It didn’t matter that my webcam friends were likely completely aware of their baby’s sleep schedule, knew that he or she was unlikely to wake up, and were sufficiently accustomed to the child’s presence that arousal and orgasm were never in question.  To them, it didn’t matter that the baby was lying right there, sleeping soundly and perhaps cooing in a contented fashion.  It mattered to me.  There was no way I was going to be able to get off with a baby in my line of sight.

Even today, two years into fatherhood, I find it unseemly to have sex while my daughter is sleeping in the same room.  That is not to say that we haven’t done it; we most certainly have, though always out of necessity.  It’s never an ideal situation, and my body seems to be physiologically resistant to arousal when there’s a chance my daughter might wake up and find me fisting her mother.

Make no mistake, we’ve had sex while our daughter was sleeping in a different room, though unrestrained; if you don’t lock or at least close the door, it’s hardly any more of a risk than having sex while the baby is in the same room.  We’ve blogged about how she’s walked in on us mid-coitus, and while she didn’t seem traumatized by what she saw, I know I certainly was.  On the one hand, I know how highly I value my own sexual pleasure.  On the other hand, when my daughter walks in on us and we are unable to hide ourselves under a blanket because we are fucking in the middle of the living room floor, it makes us feel somewhat selfish.  That may be where the “Ick” came from.

But as I read the news article, it became clear to me that I can’t judge Swedish parents for their “Let’s fuck right here beside the baby” attitude; co-sleeping is very common in Sweden, as well as other European countries, certainly moreso than it seems to be in the United States.  Then again, perhaps it is more common in the United States than we’ve been led to believe; as the article states, in the U.S. there is such a stigma surrounding co-sleeping that those who participate in the practice are unlikely to admit doing so, making the chance of collecting accurate survey data very slim.

For the uninitiated, “co-sleeping” refers to the practice of letting babies and young children sleep in the same room – or even the same bed – as their parents, sometimes until the child starts attending school.  Co-sleeping reportedly has numerous advantages, including allowing the parents to get more sleep, or better sleep; increased stability and emotional health for the child(ren), and reduced risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS.

As a rule, we never slept with our baby.  Sure, she slept in a bassinet in our room for a couple months, but as soon as she was able to sleep alone she had her own bedroom.  This was partially due to the fact that it was what we considered “proper”, or at least it was how our own parents had raised us.  It was also due in part to the fact that, when our baby was an infant, we found ourselves having a lot of sex, something that continues unabated to this day.  I didn’t want to have sex with our child present, and for this reason giving her her own space (and accordingly giving Jill and I our own space) was a must.

We have no interest in judging, whether positively or negatively, those who co-sleep.  We are open to various methods of parenting and understand that what works for some will not work for all.  But it bears repeating that our decision not to co-sleep was reached as much for selfish reasons as it was for the long-term benefit of our child.

I found the following passage from the Huffington Post article quite noteworthy:

American actress and attachment parent Mayim Bialik advocates co-sleeping and says that one of the questions she gets asked the most is how she is able to be intimate with her husband. Bialik says they simply don’t use the bed for sex. “We can be intimate in any other room of the house,” she explained in her book.

Wow.  TV’s Blossom doing the nasty.  Who’da thunk it?

So, has anyone tried co-sleeping?  Have their been any long-term effects, whether positive or negative, on your child(ren)?  And most importantly, what was the effect on your sex life?

-Jack