Family Bed: When It’s Not Working & What to Do

Marin Mommies presents another great guest article by Marin parent coach, infant/toddler sleep researcher, and family therapist Angelique Millette. She works throughout the Bay Area and across the country supporting families and helping them meet life's challenges. You can learn more about her and her services at www.angeliquemillette.com.

As I started writing this article, I received five phone calls, all from co-sleeping mothers who were beside themselves with fatigue and exhaustion. They were tearful as they told me how utterly and totally exhausted they were, and yet, each told me she felt conflicted about moving her child out of the family bed. This reminded me that a good article about transitioning one’s baby or toddler out of the family bed, must speak to the myriad emotions that both parents and children might feel as they make this change.

How Is It Working for The Whole Family?

One of the first questions I ask families when we begin working together is: “How is it working for the whole family?” How is the sleep method or location of the infant or young child working for each member of the family? New research shows that sleep challenges for infants and young children may be related intrinsically to their ability to adapt to information from their caregivers, specifically their mothers, to help them to learn to settle and fall sleep. When mothers are sleep deprived, depressed or anxious, they may be less able to respond to their infant’s need to sleep and have more difficulty “reading” their infant’s sleep cues. Alternatively, research shows that some babies of sleep deprived, depressed and anxious mothers may develop less organized sleep cycles.

Questions To Consider When Reassessing Family Bed

The following list is a good set of questions when considering moving your baby or young child out of the family bed:

• Are you having a difficult time sleeping, generally?

• Are you having a difficult time falling asleep at night following periods of comforting baby or nighttime feeds?

• Are you feeling anxious or sad as a result of your sleep deprivation?

• Are you feeling unsafe or clumsy as a result of sleep deprivation?

• Is your sleep deprivation making it difficult for you to work or drive?

• Are you feeling resentful or angry towards your baby/child?

• Are you spending less time with your other children as a result of the present sleeping arrangement with your baby or toddler?

Think about your present sleep arrangement, and make a list of what works for you and what doesn’t, and ask your spouse/partner to write their own list. Take a few days to look at the list, and share them, and use them as a guide for creating a “family sleep vision.”

Bonding With Your Baby or Young Child

Common questions parents ask me include: “Will my child lose their bond with me if we don’t sleep in the same bed at night?”, “Will my child grow up to be deprived if I don’t fulfill their attachment needs in the family bed?” and, “Won’t my child feel rejected and abandoned by me if they don’t sleep with me at night?” These are important questions; interestingly there have never been any scientific studies that confirm these hypothetical questions.

I ask parents to think of what other ways they provide nurturing, and comforting to their child. Often parents may not recognize other ways that they are providing and encouraging bonding, closeness and nurturing. For example, the bedtime routine is a great way for families to personalize and create lasting memories for bonding and closeness. Besides reading books at bedtime, babies and toddlers love singing, storytelling, slow dancing and massage. There are a range of possibilities for nurturing bonding and closeness. As you transition a baby or young child out of the family bed consider other possibilities for closeness with your young one.

Why Making Infant and Young Child Sleep Changes May Be Difficult

Making sleep changes may feel uncomfortable for parents for several reasons. First, babies and young children still need their parents at night, often due to developmental changes, teething, illness, as well as starting a new daycare or preschool, moving, the birth of a younger sibling, and a parent going back to work. Because moving a baby or young child out of the family bed means greater separation between parents and child at night, parents may feel uncomfortable about the greater physical distance at night, and not sure how the separation and changes in night comforting might change their relationship with their child. Secondly, because weaning and transitioning one’s child out of the family bed often involve limit setting—for example walking a child back to their own bed at night, comforting a baby in the crib, or, instead of offering the breast to soothe at night, asking the other parent to comfort baby to sleep—parents may not yet feel comfortable or confident about the new limits they are setting at night or the new comforting measures used. Finally, both for parents and children, transitioning out of the family bed marks an ending—of infancy, of breastfeeding—and marks a beginning of the child’s becoming more independent, and more of an individual. For some parents this ending is a welcome relief, for other parents this ending is marked by grief and loss, and for a large group of parents this ending may be bittersweet.

Shifting Sleep Associations

Some babies who gently fall asleep on the breast and are placed to sleep in the crib are able to put themselves back to sleep at normal night wakings. However, a large majority of babies who associate falling asleep with breastfeeding, being held, rocking or bouncing will need these sleep associations at night in order to fall back to sleep at normal night wakings. You will know that this is happening if every time your baby wakes, you need to breastfeed or rock to help your baby fall back to sleep. To help the transition to sleeping alone, parents can use other sleep associations such as a consistent bedtime routine, and transitional object such as a “lovey.” You can ask your spouse or partner to help your baby to sleep at bedtime and at night wakings to help to reduce night wakings related to breastfeeding.

