Throughout history our infants need to be close through the night has been fulfilled through bed sharing with parents, in fact it is a practice that outside of Western culture continues in many parts of the world today. But bed sharing has been demonised in the West, touted as unsafe at costs. We are educated antenatally with fear and scare mongering that we are putting our children in imminent danger if we choose to ever bedshare. But is this truly the case, and how if we choose to bedshare can we do so safely?

Throughout history our infants need to be close through the night has been fulfilled through bed sharing with parents, in fact it is a practice that outside of Western culture continues in many parts of the world today. But bed sharing has been demonised in the West, touted as unsafe at costs. We are educated antenatally with fear and scare mongering that we are putting our children in imminent danger if we choose to ever bedshare. But is this truly the case, and how if we choose to bedshare can we do so safely?

There you are loving on your new little babe, cruising through those intense but wholesome newborn days, in that blissful bubble of cuddles and life when those wholesome vibes are suddenly interrupted with someone dropping the following…

“Enjoy it while you can, cos the four month regression is closing in on you!!”

From that moment forward you believe you are counting down the days to armageddon, because as the name suggests everything you and baby have been cruising along doing thus far, mostly sleep related, according to all sources is about to go to sh*t.

While now in the 21st century we are getting a lot better at having the discussions and understanding that the household chores and day to day tasks of raising children and running a household are no longer just the domain of women, the aspect that is so often ignored in these discussions though is mental load. 

We often think that because we share the tasks, we are sharing the load. The task is not to be confused with the planning, thought and mental processing involved to ensure the task is completed, and historically and today throughout the world more often than not this mental labour still falls on the shoulders of women. 

Transitioning to having more than one child at bedtime can be a daunting task for any second time mama. Society may put pressure on parents to have the first baby independent, self-soothing, and sleep sorted before the second arrives. But it doesn’t have to be this way! Let’s explore with some creativity and flexibility how supporting more than 1 child can look.

The sleep suggestions come at us thick and fast thanks to the black hole of google, the power of algorithms and the so called sleep experts marketing to our every fear. 

When our child doesn’t follow the prescription we jump immediately into self blame, feeling like a failure, and as though our worth as a parent has walked out the door and shut that door behind itself. It doesn’t have to be this way.

In a society whose mental health care system is overburdened and overflowing, finding the right help and support for our mental health while raising babies with such intense needs can be somewhat elusive. What often happens within healthcare and online communities is that the focus gets shifted from the mother and her feelings, to one of adjusting the baby to help relieve the mother’s depression/anxiety. It is as though the infant is the root cause of all these deep feelings and experiences in every single mother or father. No consideration is given to the parents and their inner world until first we try to change the infants sleep through training of some sort or another. In some instances this can be the thing they need, but for others it can push them further down the spiral.

We’ve all been there wondering if we are doing our babies a disservice by feeding them to sleep. Questioning whether we are damaging them because they only sleep in 1–2-hour increments at night. You’ve probably pondered if 20-minute naps are harming your baby or if they are actually ok. Most of us at some point have compared our baby to our friend's or neighbour's babe, who is sleeping solidly from 11-5 am every night, and fretted that ours is not even close to matching this feat. We’ve all at one time or another wondered what the heck normal looks like when it comes to baby and infant sleep, surely I’m not alone in this, right?

There are babies that sleep through the night, there are babies that wake every 1-2 hours, there are babies that do both at different stages of their lives, and there is everything in between. Infant sleep can be so multifactorial that it can be hard for any parent to know what is normal and what isn’t. 

When it comes to our infants, sleep might be the biggest area in which we have handed over our parenting power to experts and institutions. In the west, it is becoming the norm to relinquish the reins of our infants' nighttime care to so-called sleep experts - but at what cost to us and our infants?

It's 2am and your darling baby is up and ready to party. Do you try to get them back to sleep or do you surrender, hop up and watch some Kardashians?

Is it something you need to actively work on, or do you let it ride out?

The midnight parties are what we call Split Nights in the biz. And they are relatively common in babies and young toddlers, but if they are happening a lot - say more than a few nights a week over 2-3 weeks - then it's often something that we can work on to fix.

Camping as a family has allowed us to go on regular holidays, reset with nature and each other and build resilience.

We aren't the flushest of families, financially speaking. And before we started camping, we would rarely take holidays - because it costs a lot to stay in a hotel and eat out all of the time.

Last year we just started to have a go. When we first went, we had my in-laws old giant 10 person tent that took the boys hours, and many beers to put up. We had things that didn't work and nothing we really needed. We didn't know how to shop for food. Our kids were cold. We were uncomfortable when we slept. But we had to start somewhere, right?!

One morning, when my son was 8 months old, he woke up in a lot of pain. Within about 15 minutes he was white as a ghost, clammy, and alternating between screaming and writhing in pain then going floppy. We had no idea what was going on but we drove him to the hospital. We were honestly scared for his life along the way. The going floppy felt like he was losing consciousness, but we knew later that he was just kind of passing out from the pain.

When we got to the hospital my husband dropped us off at ED whilst he found a park. I took him in and the nurse looked at me and said "is he teething?"

I was 40 weeks and one day. Yesterday we had ‘special persons day’ at Knoxie’s kindy where we went in for morning tea and played with him for a bit. Today, he put his beloved Sylvester cuddly into my baby wrap and proudly wore it around the house, patting his bum as he went. Last night, he gave his baby doll a bath.

I feel like he probably knew. The weeks leading up to Zali’s birth were really, really hard. His behaviour was showing allllll sorts of underlying feelings. He was scared. He didn’t quite know how things were going to look. He knew that I might need to go to the hospital at some point. 

"Each sequential phase should add greater complexity and depth to a child's capacity to attach to others. Each phase should deliver a new form of pursuing someone and being able to hold them close. The more ways a child can keep their attachments close, the greater the fuel for their growth into separate, adaptive, and social beings. Although children are born with the capacity for relationship, their attachment instincts need to be activated by consistent and predictable care. It is never too late for attachment potential to be realised, even if it didn't unfold in the first six years of life."

A baby sleep book isn't necessarily good, just because it's popular.

In fact, some of the most popular baby sleep books are downright unhelpful and dangerous.

We need to be critical of what we see and read - but how do you know a baby sleep book needs to go in the bin?

It’s okay to feel sick of playing with your children all the time.

Parenting in itself is such an intensive exercise, and sometimes the incessant ‘will you play with me?’ can feel so heavy. It’s totally normal for your child to want to be close to you; that’s how attachment often works. Children are bonafide proximity-seekers, and sometimes just next to you won’t be close enough- they will want to be on you. Take heart in knowing it’s nothing you have done, it’s just nature doing what it does.