Tip 68: Bedding next to your baby

The fourth "B" is bedding closely to your baby, a term called co-sleeping. And that's very much tied to giving your baby the motherly and fatherly closeness she can feel in her young age. With standard of living improving since this half a century, most houses are bigger and the family unit also became smaller. One or two generations ago, the family unit used to be very huge with siblings, grandparents, nephews and nieces all staying under a small roof and sharing the same mattress. As parents reduce their children from a dozen to 2, they can afford to have bigger house and to allocate a room to each child. While encouraging independence is good, it may not be wise to start at the age of babies as they need to be reassured of parental closeness during the night. Also, its convenient for mummy to breastfeed the baby whenever the baby feels hungry or thirsty.

Surely, its less feasible for parents who sleep in a double bed as there is no room for baby and parents. Usually a queen or king size bed is the minimum. If the bed is small, it feels awkward and also dangerous if the baby would fall from the bed. And I personally believe that husband and wife intimacy is more important than attachment parenting as the foundation of love starts from the parents. Though, if effort is put to improvise living conditions, something can be arranged. In Japan, its quite common for Japanese to sleep on futons (soft mattress) laid on the floor with lots of layers of padding. So, me and Tomomi decided to just do that and have a large futon area in our room. That way, there's lots of space as well as no need to worry if the baby would fall from bed. Usually after breastfeeding, Haruka would sleep and she would be placed at her side of the futon and sleep and not disturb mummy and daddy. She is quite a good sleeper probably due to us training her when she was just a few days old, of the need to sleep at night and to wake when the sun rises. Knowing that mummy and daddy loves her, makes her a cheerful and thoughtful baby.