Anyone co-sleep with your kids?  Looking to share pros/cons/ideas/tips; put 'em here!

We've coslept with our daughter Margaret, who will be 3 this month, since birth.  It has mostly worked really well, though I end up sometimes having very limited sleeping space since I'm usually the last to bed.  We do have a California king size bed, and a regular king size bed would have been even better.  Margaret is finally going to get her own toddler bed for her birthday, but she'll be welcome to climb back in with us whenever she wants for the next few years.

Duncan, as the second child, did not get to cosleep with us.  He got a bassinet beside mom's side of the bed until he outgrew that, then went to the crib.  However, he often still ends up in our bed for about half the night in extended nursing sessions.  We may switch him to cosleeping if Margaret takes to the toddler bed well.  He's currently 16 months.

It has worked great for us.

Anyone co-sleep with your kids?  Looking to share pros/cons/ideas/tips; put 'em here!

We sleep with our kids in one big room.

Does that not cause difficulties for making the beast with two backs?

Sex after having kids is a myth.  That's why children after the first are always stork delivered.

Seriously, times when the kids can be expected to sleep soundly for long enough aren't that common, no matter where they sleep; sneaking out to a couch isn't a big deal compared to all the other planning we have to do for it.

Of course, real cave men probably just let the kids watch.

My wife has what I think is a bad habit of letting our babies (twin 9-month old boys) sleep with her. I disagree with her position on it and therefore have taken up residence in our guest room until she puts an end to this practice. Now, they are becoming dependent on being next to her just to fall asleep, exactly what I was trying to avoid.

I want them to be more independent and to know when it's time to go to sleep, and be comfortable with and enjoy their own space in their own beds (cribs for now). But she's always coddling them and trying to soothe them even when they have no reason to be cranky. And now they've figured this out and are playing her like a violin.

When she isn't here, they don't pull this crap with me. They are calm and relaxed for the most part. We eat, we play, we wind down, we go to sleep in our own beds, and they are fine with that. But when she's around, they won't hear of it. This is going to be a nightmare down the road, but she can't say she wasn't warned. In the mean time, me and the dogs enjoy the peace and quiet in the guest room.

Is your Paleo from birth kid sleeping better than the first one?

I was wondering recently how crying babies would survive back then. Can't hide from predators with a crying baby. So either babies didn't cry so much, or we were the apex predator...

I'd note that babies of even apex predators are not completely safe.  Hyenas are a major threat to lion cubs if protective adults aren't around.

I think I learned more from my first child than from my second in this respect.  If she needed something - too hot, too cold, wet, hungry - she would make a very soft cry - softer than normal conversational level - and since she was a spoiled first child, it was attended to right away.  The only things that made her cry loudly were if we had guests over and someone told a good joke and everyone laughed, which she cried at for a couple of months, or when the central heating/air conditioning came on, which she cried at for about a year.

The central heat/air conditioning sounds a lot like a low growl, like a cave bear or cave lion might make, so while it's anecdotal evidence, I personally think that crying was ingrained - if everyone is asleep in the cave or camp, a cry of alarm in that situation might actually improve a cave baby's survival if the adults could wake up and fight back.  If the adults were just going to flee, of course, it makes less sense, but I'm convinced that we weren't a prey species.  Similar logic might apply to the laughing as to the heating/air conditioning sound, though laughing was less obviously like any dangerous animal sound.

When we put her down and left the room, though, she never cried as a baby.  She only cried when an adult was present.  That lasted until she became mobile, at which point she started crying if she found herself alone, whether it was because we wandered away from her or because she wandered away from us.  That of course makes sense to avoid getting separated from the group - although a prey species would probably just do less wandering.

Our son was quite different, I think mostly because he was a second child.  Before I get into details, I first want to note that I've become convinced that the spacing between our kids - 20 months apart - is not natural.  I really think the 3-4 year spacing seen in hunter gatherers is likely also the spacing of paleolithic humans.    In particular, carrying two toddlers around at a time is so inconvenient it doesn't seem like something people would have put up with.

When our son needed something, he cried a lot louder - and he soon learned to keep crying loudly until he got what he wanted.  I suspect this was partly because we were often busy with our daughter and didn't get to him right away, though.  If he'd been born after our daughter turned 3 or 4, he could have gotten the same immediate attention that our daughter did.  Recently we've been able to get him to cry less by, first, letting him cry it out if he gets started crying, but more importantly, by making a big effort to take care of his needs before he gets fully into the crying mode.  It's been a lot easier to make that effort as our daughter has become less of a toddler and more of a preschooler, so if we had had a more normal spacing, the issue might never have come up.

Also, when our daughter cries, she seems genuinely upset; she needs at least a few seconds of comforting when we get to her.  When our son cries, he doesn't seem upset; he's just getting our attention.  It's possible that the behavior patterns of a second child are more geared towards competition with siblings and are less about pure survival - or it's possible that our son's behaviors are adapted for more of a multiparent situation rather than a nuclear family.  There are also a lot of signs that the presence of a slightly older child makes him think the situation is safe, so he's willing to do things that a single child might not - though again, that could be because he's male and willing to take more risks, or could be just a random personality difference.

Overall, though, I think kids' natural behavior makes more sense for a predator than for a prey species, and that would be especially the case if we had a more natural 3-4 year spacing between children.

The two camps seem to be Breastfeeding/Babywearing/Co-sleeping in one and Formula/Strollers/Cribs in the other.  I believe our child is healthier due to breastfeeding, he cried less due to being worn in a sling or wrap on his mother, and is more confident and happy due to co-sleeping with us.

I think there's a very practical reason for the connection between cosleeping and breastfeeding.  With a baby in a crib, the mother has to wake up, get up, and get the baby from the crib to nurse it.  This may be part of why our son is falling a bit behind on the growth curve.  With a cosleeping baby, the mother doesn't really even have to wake up, so it's far more convenient.

I admit we use a stroller, mostly because of the issues with carrying two kids.