Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - The Co-Sleeping Controversy: What Parents Are Getting Totally Wrong | @cosleepy

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

Cosleeping is one of the most controversial parenting choices-today’s guest thinks it’s only controversial because parents are uninformed of the benefits and how to safely do it. Tiffany Belanger, founder of Cosleepy, is one of the most outspoken voices challenging mainstream infant sleep culture. We talk about why babies are wired for closeness, the biological benefits of cosleeping, and exactly how to safely do it.Thank you to our sponsors!GEVITI: Use code "ALEX" to get 20% off your first purchaseMASA CHIPS: Use code "REALALEXCLARK" for 25% off your first orderUTZY: Use code “ALEX” to saveZEBRA: Use code "ALEX" for 10% off any orderCOWBOY COLOSTRUM: Use code “ALEX” for 25% OFFBLDG ACTIVE SKIN REPAIR: Use code “ALEX” for 20% off your orderOur Guest:Tiffany Belanger, @cosleepyTiffany's Links:WebsiteBlogInstagramFacebook👗 Get Alex’s freshest fashion picks and exclusive guest recommendations—delivered straight to your inbox!Sign up for the newsletter HERE:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠WEEKLY NEWSLETTER SIGNUP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FOLLOW ALEX:Instagram |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @realalexclark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠@cultureapothecary⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @realalexclark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @yoalexrapz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @RealAlexClark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcast |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to ‘Culture Apothecary’ on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. New episodes drop 6pm PST/ 9pm EST every Monday and Thursday.DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Always talk to a qualified healthcare professional for any health-related questions or decisions.

Cryed out doesn't really train your baby to sleep. It kind of trains them just to be quiet and silent. One of the most cited benefits of co-sleeping is breastfeeding success. What are the studies show? More breastfeeding sessions throughout the night, and some are half asleep. They don't even have to fully wake up, and many times the mom sleeps right through them. They found that the moms who breastfeed in bedshare throughout the night breastfeed for like two to three years. Breastfeeding parents are like the parents who should be bedsharing.

Today's guest strongly believes that letting your baby cry it out isn't good parenting, and sleeping together is actually better for both of you. That idea alone has sparked outrage, headlines, and a whole lot of side-eye from the parenting establishment. But it's also what millions of exhausted parents are opting to do. Tiffany Bellinger is the founder of Co-Sleepy, the leading education platform for safe co-sleeping. She believes babies are biologically wired to be close, Cry it out, isn't the gold standard we've been sold, and co-sleeping, when done intentionally and safely, can have real benefits for families. Tiffany changed the trajectory of her career after becoming a mother and finding nothing but fear-based messaging and horror stories when she desperately searched for help on getting her kids to sleep.

Her work has been featured in glamour, the telegraph, and the cut, and she's now writing a forthcoming book. Whether you agree with her or not, this conversation will challenge what you think you know about infant sleep and why parents deserve better information than let them cry. Watch this episode on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify. We're healing a sick culture twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays. Please pause, help us start off the New Year Right with a five-star review for covering this topic. Please welcome author and founder of co-sleepy, Tiffany Bellinger, to Culture Apothecary. Co-sleeping is one of the most polarizing topics in modern parenting. Some say it saves moms mental health.

Others say it undermines safety and structure and authority. Today, I really want to explore both. You're pro co-sleeping, but are you anti-sleep training or only anti-cried out? See, that's the thing. With sleep training, it's like a spectrum. There's some people with the extinction method of cry-it-out, which is pretty extreme, in my opinion. And then you have other people who try to do sleep training when they're co-sleeping, literally their babies next to them in bed. And that doesn't really work very well.

So it's like there's not one standard way to sleep train. And that's why it's so confusing for new parents. like on TV shows from your pediatrician, the lady at the park, like everybody just mentions it. Oh, are you sleep training the babies? You know, it's like very common to talk about when you're a new parent. And nobody talks about co-sleeping, but a lot of parents co-sleep because whether or not they've tried sleep training, the babies want to be with their mom and they don't want to sleep separately. And so unless you're willing to let them cry it out or do whatever program you found or, you know, follow that type of advice, the best thing seems to be, most often, bring them into your bed. I'm not pro-sleeping in the way of like everybody on this planet is supposed to co-sleep. Like, I know it doesn't work for all families. There's definitely

some things like if you're a smoker, if you're not sober, stuff like that, you definitely should not co-sleep. So this doesn't apply to everyone. But my work is mostly about helping those parents who have absolutely no idea what to do, and they brought their baby into their bed. And they're not getting this information from the AAP or from the pediatricians. I just want to give them the tools to do it safely. It's all about safety. I call myself the co-sleeping safety captain. Like, I don't give parents a free pass to just do it. You have to do it intentionally. But if you do, we have lots of research that shows it can be done in a safe way that's beneficial for the baby and the mom. Till what age do you think it's good for parents to be co-sleeping? Definitely the first

year, because that's the year when the babies, like when babies are born, their brain is only 25% of what it is when they're an adult. So there's rapid and prolonged brain growth during that first year. And it goes through the first three. So a lot of parents try to make it to three years because we do have research that shows that nurturing your baby helps our brain and like it helps affect their mental health for the rest of their life. And are you a fan of these parents that are having like their six, seven, eight year olds, everybody's in bed together as a family every night. No. And that's the thing. Every family is different. So you could just co-sleep for the first year if you wanted. It doesn't even have to be the first year. Like co-sleeping is just a tool to help make your

