A Creepy Trend

I was visiting a lover several days ago and she was telling me about her sister, who'd just had a baby. She mentioned to me casually that her sister planned to "co-sleep".

I'd never heard this curious expression before, so I asked, "WTF is 'co-sleeping' -- is it just a fancy name for the fact that she and her husband share a bed?"

She said no, explaining that her sister and her husband planned to have their newborn child sleep in the bed with them until toddlerhood! She also added that this appears to be growing trend, as she's heard of several couples who are doing it.

WTF??? Why would any parents consider such a thing, and what man would put up with it? It seems to me that it would be very easy to roll over and smother the baby in one's sleep or accidentally knock the child off the bed. And it would seem as if the parents would never be able to settle into a deep, restful sleep, for being hyperalert not to hurt the baby.

And I can't imagine this would do much for the couple's sex life. There's no way I'd engage in sex with a baby in the room, no matter how young. It's just plain creepy to me. Again, what kind of a man would put up with this situation? I'm guessing this couple's sex life was never any great shakes to begin with.

And it would seem that a young child sleeping with parents every night would end up overly enmeshed and clingy, This "co-sleeping" crap seems like the worse kind of overprotective smother-mothering.

When my son was a baby, he had a nice, cheerful crib in his own room, no more than a few feet down the hall from our room. There was a rocking chair in there that either the ex or I would sit in to hold him while we gave him a bottle or to rock him to sleep. He was perfectly content to sleep there by himself. It worked for us and for all the parents I knew when my son was growing up.

Let's hear what you think. Do you think I'm overreacting or do you think this is as creepy as I do?