Are you sleeping?

Tanya at the Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog has an excellent post about a book by Dr. James McKenna's titled, Sleeping with Your Baby. It's a book chockful of useful facts about the benefits of co-sleeping. I've written many times about my ignorance of co-sleeping and my reluctance to embrace it before I had my son. However, once I learned the benefits of co-sleeping, I never looked back.

I can't express how incredibly important co-sleeping has been for me. In short, it's saved my sanity and these past few weeks as I've dealt with some major post-partum blues have only served to verify that for me. I'm through the tunnel now, but I can't even imagine how much worse it could have been had I been sleep deprived. The first week with Anjali was the usual tough one with a newborn - every feeding required a diaper change, she was still too small for me to nurse while lying down and I was still recovering the birth. However, since the 2nd week, I haven't really lost that much sleep unless we're suffering from colds or I eat Greek food or ice cream (which disturbs her tummy just as much as it did Arun's. Sigh.)

As rabid of a co-sleeping advocate I am, it's not that I think everyone should absolutely, positively sleep with their children. No. Quite the opposite - not everyone is cut out for it, even babies. For example, my younger sister could not, would not, sleep with my dad and step-mom. She simply slept best on her own despite their efforts to get her to sleep with them. However, I wish more folks would at least consider co-sleeping and at a minimum, become more knowledgeable. I am tired of the tragic stories being trafficked that portray co-sleeping as dangerous. I am tired of folks pressing their lips firmly together when I "confess" my co-sleeping sins.

I will definitely be reading this book. It's almost as if I see at my personal mission to help end the myths and ignorance that surround co-sleeping.