nights easier. So use it when you want to or need to and then put it away. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. So yeah. So you could do it for the first year until 18 months or maybe you get pregnant and you have another baby when your first baby's two and that's the right time to transition them. It doesn't have to be forever or to age eight or whatever like that. There's so many rumors and myths like people thinking your baby will never leave your bed like until they go to college or something. It's just not like that. It's not realistic. If you could explain what co-sleeping is in under 15 seconds. What would you say? So co-sleeping is just setting up a safe space for you and your child to sleep side by side. Easy. It's not rocket science. It's very simple. And most of the world

co-sleeps and we've co-slept throughout all of human history. It's only within the last 150 years or so here in the West and other countries who followed America's lead have like been all about independence and children like self-soothing. Like that wasn't a thing like in our past. And it's not a thing in other countries. A lot of people here are starting to look at what they're doing in other countries, like when people have babies and hospitals there, and they hand out a big packet of information for when you bring your baby home. Most of the time, they have a sheet in there that says, like, if you find yourself co-sleeping because you want to or you find that you have to, here's how to make it as safe as possible. Oh, neat. Yeah, but we don't do that here. What would be three things

that would instantly make a co-sleeping situation unsafe? Okay, for one, never co-sleep on a couch or sofa or in a rocking chair or recliner. A lot of people, there's just this stigma about bed sharing. Co-sleeping and bed sharing, I kind of use those terms interchangeably, but bed sharing is when your baby is literally in your bed. There's the stigma that it's like the worst possible thing in the world to do. And so they say it's much safer if I just set up shop on the couch in front of the TV and let my baby sleep on my chest and I'll stay awake. But we're human and we fall asleep, especially within the first few weeks and months when we're really extremely sleep-deprived. It's not possible to stay awake on the couch. It's just not humanly possible. And so that's when a lot of the accidents happen

and fatalities is when babies fall out of their parents' arms or their parents sort of leans down and slumps. You're not set up safely. Like imagine me with a baby here. This is not a safe place. It's much safer to bring them into my bed that I've cleared off. There's no pillows or blankets. It's firm. Not quite as firm as a crib mattress, but relatively firm. You know, it's not plush like a sofa and lay them down right beside me and I lie in my side facing them. But parents aren't even willing to try that many times because they're scared. They think they're going to get in trouble or the pediatrician's going to yell at them. So they do it on the couch and that's when the accidents happen. So that's the first thing. And by the way, all the hormones that are released when

you're breastfeeding make you drowsy. Like we're designed to feel drowsy when we're breastfeeding. So why does it make sense or how would that have been the point if we're supposed to sit up in a chair like this and nurse our baby and not fall asleep all throughout the night. Like it makes more sense that we would be lying next to them and it would be very convenient and easy. As I mentioned earlier, if you smoke, that's highly associated with SIDS or if you're not sober, even just like prescription medication, you want to be able to respond to your baby when they need you, if they're right beside you. So if you're out too heavy because of medication or you're not sober from alcohol or whatever it is, that is not safe at all. A firm mattress, a firm surface, because your baby

especially in the beginning, they have those giant heads and weak necks and they can't control their muscles. And so if they get into a bad position on a really squishy plush mattress to where they can't breathe, it's really hard for them to move their head. And that's a reason why crib mattresses are so firm. It helps babies move much easier. I didn't even know that. I just thought, you know, it's a baby. They don't care.

So let's give them something cheap. No. They're like rigorously tested. They have to be really firm. Okay. So let's say, because I'm somebody that has a squishy. I even put a feather bed like down thing on top of my squishy mattress. So it's like a cloud.

So then this is new information to me. So then if I had a baby at home, maybe co-sleeping in my bed wouldn't be ideal. Yeah. So then in those types of situations, would you say putting like a bassinet type of thing right next to my bed or something? So that's also considered co-sleeping. Oh, great. So pretend co-sleeping is like the umbrella term.

And underneath you have bed sharing where you bring your baby into your bed. And then there's also like room sharing or bedside sleeping. And that's when they're pulled up to you. right there close enough for you to reach over and comfort them if they need you. And they can still smell your milk and hear you. And like all those sensory inputs are really important in the beginning. They're protective against SIDS. My mind is already being opened towards this idea. I am not sold on anything. And I don't have kids yet. So I'm like listening to these conversations and debates online with moms like, okay, I see this point. I see this point. So I'm

really just here to learn. One of the loudest critiques of co-sleeping is that it teaches children early on that their preferences override the needs of the household. Is that a misunderstanding of co-sleeping, you think? I don't know how a six-month-old baby would realize that or come to believe that. What if they're like a toddler or older? A toddler? I don't know. It's just in a lot of the families I work with, it's co-sleeping makes things a lot smoother. Everybody gets more sleep, including the dad. And that often makes the atmosphere in the house happier. People are more happy when they get sleep. So of course it depends on the individual relationship. You just need to talk to your partner and if it works out to where you have a baby or toddler in your

bed for even just part of the night, like you could start them out in their own space and then when they wake up around midnight or whatever it is, they come in, but you allow them to stay with you. What if you're getting way more sleep than if you had to get up with them, walk them back to their bed, try to sneak away. They're fighting or crying. You know, they don't want you to leave. Like that wastes a lot of time and energy and by the time you get back to bed, it might take you a little bit to wind down and fall back asleep. It is so much easier just to be. be like, here you go, come on in. And so I don't think that that damages marriages. In my experience working with families, it's like the marriages that were already kind of rocky or they didn't have

great communication skills. Of course, when you add a new baby, especially baby who's in your bed, it rocks things. And often bed sharing is blamed for marital problems. But it's like they already had, there were signs already that things weren't good. Why do you think co-sleeping provokes so much fear and judgment compared to other parenting decisions? I don't know. I don't. know. I don't know. I just sort of fell into this. I never planned on doing it. And I was Googling in the middle of the night trying to figure out how to safely sleep with my baby in his bed in my bed because he wouldn't sleep in his bassinet. And that was the first time I saw all the Reddit pages and the scary things people were saying in the horror stories and the news. And by the way, those stories

don't often go into detail. They don't often say like the parent was intoxicated when this happened. They just say like another baby died because of bed sharing. Right. But when you really dig in, there's usually a reason. It was like reactive bed sharing, not intentional. Yeah, it's kind of like when they say like there was 250 school shootings this year and then you like dive into the data. It's like, well, this kid committed suicide on campus.

