seemed good and we have done it. Everything decided in a few minutes, as something everyday.
A couple of weeks ago we put his bed, that little bed that has accompanied us in the room for years, next to the bunk of the elderly. And there the three sleep. The colecho is not finished yet, because he actually sleeps with us and after a while I take him to his bed. And there he sleeps all night, although some nights he comes to our bed.
If I wake up, I take him back to his because I am afraid that he will fall when I get up and stop making him a human barrier (and so that he does not wake up when the alarm sounds). If not, then when I wake up I take it there. And hey I would lie if I said I don't enjoy when it's there by my side. I still like him sleeping with us and I still like having those little moments by his side. But life goes on, school soon begins, it is a super autonomous child who enjoys a lot with his brothers and who sleeps perfectly with them and when we suggested the possibility of sleeping with them he said excitedly that "Yes, with tetes!".
So yesterday, thinking about it, I decided to tell you my conclusions after 9 years of sleeping with children, in case they serve anyone.
As a last conclusion, or curiosity, explain that my children have never cried at night because their parents wanted to teach them to sleep alone or because we passed them to their room when they were not very clear. Logical: they left when they were ready for it. Logical: people think that these situations must be forced and taught to be alone when they are not able to do so. Logical. So logical that I continue to hallucinate when I hear professionals suggest to mothers that the best thing for their children is to be left alone in their rooms, at the risk of crying one or several nights ... no need, really, because babies are dependent by nature, day and night. If we were able to understand something so simple, children would save so many tears!
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