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Dear Mamas,
I’ve been thinking about this a LOT and we have to come up with a new word. Co-sleeping has been almost thoroughly co-opted to mean infants sleeping with anyone, anywhere; and is grabbing the headlines everywhere closely followed by the word ‘death’. We’d be fighting an uphill battle trying to educate people what the word means, much less why it’s safe.
So, here’s your homework…co-sleeping is out. The family bed is more a philosophy than an action. we need a word (or short phrase) that means an exclusively breastfeeding baby sleeping beside its mother. And since I have the smartest readers in the attachment parenting universe, (HI!) I knew you’d be the ones to do the brainstorming. I will of course be stealing your ideas ;o)
and is it just me or does Mama rock? This latest comic is my favorite!
xox,
Heather
…sleeping on contact…
Nighttime parenting?
Lol
If you want something upbeat, go with LAFS or LAFN (pronounced Laughs or laughin’).
“Love And Food Siesta” or “Love and Food Naps”.
Because that’s what breastfeeding is- love and food!
But if you’re wanting something official-sounding, hmm… no ideas here. Sorry. Maybe something with the word “mutual”?
I’ve seen the term “Sleep sharing”, but that doesn’t necessarily imply exclusive breastfeeding as part of the arrangement.
I like TopHat’s suggestions.
Maybe NASS? Nursing And Sleep-Sharing.
“I’m a Proud NASS parent” ??? Hmmmm…
Slumber-feeding?
Can’t wait to see what you come up with!
NFF: Nighttime Feeding Facilitation?
NNF: Nighttime Nursing Facilitation?
SINC or SYNC: Sleeping with Infant(s)/Young for Nursing Convenience? (I confess that I really like this one. I think it fits well with the philosphy and benefits of a family bed.)
That’s all I’ve got right now in my pre-parent brain.
I go on vacation and you announce you’re pregnant. Well, congratulations from a complete stranger!
“Wake up baby! You’re not on an approved surface!!!”
How about referring to it as sleeping like a mammal?
Or Dreamfeeding? I remember my husband asking, how many times did she wake to nurse last night? and not having any idea because I barely woke to nurse.
Hmmm… what about “Safesleeping?” It is the safest way for babies to sleep, after all. Dr. Sears calls it “sharing sleep” but that doesn’t exactly imply that the babies are exclusively breastfed.
Hooray for the family bed! We no longer ebf (low supply due to pcos, my baby finally gave up, poor baby), but we love our family bad. Our older child slept with us until he was 5, when the new baby came and he moved into grandma’s bed. So we are a cross-generational family bed household!
Nurse-sleeping? because it’s the most efficient way to nurse/sleep?
Care-full sleeping?
Overnight cue feeding, OCF for short. Takes the whole “sodden drunk cigarette-smoking parent passing out on an overstuffed couch” image out of the idea and focuses on the major benefit to the baby.
How about “The Natural Process By Which Children and Mothers Have Been Sleeping and Nursing for Millennia Until Meddling Scientists Thought They Knew Better than the Mothering Instinct and Created Cribs and Formula and Skewed the Statistics In Their Favor” or TNPBWCAMHBSANFMUMSTTKBTTMIACCAFASTSITF (which isn’t any smaller than any of the acronyms scientists give stuff, if you stop and think about it).
here’s my brainstorm, hurricane i-dra!
family-sleeping, attachment-sleeping, sleep-nursing, 24-hour-parenting, classical parenting, roots parenting, common bed. that’s all i can come up with at 1:30am. i really like saying bedsharing.
24 hour parenting! I love it! bed bonding… or maybe not. LOL
I am loving mama!
Heather in Tucson
I absolutely love Mama! This evolution of Hathor is not something I realized needed to be until I saw Mama and then I was like “Yeah! This!” What a fantastic beginning to a new phase of your life!
I actually like sleep-sharing and I like sleep-nursing, too. In our house it’s “comfort sleeping”.
Hmmm… night nursing near Mama… Breastfed bed sharing… Mama and baby sleep next to each other at night while breastfeeding because it’s the most natural thing to do in the world (oh, sorry, that’s a little too long –)
I would also say that EBF may not be the real issue as there are sensitive mamas and dads who do sleep next to baby and baby lives… but I see you’re trying to make a point here. I do love the new Mama comics!!!