This kid, you know, it was just like one kid to one kid gang violence situation. Like when you dive into the data, there's more context. Yeah. And that's why I started this work. I didn't mind diving in. But the average parent doesn't have the time or energy to do that. Right. We shouldn't be expected to do that.

So I don't know why it makes people so mad. And honestly, it's none of anybody's business other than you and your husband or your partner, your decision of what to do with your baby. Like, honestly, your pediatrician, like, that's great. But sleeping isn't a medical issue. And pediatricians didn't used to always, like, talk about baby sleep. It's kind of been a recent thing since the 80s and 90s when we had the SIDS epidemic. But before that, that was sort of like an issue that the parents decided on or what was common knowledge or that, you know, what the culture did. doctors got involved in the 80s and 90s and the AEP got involved in 1992.

Before that, they never commented on where a baby should sleep. So now it's been made into this medical issue. And so parents just blindly trust whatever their child's doctor tells them to do. And there's many pediatricians who are lovely and suggest co-sleeping, or they'll just support a parent wherever they're at and just say, here's how to do it safely. But often they don't have time or they're just going. What's easier if you see, if you're sitting here and there's a mom holding a baby and she looks exhausted and she's saying, I can't cope. I don't think I can do this anymore. It's easier. It's much easier just to say, put him in his crib. He's six months. He can go without feeding for most of the night. So just put him in his crib. And if he cries, just go take a walk around the block. Like they're trying to help. But that's actually not helpful in most cases. You keep meaning to start taking your health seriously. Every year you tell yourself, this is the year that I will figure out what my body actually needs. I've been listening to Alex.

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want to order online, that's fine. You can now buy Masa chips and bandy chips at Sprouts nationwide. Your story was, it was the middle of the night, your baby is in a bassinet next to you, but not sleeping, you're struggling, baby is struggling. What were you feeling? What did you feel like wasn't working? It's just any time I put him down in the bassinet, he would start crying. He would wake up. He would like jolt, like he could feel it. And I looked online and they said, like, there's different techniques, put him down sort of on his side and roll him back or leave your hand on him for a while. Like if you Google this or look on Instagram, there's tons of techniques you can try. But no, he wanted to be with me. And any time I picked him up, he would just melt.

He would just stop crying. He'd have that little like milk drunk look on his face, fall asleep instantly. And so when parents say to you, well, see, you're teaching that baby that they can't be away from you and that's not a good thing. I mean, what do you say? I mean, we're not going off to college. Like, they're just, they're less than a year old. Like, toddlers, As I said earlier, you can start to transition them out or set boundaries. That's totally fine, of course. But like for the baby who is rapid, their brain is rapidly growing and they are born expecting to be close to their parents because they are just so vulnerable. Newborn babies, like I said, they can't control their muscles.

They can't see very far. They can't like cling on to you. They're at your mercy. You need to pick them up and take them places and feed them. They are just incredibly vulnerable. It's like in their DNA. they expect to just be held and sleep near you and eat on and off anytime they wake up. You know what I mean? It's only in these last, as I mentioned earlier, like about 150 years when things kind of shifted in certain countries, not everywhere.

But before that, for the entire human history, that's how it is. Like the baby's usually with the mom or another caregiver, but they're in arms and they're never separated. What happened to change that? There were lots of things like a big one was the Industrial Revolution. And like around that time, America was all about ambition and independence and power and authority. And that just trickled down into families. And women were like encouraged to work at the factories and the mills. And so they found that formula was invented around that time.

And they found that like maybe they could get more consolidated sleep and not wake up every three hours or so if they gave the baby formula or if they had their husband feed the baby. So yeah, women going back to work, formula. just the general vibe shift in America of just like independence. And they put that on little tiny babies. Yeah. You would never experience that before and we're not expecting it and they're not capable. Like the self-soothing thing really gets me. Why?

Me when I'm having a bad day, ideally, I would sit on my couch. I'd put a weighted blanket on me that I'd love. Maybe I'd have a glass of wine. My husband would be there giving me a hug. He'd talk to me if I wanted him to, but if I was like, please don't talk to me. He wouldn't. Like, he's just there to be there to help his moral support. Like, that's me soothing myself many nights. Like, how is a newborn baby going to have any tools at all to soothe themselves? Like, I'm a grown woman and I had to find throughout my life, I had to figure

out what kind of calms me down. At what point did you realize, okay, I'm not the only mom dealing with this where no matter what technique I do, the way I'm placing my baby in his crib, in his bassinet, he's not sleeping. He only wants to be with me. When did you see that other parents were struggling. I started asking my friends and sometimes, like, I got left on red a few times. People didn't want to talk about it. Why? I don't know. They're like embarrassed. They think like there's this idea of a good baby. You know, they sleep 12 hours a night. They're not fussy. They're cheerful during the day. Like, have you ever heard people ask, oh, is he a good baby? Yeah. Is he sleeping? And so when you're a new mom and your mom friends are like, is he sleeping through the night yet? And if

