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My baby only sleeps when she's next to me I know it's not sustainable but I have no idea how to fix it and I'm scared. We are first time parents, and I feel like we can't get anything right. There are so many rules, so many things you're supposed to do and not supposed to do. Every time I think I have something figured out, I find out I've been doing it wrong the whole time. And it's not like anyone sits you down and hands you a list you just find out usually too late. Like with our daughter's head It was a stupid mistake I wish I could go back and fix. She has plagiocephaly because my husband and I didn't know you were supposed to turn her head if she preferred one side. Nobody told us and the part that crushes my heart is that we were with her every single day. Watching her trying to do everything right. And we still let it happen. I couldn't stop thinking about how many other things we may have been getting wrong without even knowing it. And then we found out about the swaddle. She slept in a swaddle from the day we brought her home it was the only thing that brought her comfort. With the swaddle, she was going down at 8:30 and not waking up until 7 in the morning. My husband and I would put her down and just breathe for the first time all day we thought we had figured something out we thought we were doing something right. She is almost five months old now And we just found out you are supposed to stop swaddling at eight weeks. Eight weeks. She had been wrapped in that swaddle for four months longer than she was supposed to be. Four months of nights where we thought we were helping her and we were actually just making her more and more dependent on the one thing we were eventually going to have to take away. And when we stopped using the swaddle it was a disaster she woke up at 1 am then at 3 am and then finally at 5 am my husband just decided to get up with her And from that point on we had been trying everything to replace the swaddle but nothing seems to work We rocked her we tried to shush her and patted her bum hoping she would just fall back asleep but she wouldn't And the only thing that seemed to worked was bringing her into our bed. The second she was next to us she went quiet and fell back asleep like nothing had happened. We have been doing this for week and I know co-sleeping works for some people. But my husband and I are both really heavy sleepers. Not a little heavy really heavy we lie there with her between us and I can’t fully let myself fall asleep because I am scared I think of the worst possible outcome It feels like we traded one mistake for a worse one. And the thought I keep having, the one I cannot shake, is the same thought I had when I found out about her head. We were right there the whole time. We just didn't know. I had told myself the answer was obvious. She spent almost her entire life falling asleep wrapped tight in that swaddle and now it was gone. Of course she couldn't sleep she didn't know how to settle without it. We took away the only thing that was keeping her calm enough to stay asleep And now she needed us to be the swaddle instead. That's what I believed. It made sense But honestly, I was at my breaking point I was scared and exhausted. I didn't want to make any more mistakes. So I decided to make a post on Facebook just asking for help. Hoping someone else had been through this before. Because I had no clue what to do next. It felt like everything I tried was always wrong. A few minutes later a woman named Jennifer sent me a DM. "Can I ask you something," she said. "When she wakes up at night and you bring her into bed with you, does she calm down pretty quickly once she's next to you." I told her yes. The second she's next to us she goes quiet. "That makes complete sense," Jennifer said. "And I'll explain why in a second. But first, can I ask you something else?” Yes of course “Before you brought her into bed, when she woke up and you tried to put her back down in the crib, was she just wide awake. Like fully alert even though she had to be exhausted." Yes. Every single time. Like a switch flipped. "Okay," she said. "So here's what's actually happening. Every baby's nervous system checks in during the night” “Multiple times. That's normal. That's literally its job. It's just making sure everything is okay. And when it checks in, it needs something to tell it that everything is fine so it can go back to sleep." Ok I understand why was she fine before? "The swaddle was that thing for five months, every single time her nervous system checked in at night, the swaddle was there” “The pressure. The warmth. The feeling of being held. That's what was telling her nervous system everything is okay, go back to sleep” “She didn't know how to fall back asleep the swaddle did it for her." I had never thought about it that way. "When you took the swaddle away, that signal disappeared so now every time her nervous system checks in at night, it gets nothing back. No signal. So it stays alert” “And an alert nervous system means a wide awake baby. That's why nothing you tried was working. The rocking. The shushing. The patting” “None of it was giving her nervous system what it was used to getting." I told her that's exactly what it felt like. Like she just couldn't switch back off no matter what we did. "Right and that's also why co-sleeping worked your body next to hers was giving her nervous system that same signal the swaddle used to give” “Your warmth. Your breathing. Your presence right there. That's why the second she was next to you she went quiet. You became the swaddle." I told her I never thought about it like that but that made complete sense. "But here's the thing," she said. "Co-sleeping only worked because it was handling one part of what her nervous system needs to calm down” “There's actually a second part. And your body next to hers wasn't touching it." What do you mean? "For her nervous system to fully calm down, two things have to happen," Jennifer said. "The first thing is it needs that safety signal” “The warmth, the pressure, the feeling that someone is there. That's what the swaddle gave her and that's what you're giving her now when she's in bed with you." Okay. "The second thing is her airway has to feel completely free no resistance nothing that makes breathing feel like even the smallest amount of work” “Because when breathing feels like work, even just a tiny bit, the nervous system stays on guard. That's just how the body is wired. It cannot fully calm down if any part of it is working." Our daughter's breathing sounds completely fine to us. "It would, you'd never hear it. It's not that kind of resistance. It's just the tiniest amount of friction. Enough to keep her nervous system from fully switching off” “And that's why even in bed with you she still wasn't sleeping perfectly. Because you were handling the first thing. But the second thing still had nothing." I hadn't even noticed that. But she was right. Even in our bed she still woke up sometimes. "That's the part nobody talks about” “Everyone says get them calm get them feeling safe and that's right but that’s only half of it” “The other half is the airway and if the airway isn't completely at ease, the nervous system never fully lets its guard down. No matter what else you do." She told me that's when she found something called Slumberlee. Four organic ingredients. Lavender to give the nervous system that safety signal, the part you can see and feel. And fir needle essential oil for the airway, the part you can't see or hear but that was keeping her son's nervous system on guard every single night. She put a small amount on his chest and feet before bed. He woke up twice that night instead of every couple of hours. By the third night he slept five hours straight. By the end of that first week he was staying down. I asked jennifer for the link that night I bought it the same night and it arrived 2 days later The first night I put a small amount on her chest and feet before her routine. Bath, feed, lullaby, down she went. She woke up once. I grabbed my husband's arm in the dark. Neither of us said anything. Second night, once again. Third night she slept from 8:30 all the way through and I woke up before she did because my body didn't know what to do with that much sleep. We have not brought her into our bed since. I keep thinking about what Jennifer said. Her nervous system just needed both things at the same time. The safety signal and the airway. Once it had both, it could finally do what it was always supposed to do. I spent weeks lying awake in the dark too scared to fall asleep next to my own baby. My husband did too. We never talked about how scared we both were but we didn't have to. We both knew. We are not scared anymore. She goes down at 8:30. She stays down. My husband and I put her down and actually breathe for the first time all day, the same way we used to when the swaddle was doing its job. We just didn't know there was something that could do it better. If you are in this right now, I want you to know it is not the swaddle. You did not break her. Her nervous system just never had both things it needed to fully calm down. The second it does, she will do the rest herself. Thank you for reading my story If you want to try what worked for me and my daughter I’ll put the link to Slumberlee here https://slumberlee.com/products/organic-sleep-cream-single