Separate Beds?

[Sundae]

My Mum still has residual guilt for the fact she followed late 60s ideal of Not Letting Baby Dictate Your Life. She says she used to leave my sister screaming in the pram in the garden* because it was believed that babies needed fresh air and were trying to manipulate you by crying. She thinks that's why my sister wouldn't do anything alone until she was in her teens - she wouldn't go to Play School (kindergarten), Brownies, dance lessons, Guides - nothing until I was old enough to join with her.

I was a quiet baby. Which makes her worry I just lost hope easily.

Anyway, I read a very interesting book called Three in a Bed earlier this year, about sleeping with a baby. It's unlikely to have any use to me, but I was fascinated by the idea that soemthing my Mum considered weak and indulgent was in fact the norm for the English poor until about a century ago. Damn Victoria and her fussy ways.

I know there's a fine line between accepting a baby is crying because it has genuine needs, and indulging a child (until it becomes a tyrant at the extreme end). But it does seem to me to be a natural thing to do - sleep with your baby.

Certainly Diz (smaller and frailer than any baby, although infinitely more cunning) has never been rolled on by me, and he joins me every morning.

*ETA when she knew she had no reason to scream and there was a net on the pram