Hot Topic Tuesday-Parenting with Confidence and Sleeping Alone

Parenting with confidence can be tough these days with advice flying in from every which direction and most of them too busy contradicting each other to offer anything I find “sound”. So when it comes to raising my identical twin girls I’ve let my instincts do the guiding for the most part, but in no area so much as our family sleeping arrangements.

To be quite frank, before jumping into the blogosphere I didn’t know the difference between co-sleeping, bedsharing, and all that other stuff. What I did know was what I learned from my own experiences growing up.

As a child my father was out of the home 30 days at a time leaving my mother and me alone. Looking back I would suppose that bedsharing was as much for her comfort as it was for mine, but I was the one having to deal with the excruciatingly difficult separation issues when dad came home and I faced an empty bed.

I vividly recall the stress I felt lying in bed alone when daddy was home. I remember the embarrassment I felt when I refused sleepovers at friends’ homes because I was too embarrassed to admit that I was afraid to sleep in my own bed. And probably most terrible of all, I still shiver at the horrific nightmares I had when I laid in bed alone and fell asleep completely terrified.

Before you get any wrong ideas, my mom was, and still is, one the best mothers this world has ever seen. She had no idea that bedsharing would cause me all this undue stress, and I’ve never shared it with her for fear of hurting her feelings or causing her guilt.

However, when I finally got a handle on my feelings and a grip on my fear, I promised myself that I would never, under any circumstances risk putting my children through the torture of bedsharing. Don’t get me wrong, lying in bed next to my mom was a feeling of pure bliss and there are days that I still long to snuggle up beside her, but the terror of breaking that bond is not something I would wish on even my worst enemy.

DH knew where I stood on the sleeping situation and was happy to oblige since 4 people won’t comfortably fit in a queen size bed anyway so before I checked into the hospital we had our family sleeping arrangements set up and lined out.

We placed a pack-n-play in our room directly beside our bed so that we could easily monitor our girls, have easy access to them for night feedings, but also so that the bedsharing habit would not form.

For the first 12 weeks they slept snuggly here and it worked like a charm. After that we moved them to their own room and their own separate cribs.

We’ve had no issues to speak of to date and they are 32 months young.
Despite all the hype of the hippie style attachment parenting craze I do not feel guilty for teaching my girls to sleep in their own space. We are happy with our choices and they work for us.

Check out some other mommies' opinions on Motherhood Looms and the Parenting Patch!