Resting Easy about Babies and Sleep

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A few months before my first child was born, I thought two nurses had given me the ticket to a good nights' sleep after baby's arrival. I'd read their book (complete with a DVD demonstrating how to swaddle); it advocated letting your baby cry for two nights so that he or she would learn to sleep through the night by the third night. This technique--commonly known as cry it out or CIO--seemed to me a bit harsh but necessary, like vaccines, so I considered it good advice.

Then I became a parent.

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Co-sleeping and the Family Bed: Why I'll Miss It

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Today I'm flying to Salt Lake City for the Altitude Summit summer conference--a meet-up for bloggers and designers. I didn't expect to attend because of the cost, but a corporate sponsor gave me a ticket after one of my posts for Every Mom Counts.* I'm so incredibly grateful, and I can't wait to meet Gabrielle Blair of Design Mom and to hear speakers like Martha Stewart and Joy Cho. But as excited as I am to go, I expect I will miss sleeping with my family the most.

That sounds a bit odd, I know, because we Americans (and okay, the French too) are not a family bedsharing culture. Unlike most of the world, we generally give our children a separate bedroom starting from early infancy. While preparing for motherhood, I didn't have any reason to think my children would be raised any differently. My husband and I bought a crib and figured our little one would use it at some point, if not right away.

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