Hmmmm, how about Nursing While Sleeping (NWS)? Or Breasts and Rest!! Just pulling random stuff up here…Relaxation Lactation? Breastfeeding In Bed (BIB)? This is fun!!
I have to say I adore Hathor AND Mama Is SOOOOOOOOOOOO much! Loving the new comic too!! Makes me nuts that “co-sleeping” is under so much fire, and being unfairly lumped in with unsafe bedsharing and drug users….argh.
Biological sleeping, anthropological sleeping, what word is there for “this is how humans were designed to live” lol. I guess it should just be called sleeping and in an ideal world humans would know that for a baby that includes breastfeeding and sleeping next to mom.
“Easier”? (but I can’t think of anything to make each letter stand for something)
“Breastfeeding in Bed”
I like bed-sharing and sleep-sharing in general – I like the idea of continuing the family bed once my daughter stops nursing. But currently I call our setup “dreamfeeding” since mama and baby both sleep through the nighttime nursing!
I am seeing a line of bumper stickers in the near future…
How about…AARCP…American Association of Resting Children and Parents, “The AARCP today announced that parents who rest with their children have lowered automobile accidents by 1/3 due to the fact they get better quantity and quallity sleep.”
How about “sleeping”, which is what I did more of when I slept next to my baby… I know that’s not very helpful and inclusive, but I wonder why we need a different term. We’re sleeping. Let’s normalize it. How I sleep is no business of the formula companies. Let’s get my bed out of legislation for all reasons, ok? I am a responsible adult, and exceptions are not the rule. People should be punished for being stupid and hurting other people, not for being people.
I know I am preaching to the choir, but when we get down to the nit-pickiness of it, all of a sudden we have to define every little thing. Open it up, and allow people to make choices inside the privacy of their own home. Let’s not play their game of starting to name and define so that every little thing can be scrutinized. We’re sleeping. If anyone wants to ask me about how we sleep, they had better be prepared to hear what I say about it, or they shouldn’t open the topic. And that’s all it should ever be. Everyone who wasn’t sleeping in my bed before can happily just get out of it.
I like lots of these!
I like overnight cue feeding the best, though, out of the ones I’ve heard.
I was trying to think of something along the lines of biologically inclined, um… biological sleep sharing? I think this also falls under the umbrella of ecological breastfeeding (the act of breastfeeding exclusively, without solids, pacis, or water, and unrestricted night nursing to prevent ovulation).
I like “shared sleep” or “safe shared sleep”. It doesn’t exclude baby sleeping in a crib or bassinette near mama’s bed (which works very well for some families, and better for some babies) and it doesn’t exclude babies who aren’t breastfeeding for whatever reason.
IMO, it DOES exclude “drunk mama passed out on couch next to baby” because then they wouldn’t be sharing sleep, the term “shared” implies that mama is in tune with baby’s sleep cycles.
Terms like “family bed” aren’t as accurate- shared sleep doesn’t always include dad (or 2nd mom) or older siblings- people who are very much part of the family but may make sleeping with an infant less safe.
Bed-nursing
Overnight parenting
Night-night-nee-nee (that’s the term in our house)
Slursing. No, that sounds like something a drunk would do. Or Neeping. That sounds like something a drug addict would do. =D
I also love overnight cue feeding… but you can do that with babe in a crib next to you too, technically.
In-bed cue-feeding? IBFC!
Hmm, here’s an idea… how about we call it SLEEPING. Since, as others have already pointed out, sharing sleep is the normal, biological state. Instead, how about we call this modern invention of separating babies and mamas “isolation-sleeping” or “solo-sleeping”?
Amy (who loves to wear her Hathor “shhh…revolution in progress” sleep cartoon t-shirt.)
I like Uniquely Jena’s suggestion: SYNC – Sleeping with Young for Nursing Convenience: It reminds me that studies showed the mother-and-nursling sleep cycles are in sync, making them very aware of each other.
i like amy’s observation. we should use sleeping with our babies as the norm by which we measure & label other sleep arrangements. crib sleeping is not the natural state. this is just like the “milk” debate. we can say soy milk, cow milk, goat milk & “milk” for breastmilk!
A-ha! I love the idea of calling it simply “sleeping” and everything else is “isolation-sleeping” LOL!!!
