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Comment by j79 | Hacker News Reader

Ah, I'll have to share this with my wife! We welcomed our first child in November. Since then, we've been pretty sleep deprived thanks to the nightly feedings and diaper changes. Both of us were remarking this morning how forgetful we had become, even to the point that we couldn't recall how the night had gone.

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Since having a kid myself, I've pretty much settled on the notion that it's an evolutionary trick: since you don't sleep much, you don't remember the hellish times during those early months (years?), so you're willing to have a second – or third, or fourth – kid down the road.

Ha! Funny but makes sense, though I think in this case it is a by product of our young forcing us to “pay attention” to them. The thing I always found more interesting is how babies tend to look more like their fathers than mothers at birth. The evolutionary advantage being to make it more obvious “who’s kid it is”. It is fairly easy to know the mother, but harder to “prove” the father, at least evolutionary speaking.

The young aren’t forcing you to “pay attention” to them, they just want their needs met. One of those needs is to not be eaten by snakes or other predators, so they don’t want to be alone. How people ever came up with the idea that putting a helpless baby in a different room was a good idea or even preferable to just cosleeping is beyond me.

Presumably it's a good idea because there is now no risk of them being eaten by snakes or other predators.

Are we supposed to stop adapting to our environment?

But they dont know that. And the stress they experience as a result is potentially damaging to a developing brain.

If you cosleep you don’t end up sleep deprived at all. The first year of my daughters life was a joy and super easy. The worst part was the three days when we weaned but she was already 2. 99% of our nights were full sleep, my wife commented on how it was amazing that the baby didn’t eat at night, but what was actually happening was my wife would automatically roll over and feed her when she’d fuss a little bit. Western society still clings to these Victorian notions of child rearing that makes everything absurdly difficult.

Co-sleeping, where the child is in the same bed as the parents, is generally considered dangerous.

But I suspect you're biased, we have a baby that slept overnight (mostly) from seven months, but we have friends with a five year old who won't sleep for more than two hours at a time.

Some babies are easy, some are not. Just like they're people, really!

The risks include things like falling out of bed, which we solved by getting rid of the box spring and putting the mattress directly on the floor. That also let our daughter be more independent since she could nap, then get out of bed herself once she started crawling. There is a risk of the mother rolling over on the child, but only if the mother is taking some sort of medication (or drinking alcohol) which is interfering with her sleep. Fathers sleep more deeply than the mother, but we ended up buying two mattresses and setting them side by side. Of course I'm biased, we no longer speak with a couple we were acquaintances with because it was unconscionable to let their child scream and scream all night because of "convenience", I don't know why you'd bring a child into the world to immediately abuse it. Co-sleeping obviates the "necessity" of "sleep training". Just because something is the norm doesn't make it ethical or optimal.

>>>Co-sleeping, where the child is in the same bed as the parents, is generally considered dangerous.

Citation, please?

Yes — done wrong, it has some (very manageable) risks, but if you've gone so far as to choose to bring another human into the world it behooves you to do the modicum of reading to make sure you do it correctly.

And most of these risks (falling on the floor, etc.) are by-products of our modern era, hence were no factor in early human times.

The advantages of co-sleeping are myriad and various and many, if not most, early childhood specialists encourage the practice.

Citations are hard due to online sources being 50/50 "This is great" and "Do this and your child will die".

But you don't have to search too far to find genuine cases of a children being smothered by sleeping parents, even more than one child by the same parent(s) for example:

* http://6abc.com/news/pa-mom-charged-after-baby-dies-while-sl...

I know different advice is given in different countries, and training is updated over time, but we were certainly told "Don't do that" by our Finnish healthcare-people, and I've seen medical literature that correlates SIDS with bed-sharing.

Some discussion is here, although to be fair I could also find 100% opposite advice elsewhere:

https://www.thebump.com/a/myths-and-truths-about-co-sleeping

Yes, what’s that advice someone gave me about parenting? Give me a theory and I’ll find evidence to support it.

This age old advice fails to take into account so many risk factors prevalent today namely medication.

Loving limits, your goal is to raise a responsible INDEPENDENT human being. Children have become train wrecks from overparenting: helpless, incapable and exhibiting bad sportsmanship. Healthy boundaries, help the child to help himself.

MANY? >>>if not most, early childhood specialists encourage the practice.

Citation please?

Obesity is a huge risk factor in cosleeping with infants.

Older children do not need to cosleep, it creates behavioral insomnia, enmeshment and increased anxiety which speaks more to the mental health of a parent than the well being of the child.

Our first was sleeping 5-6 hours after 2 weeks. Everyone told us we were lucky how easy she was.

Our second is almost 3 months old and it turns out everyone was right :) We're ecstatic if she goes for 5-6 hours, which happens only occasionally.

Both children slept in their own room from the start, but we're considering getting a co-sleeping bassinet which attaches to the side of the bed for this one.

We're in Finland so our child did sleep in a famous cardboard box, in the same room as us, for a few weeks. But then in a cot next to us as the box started to get a little beaten up.

Having the child nearby is definitely good!

In German, some use the term Stilldemenz, which literally means "dementia from breast feeding". It's probably related.

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