If you follow along, you know we co-sleep. I’ve done posts on our co-sleeping journey, as well as how to co-sleep safely, but there’s one more area that I know people wonder about (my co-sleeping groups have posts about this all the time):
Doesn’t co-sleeping ruin intimacy? How do you swoodilypoop when you’ve got a baby in your bed??!?
To be honest, having Gwendolyn in our bed hasn’t rocked the bed effected things more than just having a baby in general. Babies, as a rule, are needy, and so you get less sleep. That effects everyone; also mom’s body and hormones have changed…but the baby themselves is less of the issue—at least in our house.
To be completely fair, co-sleeping has been the perfect setup for our child, so she’s always been a great sleeper—until this year. 2019 has brought us the rockiest sleep of our entire parenting to date. There’s the terrible sleep regression that all kids have, and then there’s our reality of having a toddler who just wakes screaming multiple times a night if she can’t find a boob, or if she realized she’s cuddling with dad instead of mom. Very frustrating.
But in general, we’ve found that co-sleeping hasn’t negatively effected our romantic pursuits. Perhaps you’re considering co-sleeping, or just started with a new baby, and are concerned about changes to your sybaritic activities. Here’s some things to keep in mind:
- if you’re not totally lurid, babies are pretty good at staying asleep, once all their needs are met. We used a side-car crib the first few months, so she wasn’t even really in our bed
- if you do disturb your scion, you’ll easily be able to settle them, without them getting frantic, because you’re right there. Pause
- if you’re too bothered at the thought of rubbing butts in the same room as your kid, you can go somewhere else. Most people have a couch, or second bed, or closet, or f l o o r. If you want to make it a priority, you can
- if you’re worried that not having your room to yourself will directly cause your reproductive rituals to be put on the back-burner….just take, like, a grain of creativity and thought. If nothing else, it’s higher stakes: when will the baby need you next (irrelevant to co-sleeping)? Is there some corner of the house you can make a just-you-two space? Imagination is fun
Hopefully that clears some things up for anyone concerned about how their intimate life might change as a result of co-sleeping. It doesn’t really shake things up that much, especially in contrast to how much just having a baby—or even being pregnant—does. Heck, our cats have been more problematic at ruining the mood than our baby ever has. (They are pervs, turns out)
If you co-sleep, have you found that it doesn’t effect adult activities that much? I feel like everyone deserves to have the best sleep they can get—and for us that’s been through co-sleeping—so, please, feel free to share any positive stories! I tried to be thorough, but if you have any further questions, or reservations, let me know.