your baby isn't, you feel shame like you're not a good mom. Totally. Yeah. And you don't know to find help. I only found out I was having trouble breastfeeding. Also, breastfeeding is hard, and I didn't know that before I was a mom. Like, it was physically hard. He wasn't latching. I made an appointment with a lactation consultant. And she was the one who just happened to ask as she was helping me with latching. She was like, oh, how sleep going? And I told her the only place he will sleep is in my bed with me. And she said, oh, well, people do that all over the world. And she gave me a name. She said, Google this man, Dr. James McKenna. He has a book. Like all his research is on this and he has a book on it. And so that was my first step. I bought that book that

night. I tried to read it, but, you know, it's hard. It's like a lot about research and it's a chapter book. And so that's why a lot of my work that I've made since then is really just cherry-pickable because I know that moms are looking this up in the middle of the night. They just need the basics. How do I do this safely? What do I need to move off my bed? Do I need to put my mattress on the floor? Because I don't want them to roll off. Or maybe you can install like a mesh bedrail, you've got to prevent them from falling off the bed once they're about four months and they become mobile. There's all these things. And so I was starting to learn about it. I asked my friends. Some left me on red. Some didn't want to talk about it. I had some family members who I asked

and they just said, that's our thing. You do your thing. I don't even want to talk about it. Whoa. I know it gets touchy. It's like freaking fight club. It gets really weird and I was not expecting that. It's like, you know how they talk about the idea of like a village like that's something we're missing. We don't really have support when we become moms. It's very isolating. And I did experience that. Some of my closest friends, I was just like, they never told me about this. So then what happened? You just started reading this guy's book? I just got obsessed with it. And it's really weird because I worked in Hollywood before this. I never was even interested in parenting. I wasn't like you. I didn't do research beforehand. But I just feel like it's sort of like a

calling. Like I feel like I have to get this info out there because I spent so many hours in those early weeks on Google, reading the books, and I missed time with my newborn, with my little baby, because I was busy doing that, or I was incredibly stressed out and feeling guilty. And I don't want other moms to go through that. From a biological perspective, what does proximity during sleep actually do for an infant's nervous system? It's really amazing. We have a lot of research on this.

So just being close, having physical proximity increases oxytocin in both the mom and the baby. And that's the feel good. They call it the love hormone. Also, studies have shown that the closer your baby is to you, the more oxytocin they're getting and the less cortisol. It's going down and it doesn't last nearly as long. So it's sort of like the mom's body provides a buffer sort of and affects her baby just by being close.

Even this would be better than if your baby was across the room. The closer they are, the more oxytocin they're getting. You mentioned cortisol. What do we know about cortisol and stress responses or arousal thresholds in co-sleeping infants versus solitary sleepers? We do have research on this. but just imagine a baby waking up and they're swaddled. They can't move and they're in a dark room and there's no humans nearby and it's quiet.

That's a stress response right there and there's tons of stress hormones that flood their body. And they start crying and get all wound up and it takes a while. Hopefully their parent comes to get them, but it takes a while for them to calm down. And then think about a baby who's sleeping in their parents' bed. And sometimes they don't even, we have video studies that show that sometimes the babies and the moms don't even wake up. They're stirring in their sleep and the baby sort of turns over and latches onto his mom. and nurses. So either they're half asleep, which is really, seems really peaceful to me, or they wake up, but there's no crying involved. Their mom is right there. And it just,

it's a second for her to latch them on. So it's just they're, they're not experiencing that, those stress hormones when they're co-sleeping. What does better sleep truly mean in infancy like? Is it longer stretches? Is it fewer full wakings or is it just easier resettling? Definitely easier resettling. But like everybody has a different opinion. Like the random lady at the park might say, no, good sleep is 12 hours. You put them in their crib at 7 o'clock and you don't go in there until 7 a.m. Just solid good sleep and you don't have to feed them. Other people are like, no, that goes against their biological needs.

Babies need to feed every two to three hours throughout the first year day and night. What do you think about the babies that sleep through the night and aren't eating? I really feel for them. And this is no judgment for the parents because all this anger that I'm directing when we're talking about sleep training, It's at the AAP and pediatricians, and it goes down to like the sleep trainers you find on Instagram. They have their little businesses. It's just that's what I just said. It's going against baby's biological needs.

So breast milk is high in sugar, which provides a lot of energy for them, but it's low in fat. So it doesn't really satiate them for long, meaning they have to wake up and feed every two to three hours. That's just how we are. Humans are. That's how our breast milk is. And so therefore, that's why throughout. human history, they've slept next to mom so that it's very easy throughout the night just to, like I said, latch them on. What do you think the most popular sleep training accounts on Instagram are getting

wrong? First of all, I don't ever look at them, but I've seen some that say within three days, they can help you make, like get your baby to sleep through the night in three days, like some sort of process. That doesn't make sense to me. At the core of it, it's they're trying to just fit their baby into this society, this culture we have, fit their baby into the life they had before. Like I knew when I had my baby, I can't continue to work in Hollywood. I thought that I wanted to and I planned on it before I had him. But as soon as he was born, it was just like, I can't fit him into my previous life. My previous life is over. I'm a different person. It's a completely different life. My husband and I have a different relationship. And that's not bad. It's

