If you decide to have your child sleep with you, either for naps or at nighttime, and you’ve found how to make co-sleeping work with your family, it’s important to follow these safety guidelines to protect your baby. People have a lot of opinions and ‘what worked for me’ stories - but do your homework and make safe choices. Yes, I know you get tired, and, yes, I know that nothing bad has happened yet, but accidents do occur, and you want to prevent them from happening as much as possible. It should be your top priority to make sure that your child’s sleeping place is always safe.
Adding a second child to the family changes everything. The postpartum time produces a whirl of emotions that envelops everyone in those first tender months after bringing your second-born into your family. In our instinctive drive to keep newborns from harm, we often become overzealous. Thus, without being aware, we protect the baby, but not her sibling’s feelings, driving a wedge between them from the very beginning. The words and actions we use to shield our infants inadvertently seem defensive, accusatory, and negative to our older children who often do not, or cannot, communicate the hurt. Siblings may perceive that they should be happy at such a time but may be perplexed as to why they also feel sad.
Have you heard of ‘serve-and-return’ interactions and wondered what they are? They are back-and-forth interactions between you and your child - much like a game of tennis or volleyball, where the goal is to keep the ball in the air.
Just as a vitamin or a mineral deficiency can lead to problems later in life, if we want to raise happy, confident children, parents need to focus on fulfilling the basic needs every baby has from birth onward. And babies are not the only ones with needs. Every person longs to experience these seven feelings from the day we are born until the day we leave this world. By identifying the desires you have in common with your baby, you can become a more mindful parent.
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