He colecho It is the practice by which a child shares space with his parents at bedtime. It is something that has been done since time immemorial and it is something that many children did with our parents when we were little, but now it is not recommended by some health, education and psychology professionals (well, and the carnicera, the cashier from the supermarket and your son's friend's mom).
However, many other professionals have decided to support this practice as another option for each family, treating it as an intimate issue in which no one, absolutely no one, should interfere.
This is because there is no evidence that sleeping separately from the parents means no benefit to the baby (or child) and yet yes there are studies that show that the most natural and least disruptive of the feeding, sleeping and emotional patterns of babies is precisely sleeping with them.
However, when the baby grows and becomes a child, many women become pregnant of what will be their second child and there are doubts:It is possible to collect with two children at the same time?
The older brother's age
When the mother is pregnant, parents wonder what is best for everyone. It is usually thought that the most logical thing is that once the child arrives, the elder should already go to sleep in his room, however this may not be too feasible due to a maturation issue.
If the older brother is two or three years old, it can be difficult to convince him that he has his bed waiting for him to sleep in it. In addition, parents do not usually feel too well making that decision, because it can be contradictory to sleep with your baby to respect their rhythms and suddenly force the change to another bed when the child probably does not want to.
When the child is four or more years old (some before and some not even then), it is usually easier to talk with them and negotiate the transfer. Going to buy the bed, if you do not already have it, or choose the sheets (now that they are stamped with Caillou, Mickey or whatever you like), in addition to moving some toys or some of their things to the room can be a solution to make him accept sleeping in his room.
If you choose this route the change must be made before the baby is born (or after a prudential time), so that the child does not believe that he separates from the parents to be replaced by the baby, speaking in the field of emotions, because on a physical level this situation is real.
Collecting with both at the same time
The other option is simply to let time go by and adjust to the news, which is what we did (my wife and I). We had a thousand doubts before Aran was born and although it seemed that putting Jon to sleep in his room was the best solution we were never able to carry it out, especially, because we didn't want to do it (In the same way that now that he has just turned five we still don't want him to leave).
The ideal solution for parents who opt for this solution and feel that they do not have enough space in the bed is called colecho cot, which is nothing more than a semi-open crib whose height can be modified to the millimeter to leave it at the same level as the bed. In it the baby can sleep the first months without any danger, sharing space with the mother.
How to collect when both grow up
Once the baby grows and the colecho cradle becomes small (and especially when he learns to crawl and move, beginning to be dangerous to escape from the large bed down), a decision based basically on the available space must be made in the room.
In my case we chose to remove a bedside table and put it on top of the other (as a symphonier) and take advantage of that space to put a bed, moving the large bed a little to make space.
If it didn't fit, I don't know what we would have done. Maybe put barriers on the bed and sleep the four a little tighter or maybe opt for an option that I've always liked: put the mattresses directly on the floor Y dragging, which is gerund.
When one of us cries
The biggest problem of sharing a bed with two children is that they don't usually have an established sleep rhythm yet and often wake up (the little one more than the older one, of course). This is further accentuated when someone is sick and coughs, cries, runny nose or whatever happens to him and causes noise.
In those moments it is when you have to run to try to calm the one who has woken up so that he does not wake up the one who still sleeps (or if you do not have her in a good time).
For this reason we have met more than once migrating to the sofa with one of them on a temporary basis (a few minutes until the situation calms down and we can return to the “base” in safe conditions) or moving to what remains of Night to another bed.
