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I have always wondered about parents who co-sleep with their child .... Regardless of whether or you are an APer..... Because not everybody who co-sleeps is an APer .... But how or at what point does it affect your marriage? Cause truth be told there is no way I could have sex with my husband with my kid in the bed. So if your chiłd sleeps with you every night what happens? There is no right or wrong answer and I'm sure everyone has different ways of handling it ...I'm just curious
I did for a short period with my son. He was impossible to get to sleep in his own crib. I think the first time that I got him to successfully cio he was 9 or 10 months. I honestly co-slept with him because by 3 am with no sleep, it was my sanity. But I was not an APer. I was a first time parent, I was exhausted and it was the only way I ended up getting any sleep with him.
Now my daughter, on the other hand, I never co-slept with. She slept for six hours a night from the day we came back from the hospital. I never brought her into our bed because I didn't want to develop that need in her.
I always started my kids in their own beds and then brought them in with us when they woke up, whenever that was. As they gradually slept longer and longer stretches, the slept more and more in their own beds and by 18 months or 2 years, they no longer slept with us. I think families whose kids are always in their beds just get more inventive in terms of finding places to have alone time as paretns...LOL
The bed ain't the only place for sex lol! Same as others, I had to cosleep to save my sanity. I need 9-10 hours of solid, good sleep to be able to function and that wasn't going to happen if I had to get out of bed, nurse the baby and then go back to bed. At least with co sleeping, I could just whip my boob out, get baby latched and fall asleep nursing :)
I don't consider myself AP but I do see merit in the foundations of the approach. I did co-sleep with my kids but it was just as others posted, they were brought into my bed once they woke up and I would just continue to breastfeed while I slept. This also helped with my milk supply as they would continually drink/suckle (I had low milk supply). I found co-sleeping very effective to train my kids to nap in a big stretches and I trained my first daughter to take a good afternoon nap by napping with her (it was awesome for me too).
I sleep trained my first daughter at 9 mos and the 2nd at 6/7 mos.
Sex- not an issue as the kids never were there before the early morning hours. My kids go to bed at 7:30, there is lot's of time before that