just a part of life. But some people just, they're so resistant to that. Yeah. They don't want to have to adjust or change. And so it's true. If you want to have a baby, you have to be okay with your life changing completely. And also the first few years, know that your baby is going to be very needy. They really, really need you day and night. And so make sure that you can, you're ready for that challenge. One of the most cited benefits of co-sleeping is breastfeeding success. What did the study show? More breastfeeding sessions throughout the night. And some are half asleep. They don't even have to fully wake up and many times the mom sleeps right through them. And we can talk about the positioning, but the mom is sleeping on her side. And so the baby is sleeping on his back

with their head right here homed in sort of like on her breast and they can just easily turn over and latch on and off and fall asleep that way. Baby, I'm guessing, always needs to be on the side of you that's going to be more inside towards the bed. Well, it's actually Dr. James McKenna found that it's safer for the baby to be just by the mom, not in between both parents. Oh, okay. Yeah. So that could be your, I know a lot of families who buy like a twin bed and the husband will sleep on that. And the wife has like the big bed to really stretch out. I mean, I'm not arguing with that. I know. Some dads are totally like I get more sleep in the guest room. It's okay. But again, like we were saying earlier, it just depends on that relationship, what they're comfortable with. But just this is a temporary season. So your marriage is not always going to be like this. Just remember that. So more breastfeeding sessions throughout the night. longer total, like they found that the moms who breastfeed in bedshare throughout the night breastfeed for like two to three years, whereas if you're getting up every time walking over to the crib, that's tiring, that's rough. Or if you're going back to work and it's hard to pump and you

start giving them formula, like you don't, like bedsharing is really, really helpful for the parents who breastfeed. So sometimes when parents aren't breastfeeding anymore, they're sort of like, and they don't, they'd rather just do crib. So like, yes, to what you've said, breastfeeding are like the parents who should be bed sharing. I was cutting a steak the other night and I dropped the knife blade down right on top of my foot. It was exactly as bad as you're imagining. My little strawberry sock filled with blood like a capri sun. I swear to God, this is what happened to me.

Absolute crime scene. And my, oh, I was about to tell you something secret. Anyway, I'm standing there thinking this is it. This is how it ends over a rib eye. Luckily no stitches. I was scared there for a minute. And I was trying to get bocci not to lick my blood. Okay, I'm really giving you way too much.

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breastfeeding? Or is it breastfeeding that naturally leads to co-sleeping? I love this question. They go hand in hand. Because babies are born expecting to be very close to their parents day and night and because what I said about breast milk, how they need to have it every two to three hours, to understand babies, sleep, you need to understand lactation and breastfeeding. It's like what came first, the chicken or the egg.

Exactly. Exactly. So that's why a lot of times parents who decide to formula feed and they're not really interested in breastfeeding or lactation, they don't quite understand. Just because our society has changed or the AAP's guidelines have changed, like that doesn't change all of human history and the biology, like our DNA. Like you can't change that in a baby. What is the single biggest myth about co-sleeping that you would fix if you could rewrite the AAP guidelines. Well, first of all, they say bed sharing or co-sleeping is never safe under any circumstance. And that's absolutely not true. But me, look at other countries where co-sleeping is the norm. Look at India. How many billions of people live in India where co-sleeping is the norm? Like they're doing okay. They're procreating. They're keeping their babies safe.

Like I said, only in America and a few of the other countries who have sort of followed our lead, is it like a big deal here? Why does it seem like when it comes to pregnancy advice in America, everything is behind. We're behind on co-sleeping guidelines. We're behind on nutritional guidelines for pregnancy, what we should or shouldn't eat. It's like we're not updating anything here. No. No. The last time the AAP weighed in on baby sleep about how babies need to sleep on their back, that was in 1996. That was 30 years ago. So, and there's been tons of research by Dr. Helen Ball and Dr. James McKenna and other people. We have lots of hard evidence about the benefits of co-sleeping and how it can be made safer and they have not updated their recommendations at all. It's like a blanket statement.

You brought this book. Oh yeah, I brought this book to show you. I took it in my carry-on all away from California. Look how heavy it is. So this is the book I got when I had my baby. When I left the hospital, they handed this to me and they said, all of your questions will be answered. And I did leave feeling pretty confident like I'm in good shape. Okay, Alex, look through the book. Look at the back index. Co-sleeping, bed sharing. Those terms are not mentioned one time. So out of 900 pages, they couldn't give us one page

to say, we don't recommend this. You got HIV and AIDS, though. You have everything. HIV and AIDS for your brand new baby, but you don't have co-sleeping. Everything's in that book, how to cut their toenails. Like, why couldn't they give us

one page out of 900 to say, we don't recommend this, but if you find yourself in a situation where you have to do it, here's the 10 things you can do to make it safer? Do you think that we'll ever see a future where co-sleeping gets added to that book?

I don't know. Maybe with your help. Seriously. I like the challenge. Okay. So the AAP, there's tens of thousands of pediatricians in it. But the subcommittee who decided on safe sleep was only about 10 to 12 people back in the 90s. Seriously, it's 10 to 12 people have decided what we hear, what we're told from our pediatricians. Some people are scared to bedshare.

They're afraid that someone's going to call CPS. You know what I mean? This has become such a huge thing because, 10 to 12 people don't trust women to make an informed choice. That's my opinion. You know in your third trimester, you can drink a glass of wine at that point. Have you heard that? Yes.

