I sit and hear a little baby crying in the distance of our suburban street....the cry goes on and on. I feel saddened as I listen thinking of the tiny little person calling out to their Mumma for comfort and love.....but the continued crying goes unsupported.
Could this be another family who have embraced the 'controlled crying' or 'cry it out' method of training their tiny baby to sleep through the night?

How is it that this practise is considered 'normal' by some families? 

Natural and nurturing to me is to keep your baby close, to breastfeed on demand and to trust their needs. Yet I am in minority when I speak of co-sleeping and holding my bubba close....this is interesting considering for thousands of years children slept alongside their parents as  a normal  way of life and in a lot of cultures it still is. Parents like us believe that our children deserve our company and loving comfort at night as well as during the day.  
Yet the majority of the Western world has seemed to like the idea of an artifical, mistrusting and controlling approach to parenting.

Artifical as in cage-like cots for their babies in a separate room. Mistrusting of a child's basic needs for love, comfort and touch.
Controlling a child to suit their own needs, for example training a baby to sleep through the night, when it is not natural for them to do so.

How is it that we are the only mammal that forces our tiny young to sleep away from us?  Can you imagine how it feels to be so connected to a Mumma, then all of a sudden isolated and alone?

I followed my own instinctive heart to love, protect and nurture my babies in the most natural way.......sleeping alongside and breastfeeding without getting out of bed. I was also nurtured by the extra sleep I received, which enabled me to be more patient and loving during the day instead of sleep-deprived and grumpy.

Do we really want to lessen the emotional bond between parent and child? Co-sleeping is nurturing and natural, I love seeing my beautiful boys eyes open up in the morning to welcome the new day. To ME co-sleeping is normal, I feel sad for children who are bought up in homes where it is not.

Arthur Schopenhauer stated 200 years ago....' All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident'. 

So even though we are a minority now and ridiculed by main-stream society.....we have our own truth and that is to parent with our hearts, not by being influenced by an opinionated sheep-like society.

kJ xx 

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