I vote for that idea too, just Sleeping!!!
And I add for everything else “sleeping in ostracism” (sorry my english is not very good, I’m spanish)
Okay LOVING calling it sleeping!!! LOL!! And it’s true, we’re odd for NOT sleeping with our babies.
I’m so calling it that from now on, as well as the whole milk thing. I’ll be confusing MANY MANY people!!
how about attachment sleeping?
I love SYNCH. And am loving the normalising of the sleeping relationship. It’s like the breastfeeding/formula feeding equivalence: if BF is the norm then babies who are formula fed have a lower IQ. If FF is the norm then babies who are BF have a higher IQ… A small change but an important one.
Loving Mama. And conrgats :~)))
Who are all you Mamas that are getting “sleep?” There’s not so much sleeping around our house, we just call it “eating lying down.”
I like the ‘sleeping’ idea too! We should normalise what is the natural thing to do!
I’d rather see a term which doesn’t use ‘nursing’ as it’s an Americanism, it certainly isn’t used in the UK, whereas it seems both ‘nursing’ *and* ‘breastfeeding’ are used in the US.
I like ‘breastfeeding’ much better anyhow as it sounds more blatant and less afraid – it says what it is loud and proud! ‘Nursing’ in this country means the job of being a medical nurse.
So instead of saying “we co sleep” we can say “we don’t incorporate night time isolation techniques.” Not bad.
I was also thinking about “Prolactin-induced sleep.”
I can’t believe I haven’t been able to find a term used, even for kittens, for that sleeping, nursing, kind of thing. We see it in all kinds of creatures. That den or nest phase when the groggy mom lays around nursing like crazy and loses weight and keeps her young close to her. I can’t think of another species that doesn’t sleep with it’s mother before it’s weaned.
Yes! Just “sleeping” is the best idea in this thread so far. “We don’t practice infant isolation techniques in our home . . . ” YES! Throw the burden of justification back on people who think that baby monitor manufacturers or Gary Ezzo’s mean-spirited advice trump thousands of years of motherhood. And give people who never thought that much about it . . . food for thought.
I like sleeping.
It falls into the same argument about the language we use: like “breast is best” Breast isn’t the “best ” choice- breast is the Normal choice. By that reasoning, all other methods of feeding are second best, and not “Normal”. Same with “co-sleeping”- it isn’t “best”, it’s Normal. and therefore all other methods of night time parenting are second best, and not normal.
By the way Heather- Congrats! and thanx for your new site- I’ll be dropping in often!!
***DR PHIL ATTACKS HOME BIRTHING!!!***
He’s looking for people who regret their home births!
http://www.drphil.com/plugger/respond/?plugID=12524
“Do you regret having a home birth?
Did you have a child at your home?
Did you want to have a soothing experience where you were in control and could bond with your child?
Did it not go the way you planned?
Do you regret having a home birth?
Do you regret using a midwife instead of going to a hospital?
Did you have your second child the traditional way in a hospital?
If you or someone you know regrets having a home birth please tell us your story below.
Be sure to be specific and include details!”
THIS mama is seething!!! Way to present both sides of the story Dr. Phil, sheesh!
Well, he probably didn’t have any problem finding people who have had pleasant home birth experiences. No need to go fishing like that for the other side. Not that I expect a fair and unbiased look at the issue from daytime television..
Julie – there is a term. It’s called hibernation, and I wish I could do that every winter!
I wrote in to dr. phil. here’s my letter: “I’d like to know what your agenda is. I had my son in a freestanding birthing center (not attached to a hospital) & I intend to have my next child at home. What reason do you have for specifically seeking out unhappy homebirthers? The hospital is, by no means “the traditional way” of birthing. Women have been birthing their babies at home ever since First Woman, so it seems to me you are trying to portray homebirthing in a negative, unbalanced light. Be careful, Dr. Phil. I don’t agree with all of your points of view, but I damn well respect you, I enjoy your show & I know millions of other women feel the same way. I would really hate to see you sink to the level of Tyra Banks, who only few weeks ago publicly tore down breastfeeders on national television. Millions of pregnant women watch both shows & you each possess enough influence that could sway a woman who is undecided about where to birth & how to feed her baby toward a cascade of medical interventions, including a cesarean and formula feeding, which all balanced research has found to be inferior to natural breastmilk. If you’re going to do a show about homebirthing, fine, but I urge you to invite women who enjoyed & felt empowered by their homebirth experience in order to show women across the nation that homebirth can & often is a satisfying, positive experience for all involved. Unless, of course, you’re affiliated with ACOG….. then to hell with you.”