Okay. But your doctor will never tell you that or recommend that because they just say, it's better if we just put out a blanket statement, say no alcohol ever during pregnancy because they don't trust the individual women to really think about it, weigh the pros and cons, and decide what's best for them. Same with this. They say, your baby should never, ever be in your bed because it can't be. be done safely. And you should never have raw fish. There's like soft cheeses you're not supposed to eat.

There's a lot of rules. Or sauna. In Finland, they're all doing sauna while they're pregnant. That's what I'm saying. Like, why can't we look at other countries? Oh, and you know what else? This really starts when you're a teenager as a woman because you're in high school and they just tell, you know what, your period's too complicated. It's too hard to understand your cycle. Just get on birth control. So it's like from the moment we are starting to transition into womanhood as as females, we are told that we are too stupid to think for ourselves. And gosh, that sounds feminist of me. But I mean, I'm not wrong.

And I wouldn't consider myself a feminist. But I will say that there is something when it comes to empowering women from a medical perspective that we're just not given. We're just not given informed consent. We're not given agency, autonomy to make our own choices. And like we know what's best for ourselves. or for our children. One hesitation I have, and I got to lay this out honestly. It's not about infants. I think that when it comes to co-sleeping, I am sold on newborn stage. What I'm not sold on, and I'm bringing this up because all of my friends are doing it. Every single one of my best

friends who have multiple kids are all co-sleeping. And their kids are like toddler and above, okay? Every night they're all piling into bed together. Like this is like Goldilocks and Three Bears or something. So some families I know, and this isn't my direct friends. So I'm, I just want to say that. But some families I know that are co-sleeping later, it seems to me like they've got this inverted family structure. So their kids are dictating bedtime. They're dictating their food choices.

Their sleep arrangements. Parents are losing authority. And so interestingly, when I was looking this up to talk to you, some behavioral research I found suggests that when bed sharing continues beyond infancy, that's where there can be some associations with emotional dysregulation. So my question is for you. How do you distinguish healthy co-sleeping from co-sleeping that erodes parental leadership? I think only each parent can decide, each for their specific family.

We have research on this, but there's no specific age that we know of, like, after age four, it's really important to get them out of your bed. Like, we don't know. In other countries, I can tell you, many of them stop. They make that transition when they have another baby, and that child goes to sleep in a room with either an older sibling or, like, usually a grandparent. Some people, they sleep with their siblings in the same bed or the same room, like I'm thinking of India until college. Whoa. Hold on a minute. I've never heard that.

Yeah, not their parents, but like a sibling or a grandparent. Not their parents. I was like, that is the craziest thing I've ever heard on this show. No, but think about it. Not everyone has big houses like we do with multiple bedrooms. That's true. So look, it's every family, your individual friends need to say, like is my four-year-old running the show? And again, it's like we were saying earlier with marital problems. Like, I don't think it's fair to blame everything on bed sharing. So if your kid is being the boss and you don't think that's right, like you need to look at all sorts of things. Yeah.

Including like eating, like everything. Look at the context. Exactly. It's not just where they sleep at night. I think that's fair. And I think the audience that are super gung-ho about co-sleeping, which I know most of you are, are going to appreciate you saying that. You talk often about co-sleeping as this mental health intervention from mothers. What benefits do you see most consistently and where is the evidence strongest?

Well, we do have a lot of evidence with the oxytocin like we were talking about earlier. Just close proximity increases it. And that's the feel good love hormone. A lot of moms are afraid of their baby not breathing. I don't know if your friends have mentioned that. Yes. It's because we hear about SIDS, which we don't really know that much about, the typical mom, but we just know like some babies stop breathing.

And so I know so many moms, including my own self, we would wake up and panic and go look and be like, okay, I can see they're breathing. they're okay. So when your baby's right next to you, you don't have as much of a panic. You can open your eyes and they're right here. That makes sense. Yeah. You don't have to walk across the room or buy one of those like socks or like little devices to track. You know what? And I don't like that. I'm going to tell you right now, that's a lot of EMF exposure on your baby. Totally. That I think is unnecessary. And then you've got the Wi-Fi baby monitors and all that. I don't like any of it. I'm going to say that right now. I'm anti-baby monitor, at least the Wi-Fi kinds. Yeah. So I don't know.

There's a lot I could talk about there. But yeah, I don't like the little sock and with the cords and all that. Yeah, we never bought a baby monitor because we always co-slept. That makes sense. And we got both of my little boys used to sleeping in their bassinet for the first stretch of the night when they got a little older. Like the newborn days, as I told you, that it was not happening. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

So many families, they have their bedtime routine, just like anybody else, and they put their baby in the crib. But when the baby wakes up for the first feet around 11 or whatever, at that point, they find it easier just to take them to bed with them. Because it's a whole routine. I don't know if your friends have told you to like rock them this way, shush them, turn off the lights, put on the sound noise. Like it's a whole thing. And that makes traveling really hard, by the way. So if you have a lifestyle like you, you're probably going to want a baby who can sleep anywhere. Oh, yeah. Right? I need, yeah, that's exactly. A rock concert, whatever. Yeah. So, but these families who do sleep

training or just have their very rigid routines, it's hard to go, like, they have to do like a 10-step process. And that's just stressful. We don't need to add that to our lives. You know what? I can't stand. I cannot stand the parents that are rigid about when the bedtime has to be. I mean, they say it's 7.45. And so it's like if you're out to eat or you're at something and it's 7.30, they're like, we have to leave. The food doesn't come yet. We're leaving because the baby has to be a bed. I'm like, why would you put yourselves in a prison like that? I do not understand it. Yeah. But I mean, I'm sure there are going to be some parents that disagree. That drives me nuts.

