Does your baby sleep better without you?

I hate that I can't find the original article, but I read online today that studies have shown that kids who co-sleep with parents have a higher chance of having troubled sleep. This is because they depend on their parents to sleep, compared to kids who learn to sleep on their own. Kids who fell asleep with parents and then woke up in the middle of the night without mommy get discombobulated and so cry for mommy to put them back to sleep.

Something like that. I really wish I had the original article but when I turned to Google for help, all I found was this: Study finds that children who share bed with parents likely suffer disrupted sleep.

Okay, I don't want this to be a debate because I believe in whatever works for the family. I co-sleep safely with my kids and we love it. It works for us. I have friends who put their babies in a crib in the same bedroom. That works for them. I have friends whose kids slept in their own bed in their own room from birth. That works for them.

I do believe in science, however, and if research has pointed out that the baby sleeps better on his own then I ought to pay attention. (And then there's this: Bad news for dads: Babies "should share mother's bed until age three" because it's good for their hearts. Ano ba talaga?!)

In our case, my kids—all three of them—always slept through the night by the time they were 2 to 3 months old. I attributed that to our co-sleeping arrangement and my breastfeeding them. But as they got older, past the age of 7 months, I noticed that they wake up after 4 or 5 hours. They stay awake for maybe 10-15 minutes before I nurse them back to sleep.

Vito and Iñigo don't do that anymore now that they're 4 and almost-3 respectively, but, like his brothers before him, 9-month-old Piero wakes up intermittently now. It's not because of his diaper (he uses Pampers, which has magic gel that absorbs lots of pee, and can last up to 12 hours! He really does stay dry and comfy all night! But I'll talk about the wonderful features of Pampers in another post.). I think it's really because of what the article pointed out: he fell asleep because of me, I left the bed to work or be with Vince, and he felt my absence and woke up.

That's one major reason I didn't include in a previous blog post on interrupted sleep (Top 5 reasons why babies wake up at night: startle reflex, hunger, illness, light, discomfort). Well, at least I know that Piero doesn't have his sleep interrupted by hunger, illness or discomfort. I breastfeed him at night. He's healthy. And I use Pampers, the best diaper ever! Still, he does wake up because I'm not beside him. I don't know what to do! What do you do to make sure your babies sleep through the night, mommies?

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