Shifting Sleep Locations

• Build a “space within a space” by creating a special sleep area for your baby or young child in the family sleeping room. You can use drapes, a screen, or pictures your baby likes, to help “build attachment” to the new sleeping area. Some families use a sound machine to prevent parents’ activity from waking their child. Place the crib or toddler bed a few feet away from the parents’ bed, and you can push it a little bit further every few weeks.
• Move the “family sleep” to the nursery by having baby sleep in a crib or toddler bed, or on a mattress or futon on the nursery floor. A mattress next to the crib or toddler bed allows the parent to remain close to their infant or young child while they are becoming attached and secure in their new sleeping area. Parents can split the night so each parent is getting a stretch of sound sleep, while also getting some time to help their baby or toddler to get used to their new sleep space. If you are moving baby to a toddler bed, or mattress on the floor of your child’s room, remember to “baby proof” the room too. After 3-14 nights, parents will want to move out of their child’s room. This minimizes the potential for a new sleep association to develop, the child needing the parent to sleep the whole night in the child’s room.

Additional Sleep Learning Suggestions

• Talking to baby or toddler
  Talk to your young one, even infants, about the sleep changes, let them know that even though, “mama won’t be holding them at night, that mama will still be close by for night time needs.” One mother of a six-month old baby girl told me that she “talked” to her baby even though she was very skeptical, and was surprised that it was the easiest nap putdown that she had ever had with her infant daughter. Babies, even pre-verbal ones, respond to myriad clues in the voice.
• Build attachment and security to new sleeping space
  Help your infant or young child feel secure in their new sleep space by spending time there. You can do this for any child sleeping in a new space. Try to incorporate your child’s bedtime routine and other shared, intimate activities into the new space. You can do this for a period of a week or two before making any further sleep changes, and will help your child to feel connected to you in the new sleep space. Count on a little normal separation anxiety when making sleep changes, and if your infant or child is suddenly unusually clingy, it is possible that a normal developmental milestone is underfoot, and it may be better to wait a week or two to make sleep changes.

Letting a Child Cry

Despite all best efforts, or simply due to sleep deprivation, very often families will choose to use sleep methods that involve a baby or young child crying. Whether the method involves the parents staying right next to the infant or young child anytime they are crying, or the parent leave their crying infant or young child at short intervals, parents who use these methods often see improved sleep within 3-21 nights. You can prepare yourself and your child by using the gradual sleep changes first, talking to your baby and helping your child to get attached to their new sleep space, before starting any crying method. It’s important to note that limits to all successful sleep solutions include illness, teething, developmental milestones, growth spurts, travel and consistency.

Infant and Toddler Temperament and Sleep

New research is showing us that some infants may have much more difficulty with regulating sleep. This can happen for a number of reasons. If a parent has tried consistently to make sleep changes, with little change to their infant or toddler sleep, their young one may need even more parent help, structure and consistency to transition from active play and socializing to sleep time. For these high needs temperaments, it is best to darken the room where the child sleeps, use a sound machine, and incorporate a gentle and consistent pre-nap routine that helps your young one to slow down his body and sleep. Research is showing us that these children need even more of our help to regulate sleep, may be lighter sleepers, typically get the minimum amount of sleep needed, and are much more irritable when they don’t get the sleep that they need.

In making decisions about family sleep choices, parents should recognize that attachment with their child is built in myriad ways.  The child is best served when the whole family is healthy; for families where the family bed is not working well, there are positive alternatives that will care for all the members of the family.

Angelique Millette (PhDc, MFTt, PCD/CD [DONA]) is a parent coach, sleep consultant, infant/toddler sleep and postpartum mood disorder researcher, lactation educator, DONA-certified birth and postpartum doula, and infant-child therapist intern who has worked with families across the Bay Area, the United States and Europe for the past 15 years. Angelique teaches sleep workshops at Day One in San Francisco, Parents Center in Marin, Birthways in Berkeley, professional conferences and parents groups across the country.
Check out www.angeliquemillette.com to find out more.

Angelique is excited to announce the Fall 2009 launch of the Angel Baby Sleep Swaddle™ an innovative, baby swaddle designed to support the natural hand and arm movements of babies!