Photo courtesy of Gracie Carroll
For nearly my entire pregnancy, I felt like I was constantly obsessing over how my baby would sleep. Should I get her the beautiful Eames-like $1500 crib even though friends reminded me numerous times that a $150 version from IKEA would work just as well" Did she need a high-tech bassinet with motions to soothe her" An overpriced pillow to sleep on" The issue of where she would sleep also loomed over me. Living in a small home in downtown Toronto, we don?t have a spare room to create a nursery for our girl, and we weren’t quite sure how we would fit a crib into our bedroom either.
After weeks and weeks of temptation, my baby product shopping obsession began to wear off and I ultimately made the decision to hold off on buying a crib until the baby really needed one (which could still be months away). Instead, I settled on having a quaint bassinet on a rocking stand (a hand-me-down gifted to us by close friends) next to our bed. As soon-to-be parents, we heard all of the typical warnings about co-sleeping with a newborn baby, but our midwives assured us of the many benefits that bed-sharing can have for both parents and baby. When our baby girl arrived at 1am on a Saturday and we arrived home from the Toronto Birth Centre a few hours later in the early morning, our sleepy-eyed trio headed straight to bed, and there was no question in our minds that our tiny new baby would be sleeping with us?how could we possibly have her ...