At least she doesn't snore

Before I became a mother, I would scoff at people who slept with their kids. I mean, come on, who the hell encourages her children to climb into her bed night after night? Don't these people want to sleep uninterrupted? Don't they want to have sex? And for the love of God, kids are notorious for kicking you in the head and stealing the covers. I have to deal with Josh's snoring, isn't that enough?

And then I pushed Jack out of my nether regions and my view changed immediately. My baby in my bed? Does it mean I won't have to get up and walk all the way down the hall to feed him five times a night? I can just roll over and stick a boob in his face while I drift back to sleep? Because I am nothing if not supremely lazy, I signed on the dotted line.

To be clear, I did co-sleep. But I set some limits: he started the night in his own crib and I would bring him in to our bed when he woke up the first time, we didn't pull the covers up anywhere near his body, the pillows were kept far from his little head, we left the bedside lamp on so we could see him and he slept between us so he wouldn't be in danger of falling out.

When I weaned him at a year old, I weaned him from our bed as well. He never protested, mostly because I think he associated sleeping in our bed with nursing and since he didn't have 24-hour access to the boobs, he didn't need our extremely comfortable queen-sized bed and 800-thread-count sheets either.

We followed the same protocol with Emmie, although she seemed to prefer her own space and spent more of the night in her crib than Jack did. Maeve started off preferring to sleep ON me in our bed for the first few nights she was home, but now spends most of the night in her swing and occasionally transitions to the bed if she falls asleep nursing during the early morning.

Again, I don't co-sleep because I think it promotes bonding or I like the idea of the family bed, I do it because it is easy and I am all about doing whatever is easiest and provides the most amount of sleep for the most amount of people in this family.

I bring this up because recently, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has focused on infant co-sleeping deaths. I grew up in Milwaukee and still read the hometown paper of record online every day. I noticed in the last few months that they were reporting more of these cases. Just in the last two weeks, three infants died while co-sleeping in Milwaukee County.

In one of those cases, the mother said she took precautions for co-sleeping and kept the pillows and blankets away from her five-month-old baby, put the baby to sleep on her back, slept lightly and gave the baby plenty of room. Despite her precautions, her daughter still died in her bed.

In many of the cases I read about, one or both parents had been drinking. Some, excessively, to the point they did not realize they rolled over onto their baby and suffocated it.

Now, I am not judging anyone. But clearly, drinking and sleeping with your baby is a terrible recipe for disaster. But what about people who don't drink and grab some shuteye with baby? It's practiced in many cultures around the world. It seems so natural -- the baby spends nine months attached to you, taking him away from your body and forcing him to sleep alone doesn't make much sense biologically.

So I want to know: did you (or do you currently) co-sleep? If so, why? If not, why not? Not trying to incite a riot here, but I genuinely want to open a discussion on this and see what people think. Let's keep it non-confrontational though. Everyone's opinion is valid, just please express it politely. So no "zomg u r killing yer preshus baby you stoopid whore" comments, please.