Tiny Footsteps

I hear tiny footsteps scurrying through our room in the middle of the night. My daughter climbs into bed and settles herself into her spot next to me, and then quickly drifts back to sleep. She has been doing this since she was about 16 months old. Since we gave up on the crib and got her a floor bed. Since we finally started getting some sleep again. This is her safe place. We are her comfort. And it feels right.

In the western world of sleep training and self soothing, cosleeping is looked down upon by many. But in almost every other part of the world, cosleeping is the natural choice for parents and has been for thousands of years. From the beginning of time, humans were meant to be together. Families slept in close proximity to each other and didn’t have today’s luxury of a multiple room house. Babies slept next to their mother, and in fact their survival depended on it. Babies needed their mother at night for food, protection, and temperature regulation. A breastfed baby naturally wakes more often throughout the night and is thought to be a built-in protective mechanism against SIDS. Breastmilk is very easily digested by babies which causes more frequent wakings to keep their belly full. When a baby nurses, oxytocin, commonly referred to as the “bonding hormone” is released. The close connection and comfort that breastfeeding provides, along with the calming effects of suckling and the melatonin in breastmilk, help put baby back to sleep quickly. All of these factors are part of God’s intended design for babies and mothers – a way to bond, to create calm, to induce sleep. But today’s sleep training culture tells us to go against our natural instincts and how we were created. To not feed our baby to sleep. To place our baby alone in a crib, in their own room far away from us. To let them cry themselves to sleep. And all of this is supposedly good for the baby. And good for the mother.

When I had my daughter all of these modern recommendations felt so wrong. She was crying out for me, but I was supposed to leave her alone so she could learn how to “self soothe”. Self soothing is actually an impossible and unnatural task for infants. Children rely on co-regulation from their parents up until the age of 7. The only way my daughter would fall back asleep was by breastfeeding, but I wasn’t supposed to do that because it would create “bad habits”. It was a very stressful time in my life. I felt like a failed mother because I had a baby who didn’t sleep through the night. Why wasn’t she sleeping? What was I doing wrong? It took me a while to finally figure out the answer – my daughter was waking up frequently because she was a baby and it was natural. It was as simple as that. She wasn’t sleeping through the night because God made her that way. She was designed to sleep near me. She was crying because she needed me. She wasn’t manipulating me, she wasn’t a bad baby, and I wasn’t a bad mother. She just needed me. We eventually found what worked for us, a way to help us all get more sleep. Turns out all she wanted was to sleep next to me. I researched the Safe Sleep Seven and decided that I felt comfortable enough to co-sleep since my daughter was older.

So every night, usually a few hours after my daughter goes to sleep in her bed in her room, she wakes up and makes her way over to ours. And do you know what? I don’t mind it at all. I love being close to my daughter and I love being able to comfort her. These years are very short. Those tiny feet won’t stay tiny for long. Now is the only time in her life I’ll be able to be her sole source of comfort and calm. And sometimes another realization hits me – this is the simplest my daughter will ever be. One day my presence won’t automatically fix everything anymore. One day I won’t be the most important person in her life. One day she will have real, deep struggles and I won’t know how to make it all better. So while I still can, I’ll welcome her tiny footsteps at night.