I definitely don't want to be in a situation like that when I have kids one day. I do have questions about co-sleeping when it comes to twins or multiples. Yeah, it just depends on the family. Some parents feel better with their kids in like next to the bed but in separate bassinets. Others have one big crib and they put both of them in there. There's just different ways to do it. But research shows that the twins who are put together, like they have video studies where they're hugging each other throughout the night. And it's just, I don't know, humans, we call.

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you, just a healthier, steadier version of the one that you already are. If sleep training helps mothers, in some cases, feel more regulated, rested, and emotionally available, how do we reconcile that with the claim that co-sleeping is the healthier option for moms overall? Yeah, I don't ever want to judge. If they really feel like their mental health is better and it's better for their family, then I would say good. But because of this work, I've spent a lot of time in the research. And so I believe that human babies are meant to sleep close to their moms for a variety of reasons. So deep down, I feel for those moms.

They're doing it for a reason, just like the ones. you mentioned when they leave the restaurant. Like they're doing that because they have a lot of anxiety and they think this will solve their problems. You know what I mean? Like sticking to a strict schedule. Right. So I feel for them.

What are the biggest problems with the cried out method? What is that doing to a baby mentally? What is that doing to mothers mentally? You know, a lot of situations you've got a dad saying this baby needs to sleep through the night. This baby is not going to be in our room. You need to let go. You need to let this baby sleep in their nursery. What do you have to say to that?

Well, for babies, we know the cortisol and stress hormones, and there have been a couple studies that showed that the babies, maybe in three to five days, they do stop crying. And that's when the sleep trainers will say, yes, see success. But when they actually hook the babies up and see, they see the stress hormones, and they see that the babies are lying, they're awake. They're no longer crying, but they're awake.

So cry it out doesn't really train your baby to sleep. It kind of trains them just to be quiet and silent and sort of ride it out. And I don't think I was sleep trained, but I was just put in a separate bedroom because that's how it was in the 80s and 90s. That's what my parents did with us. From night one, I was put in another room. And I have not blaming my wonderful parents. They were doing the best they could, but I have a lot of anxiety at night. At nighttime, worst case scenario, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm thinking of all the bad things.

Like, I'm not blaming it. This is just my own lived experience, but I just, I didn't have, like sleep is not a, safe place for me. I don't feel safe when I'm sleeping or at night. Like, I don't feel like if I had a problem, someone would come get me and take care of me. I don't have that in my heart. And so my boys now are seven and five. And again, this is anecdotal, but like they're not afraid of nighttime because we've either been in the same bed as them or in the same room. And now my oldest is in his own room. But he knows we're right there and the door is always open. Some people close the door, lock the door. And for moms, that's a hard decision. It's so hard to hear your baby cry for just.

a few seconds. So I can't imagine having to close the door and leave for sometimes they're doing it for like five minutes at a time. It just depends on what program, but it rips you apart. Do you think that the cry-it-out method is affecting childhood attachment? I think so. Like they say this is the anxious generation. They say kids have all these mental health problems. They didn't before, which I don't know if that's true. But I mean, at my kid's school, I definitely see it. Even young kids being very anxious. I wouldn't doubt it. Because, think about it. Those are your earliest memories. You're crying. It's dark. It's silent. And no one comes to get you. Like what is that telling you about life and the rest of your life and safety? And you know what I mean? It's

not providing a solid foundation there. Do you think it's possible for kids to be securely attached without co-sleeping? Yeah, totally. You could do room sharing, which they could be across the room, or they could be in a different bedroom. But when they cry, you go to them. Because crying is the only tool they have when they're really little. That's all they have to get their parents' attention. And so if you ignore it, what does that leave them with? So yes, you don't have to co-sleep to be a nurturing, loving, good parent. When a parent asks, will this create bad habits or dependency? What does the long-term research actually say? Yeah, the research shows that no, it doesn't. And again, it depends on the individual family. If that kid is like running the show and wants to

bedshare until he's nine years old or something and it's affecting the marriage and that's completely different. But no, we don't have hard research that says, like, these kids are mama's boys are just like they can't function at school or have good relationships. There's nothing negative like that that we've found so far. In these last 30 years that the AAP has been silent, we have lots of great researchers like Dr. Helen Ball and Dr. James McKenna who've done tons of studies, specifically on moms sleeping next to their babies. And sometimes those studies would follow them as the kids grew up. Oh, really? Yeah. And there's nothing negative to date that I could give you and report back and say that's compelling tell us the practical ways to make your bed safer

for co-sleeping so i always say this isn't rocket science but at the same time i never give people like a free pass especially when i'm talking on instagram and i know people are just scrolling through so fast we if you want to co-sleep that's wonderful but you have to do it safely and intentionally and if your husband's going to be in the bed he also needs to take responsibility and be and know that the baby's there and we're not going to be lax about any of this and so i'm assuming if you're saying mom should not be smoking or drinking co-sleeping. Dad should also not be smoking or drinking. Right. I mean, if dad has

a couple drinks and he's on the backside like he's behind the mom and the baby's right here in front of the mom, they're not going to interact or anything, so it's probably okay. It's just up to the comfort level of that family. Like some people are totally fine with it and some people just say for now no smoking or drinking. Yeah, and no baby between mom and dad, baby only on one side of the mom.

If possible. A lot of parents, when the baby becomes mobile and it's crawling, if they can't set up their bed or like put the bed in the mattress on the floor or set up a bedrail or something, they will put the baby in the middle, but just keep in mind that that's two adult bodies that are like creating a dip, two dips in the mattress. So you have to do that. You have to have a bed rail or put your bed totally on the floor. You have to around four months make some sort of proactive decision, like something to keep your baby safe because that's a big factor falls off the bed. Okay. And it's easily preventable. And what else do you have to do?

