- Hi there, I'm Dana.
Welcome to this week's video.
Today I wanna talk about bed-sharing
and sleep training.
Are they mutually exclusive?
Now in my opinion, yes they are
and here's my reasons why.
First of all, most of the people that I see
are co-sleeping or bed-sharing, whatever you wanna call it
simply out of necessity.
Meaning that it was the only way
anyone got more than 30 minutes of sleep in the night.
So you hauled her into bed and a year later
that's where you still are.
So most situations like that
where you're just doing it because you had to,
people are looking for options out, right?
I don't want her in my bed anymore
I would like her in her own space
sleeping through the night.
So those are the most common scenarios
of people who are bed sharing and seek out help
through the program and that's good
that you're ready for an option out
because the sleep plan will give you that.
Now some people though
want to continue the bed-sharing relationship
but they just wish that she would sleep more than 20 minutes
all through the night
and they ask if there's a way to teach a baby to sleep well
and in the bed.
And I don't think that there is.
Most cases it's a prop association with the breast.
So baby gets on the breast, that's her journey into sleep,
that's her sleep prop and cue
and everything around it is sleep related and food related
but in the night it's mostly sleep
and so she's up every hour or two looking to nurse.
And so to break that connection, that's what needs to happen
and in order for her to start sleeping well
she needs to break the connection
between the nursing and the sleep
and start figuring out some strategies
for getting to sleep that are independent of the nursing.
And I don't really think that that's easy to do
nor is it really fair to do to the baby
if your breast is right there, right?
It's kinda like here's the cake but you cannot have it
and that will be upsetting to the baby
and it's gonna make training her to sleep well even harder
and I don't wanna see this ever be harder on anyone.
So if you're looking and you're needing this child
to sleep longer stretches through the night
and you wanna keep her in your room,
you're sure that that's something that you need to do,
then put her in a sidecar or a crib in your room
so you can keep an eye on her if you want to
but you really do need to break that
sort of immediate connection between you and the child okay?
Now also too
I don't feel like it's a safe place for a baby to be.
Ultimately the goal is to have an independent sleeper.
So the goal is that one day I will stick you in a location
and you will happily go to sleep.
You'll have a little five or 10-minute chat to your babies
or your teddy and you'll go to sleep
or you'll do a little lap around your crib
and then you'll go to sleep.
You cannot do that with a child on your bed, right?
You cannot leave a child unattended in your bed.
That would not be safe.
And even a drowsy baby,
I don't want you leaving them unattended in your bed either.
So it's not gonna work according to the plan
because there's no real safe way to do it.
So if you wanna hang on to the bed-sharing
then absolutely do.
When you're ready to end that relationship
and teach your baby some sleep skills
that are independent of you and the bed
then the Sleep Sense program is absolutely the path for you.
There's a gentle approach in there
where you'll just kind of gradually move your way
out of the room and break that connection to you gradually
so it's not too upsetting to you or the baby
but it is ultimately what needs to happen at some point.
Now I can tell you just as a cautionary tale
that I have had a lot of parents come to me over the years
with five-year-old, six-year-olds, eight-year-olds
who are still bed sharing with their parents.
And I just wanna touch on it really briefly
because sleep habits are hard to break.
And I can't think of too many other habits that we have
that are harder to break than sleep habits.
We're really protective of our sleep environment.
We don't like a lot of changes or surprises around sleep
so it's very hard for a child at some point in their life
to say, "You know what, I'm gonna be okay without you.
"I'm gonna sleep better in my own bed, goodbye,"
and go off to their own room because it's not the norm,
it's not the habit.
And so it's hard for them at any point
to start sleeping alone, be okay in their own space,
be confident in their own skills.
So there really is not an easy time
to transition out of the bed sharing relationship.
So make sure you have a good hard look at the situation.
Is it working for you?
Are you happy with it?
Are you getting good quality sleep?
Is your partner happy with it?
Has he been sleeping on the couch for the past six months?
If those are the scenarios
and it's not really working for you anymore
then I would encourage you to take some steps
to solve the problem and get everybody sleeping better
and through the night.
Thanks for watching today, sleep well.