I vote a bunch of Mamas write into Dr. Phil claiming to have a horrible birth experience and begging to be on his show so we can tell all mothers how horrible it is to home birth and then as soon as they are all on the show, completely turn it around and say “what? No way, home birthing ROCKS! Best experience of my life” and steer the conversation away from danger. How about they have some intelligent information on that show for ONCE?
Imagine his face when he finds out he’s been tricked by a band of bloodthirsty happy homebirthers out for a little Dr. Phil snack
LOL
I am loving “Sleeping”.
Heather in Tucson
Mammarian sleep. Mammalian sleep. Mammal nesting. Something to include nursing…
How about Mammarian Somnus. I am sure that is somehow grammatically incorrect but we can tweak it.
I say we ‘share sleep’. Or just ‘sleep nearby’. Who else should care just how ‘nearby’ that means? Why is it other people’s business where we sleep? Are the police going to start getting lists of new birth registrations and come checking to make sure there’s cribs in every home?
Non-separation
Of
Resting
Mothers
And
Little Ones
Here’s my submission to Dr. Phil–I am all about joining you for a feast on this blowhard, Amber S. and sewathomemama! I tried to lie and say I had a bad homebirth experience in the interest of bluffing my way on the show, but I just couldn’t.
“What is the agenda behind this show? Where is the form to write in about my AMAZING and WONDERFUL home birth experience? Because that is pretty much the only kind of home birth experience I have ever encountered. Certainly there are exceptions, but they are just that: exceptions. Women choose home birth for a vast array of reasons, and I would hope that as a “doctor” with a research staff, you have done your research on the horrific C-section rates and the abysmal rate of interventions in normal, low-risk births. Did you know that few obstetricians EVER see a woman’s progression through labor from beginning to end, unless it’s their own/their wives’? They have NO IDEA what normal labor looks like, feels like, progresses like–and we put these folks in charge of “managing” our normal births? Of course, thank goodness for their technology and their training in extreme/emergency situations, but it benefits absolutely no one to create these situations out of ignorance of what normal birth is and can be. If you are seeking an unapologetic advocate for the choice to home birth, you’ll find many more of us than the garish “nightmare” sorts of situations you seek out so ardently.”
I think there needs to be a two sets of vocabularies, each with it’s own terms.
Vocabulary 1: for parents…
sleeping, milk, artificial baby milk, isolation sleeping, sleeping in the same room
Vocabulary 2: for doctors and researchers …
SINC or SYNC: Sleeping with Infant(s)/Young for Nursing Convenience (maybe finding another) C word …, Biological Sleeping, Overnight cue feeding, OCF (includes bedsharring and nearby sleeping with breastfeeding),
so in Vocabulary 2 for doctors, they can have precise words for:
exclusive breastfeeding with bed sharring
exclusive breastfeeding with nearby sleeping, eating in bed
exclusive breastfeeding with nearby sleeping, feeding in a chair
exclusive breastfeeding with sleeping on a couch, lazy boy or other unsafe surface
mixed feeding with the variations
many many kids 6 mo and older are not exclusively breastfed… they eat solids, or play with them
so need other terms for non-formula fed, still breastfeeding baby, also for 1-2 yo, and 2-3 yo and 3 and up.
also need other terms for babies who were/are non-formula fed, but still share sleep
So one term does not have to catch all… but need lots of terms so that research can be accurately conducted.
Vocabulary for families has a different purpose.
…. untangle that mess of thoughts! I dare you.
BED AND BREASTFAST
BED AND BREASTFEED
BED AND BREAST
NON-STOP NIGHT NURTURE
or UNINTERRUPTED NIGHT(TIME) NURTURE
or COMPLETE NIGHT(TIME) NURTURE
MULTIDISCIPLINARY NIGHT(TIME) NURTURE
MULTIFACETED NIGHT(TIME) NURTURE PROVISION
in germany it’s called “familienbett” or as a verb, “familienbetten”, familybed or familybedding.
and it’s not necessarily only breastfeeding families that use the familybed.