So the mattress needs to be firm, as I said earlier, and clear of all suffocation hazards. So no bedding, pillows. None of those plush loungers, like docketogs. Can the mom have a pillow? Totally, yes. Because she's going to be sleeping on her side. And this is what I call the cuddle curl position. So the baby's head is chest level. She's on her side, curled around him or her head, hand arm is up underneath her pillow, sort of. But that protects, like if her baby started to inch up, her arm is blocking the pillow. hello from the baby. Got it. Does that make sense? And then her knees are out in front of her, so that makes it impossible for her to fall forward. Because that's a big thing. People say all the time, I don't want to go sleep because I'm going to roll on my baby in my sleep. And first of all, it's really hard to roll on a baby and not wake up unless you're intoxicated or something like that, right? And babies will make noise. And it's not like you, like we hear of these horror stories all the time, but it's very rare. Or there's a reason, like the person is not conscious or something

like that, which is horrible. But when you lie in this cuddle-courl position with your knees bent in front of you, you cannot physically roll forward. Your needs block you. So for anyone listening or watching, if you don't believe me, get down on the floor right now, pause this and try it. And you'll see. You can't do it. It's like, and this position has been observed by anthropologists all over the world. Like it's an instinctual position that moms do. So there's probably a good reason for that because for human history, it's kept the baby safe beside them. They're right there, right where the milk is. Their arms blocking them. The legs are keeping them in this little pocket and the mom can't fall forward. It's perfect. How is mom supposed to sleep with a blanket? You can wear a blanket, use a blanket up to your waist.

But you don't want to pull it up to your chin because your baby's right here. But if you have it up to your waist and you have like a long sleeve top on or a pillow behind your back to help prop you up or your partner or husband like either spooning you or lying back to back that can help keep you warm. Like these are the practical things I like to talk about because it's true. Like I don't want people to co-sleep and be miserable. You got to find a way to make it work and, you know, to look forward to going to sleep. You know, like support pillows. Get all the pillows you need. Like between your knees, you definitely need one there. If you had to elevator pitch co-sleeping to a skeptical parent, what would you say?

It's just so natural. I don't know. It's just you're just keeping the most important little person in the world close to you while you sleep. and it's been done forever and it can be done safely. And it just, you are getting hits of oxytocin all throughout the night. And it feels good. It's just like a blissful feeling. I don't know how to describe it, waking up and seeing your little person there.

And when they wake up, they smile at you. Like, you're the only thing they care about. Do you find that there's less rates of postpartum depression in moms who go sleep? There's definitely studies that show that. And just talking to people on, Instagram I hear it. They say like, I was struggling with postpartum anxiety and depression so much, but once I started co-sleeping, it lowered like I don't have to take medication anymore. Like it was, it just depends on the person, but sometimes having them right there. And especially if you're worried about them breathing or SIDS or something, they're right there. You could put your hand as you're lying on your side. You could put your hand on their tummy. You feel them breathing. You can hear them. You know what I mean? And you're getting the oxytocin. You're getting these feel good hormones all night long. So yes, it's extremely beneficial. for both the mom and the baby. What sorts of courses or training or info

do you offer parents and where can they find it? So I'm writing a book right now. But in the meantime, thank you. I'm just so happy that like a major, this is Hachet is publishing it, which is a major publisher. Like we're going to have a book in Barnes & Noble and big stores about co-sleeping.

That is so exciting. It's a victory. Yeah, because when I started in 2018, there was no Instagram account talking about this. So it's just, that's been what, seven years? Like we've come a long way and I'm just so excited. But in the meantime, I have how to guide. that I've made like very easy for the middle of the night you just to like get the info you need.

And I have a really big community on Instagram that's just really encouraging if you're feeling alone or feeling like you're the only parent with a baby in your bed. There's so many of us doing it. And so what's your Instagram? Co-sleepy. Cute. Okay. I ask every guess this.

If you could offer one remedy to heal a sit culture physically, emotionally or spiritually, what would it be? I mean, you know my answer, right? I can guess. I definitely think anyone who can do it safely should try co-sleeping. I really think it makes a difference for the mental health of the mom and the baby. And I think we're worth it. Women and babies are worth more research studies, more conversations like this.

Maybe someone like you going in front of the AAP and talking about this. Like, we're worth it. And I really think that could affect our culture. That's fun. Should we go to the AAP together? I would love that. I think that we should do it. Okay.

I'm into, I love any, like, you know, excuse to protest or come up with something to just, you know, make a splash. I love that. Tiffany, you know, so proud of you for. or seeing a hole, a very needed hole that needed help within the parenting space and filling that with co-sleeping information and education for moms, just really proud of you. And my audience has been begging me to have a co-sleeping person on. So it's Tiffany. I hope you guys loved it.

Thank you for coming on Culture Apothecary. Thank you, Alex. Are you pro-co-sleep, pro-sleep train, or pro-cry-it-out? Leave a five-star review. Let us know what you thought after hearing this episode. You can continue the conversation in the conservative's Facebook. group, by the way. New episodes of Culture Apothecary release Mondays and Thursdays, 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern, where we strategize with expert guests on how to heal a sick culture, physically, emotionally, and

spiritually. Find the show on Instagram at Culture Apothecary or me at Real Alex Clark. I'm Alex Clark, and thanks for listening to Culture Apothecary.