To co-sleep or not to co-sleep...(long)

...that is the question. I never wanted to and always thought moms were crazy for doing it, but I now understand why it is popular among moms nowadays. I think it solely depends on the kind of baby you have. Gavin was a super mellow baby and could usually soothe himself and put himself to sleep with just a little bit of crying...even from the beginning. We figured Georgia would be the same way...atleast we were praying! It turned out that she is not as calm and mellow as her big brother was. She is very cuddly and needy and has a hard time soothing herself (although she did it today in her swing for the first time!!) on her own...I dont think it is anything the parents do...Georgia was like this the first night we had her in the hospital!

When we first brought Georgia home we would strictly put her in the bassinet next to our bed after feedings and changing her...she slept fairly well but would wake pretty frequently and I would have to sit there with bloodshot eyes while rocking the bassinett and not letting the vibration setting turn off until she was in a deep sleep. Once in her deep sleep she would stay asleep and actually sleep really well. Well, over time, all that rocking in the middle of the nights became very tiresome and ANNOYING. I slowly started to realize that nursing her in bed and letting her fall asleep and stay in the bed was beginning to look very nice and helped all three of us get a good nights rest. We still try and put her in her bassinet for the first half of the night until she wakes up to feed. The second half of the night is spent with her in our bed because she seems to be fussier during that second half of the night.

Now, you can judge me and wonder why we would do such a thing and risk harming our baby in the middle of the night, but I ask you not to judge until you are in the same situation with a fussy baby. I still can not believe that I am okay with this because it is something I ALWAYS frowned upon. It also does bring on a whole new set of worries...for example, is she becoming too dependant on us to sleep and will this make the transition into her crib really difficult? Will this dependency on us make it more difficult for her to soothe herself when she IS in her crib? Will this make her a shy and needy toddler? This is whats tough about parenting...there really is no good answer and you just have to do what works for that specific child. It's just difficult because Gavin was easy with EVERYTHING and still is! Dont get me wrong, I still consider her an easy baby...its just that I dwell and think a lot about how what we are doing now and how it is molding and shaping our baby girl into what she will be like in the future. I do not want to mess it up because you only have one shot at it! Yes, call me crazy, but I take parenting very seriously and have my ways pretty much set in how we want to parents our kids! Thank goodness Scott and I are on the same page...Oh I forgot to mention that we will be transitioning Georgia into her crib in about 2 weeks...I have a feeling it is going to be super tough, but we know how great the reward it of having a sleeping baby in their crib!