This is a terrifying subject but I need to brave: I slept with my baby for the first five years of his life.

A little like breast-feeding, this is thorny ground, I know, and a vastly controversial and deeply emotional issue. So while my natural urge is to try to convert everyone to co-sleeping I completely understand the impossibility of this for many new mums: the fear is too great and our knowledge too small – most of us take pointers on child-rearing from our families and friends and if they have never co-slept or have strong views against it, it’s a huge step into the unknown.

It wasn’t until I entered the warm new world of mum-to-be and was lucky enough to encounter some really wise people through NCT groups and beautiful places such as the baby groups at Steiner schools, that I even knew there was an alternative to a cot. Then I was given the marvellous, much-mentioned: “Three in a Bed”, though this one is apparently also brilliant.

Obviously I bought a cot when I was pregnant. (It was secondhand and very cheap. Of course.) Like everyone else I didn’t even question it. It is what you put your baby in. And at the time I thought nothing of the small row of teeth marks still embedded in one end, that it arrived with.

The cot did end up having its uses. For the first six months it sat by the side of my bed to stop my baby slipping out. Then I learned that you don’t need this. Babies learn where the paramaters of the bed are and instinctively settle in the middle anyway. Most co sleeping parents will tell you about the Star Fish position where arms and legs fling out to the sides and often coil around you. It seems to be an instinctive thing. So, they won’t fall out. I promise you.

And you will not roll over on to them and smother them. This was always the first thing anyone said to me when I confessed (for that is how it feels) to sleeping with my baby. Word for word. It was always: “Oh no I would be too frightened I would roll over and crush them”. I can tell you that you don’t, you just don’t, ever.

You won’t believe me, nor should you, but there is evidence. It’s all there in buckets with Deborah Jackson: loads of research and common sense – and I don’t have enough room on a blog to write it all out, but these are the main points that really got me thinking and could be good to know:

Most of the world’s parents sleep with their babies. It’s largely only in the West that people believe we should sleep without our babies beside us – and in the UK only since relatively recently has it become so taboo.

Cot Death: The word “Cot” is there as that is where almost all the deaths occur. Yes, most people put their baby in a cot. But wouldn’t you imagine there would be a larger proportion of deaths from sleeping with your baby? There are barely any.

There is, however, a section of British society where there have been no recorded cot deaths at all. It’s a Bangladeshi community where…..all the mums sleep with their babies. Interesting again that it is a non Western custom to sleep with your baby and they appear to be the safest. Already this should show that the majority of the mums in the world choose to sleep with their babies, indeed children. The West is not so very big in world terms.

Yes, if you are drunk, a smoker, very overweight or putting your baby under heavy blankets and a tangle of sheets, the chances do increase. But if that doesn’t apply to you and you are just a normal parent, it’s not going to happen.

And you won’t believe me until you try it for yourself. At first I was super cautious. Of course I was. I put a pillow between us and made sure the duvet was half way down his body. But I would always wake to find he had squirreled under the pillow and pulled up the duvet somehow, looking for me and the warmth of the covers.

Once a few months had passed and every morning I woke to find a soundly sleeping baby next to me, still breathing, still intact and very content, I began to relax. And it became a great joy. We were so synchronised we woke together. I would hazard a guess that you don’t open your eyes in the morning to a soft kiss and your drowsy child whispering “the sun has come Mummy so we better do something interesting” in your ear!

(You don’t stay in the bed once they are asleep by the way. Heavens, I am not suggesting you go to bed at 5pm every night! No, you creep away and put the baby monitor on (if you want. I gave up after a bit – small house, thin floorboards!).

When he was three and tougher, there was no need for caution and he would climb in and settle himself. We cuddled, read stories, sang or just chatted about the day. Sometimes he was feeling silly so we would play for a bit but he knew he had to go to sleep sooner or later. And he did. Easily and happily.

And he never woke in the night. Why would he? He knew I was nearby and he was safe.

It was hard showing sympathy when mum friends – and this was ALL my mum friends – dragged themselves to a chair, bleary eyed and exhausted, to talk about their terrible night experiences.

“Up three, four five times, why won’t he go to sleep, nothing I can do, when will it end?”

They knew my views on this but I did not manage to convince a single one of them that they could change all this, overnight. Literally. The conditioning was too strong. It’s even more ironic really that as time went on, several of them admitted that their child, when older and able to walk, often climbed into their bed in the night/morning. They said this in hushed tones, like a confession. Leave them there I said! But they always patiently got up and took them back to their rooms. Several times if need be.

I can’t imagine what nights were like for them. But thanks to the books I read on it, I can see it from the child’s point of view. I read this somewhere and this is the basic gist of it. It’s a tough read but was definitely what finally convinced me.

“Here is what baby knows. She is taken out of your warm arms and put far away from you in another room, in a cage with cold bedding. She needs to be safe – you are her safety and you have left her. Night time is the most terrifying time. It goes dark. The reassuring noises of the day fade away and in primeval terms, she is most at risk. She cannot run away should a tiger appear in the bedroom/living room/street so she must know you are very near. She cannot forage for food and is always hungry so you also, must be near by. But you are not.”

I mentioned that Albie never woke in the night, except to rummage for a nipple when he was tiny and effectively feed himself. When you have to get out of bed, put on a light, fumble your way to another room, baby’s cries will have reached screaming pitch and it is doubly hard for you, and he, now fully awake, to settle back down again. Chances are, since he knows you will be leaving him again and he will be in that nasty frightening darkness all alone very soon, he will wake repeatedly until exhaustion cuts in and does the job. For a couple of hours.

All of you will be wide awake, possibly several times a night. The co sleeping parents may find they never wake at all, except to make an easily accessible nipple a bit more available with a rustle of a nightie.

And I can’t tell you unless you know it for yourself, how very very right it feels to have your warm, snuffling, sweet breathed child curled up beside you through the night.

Think apes if it helps. And those wildlife programmes. Do you ever see the tiny babies anywhere else but in their mother’s arms or fast asleep on their back?
And while we are on the subject of apes. Something else I find interesting is that while he quite likes them now, Albie was completely disdainful of grinning teddies, furry rabbits and all things cute and Disney. He has no need of these substitutes because he has never been denied the closeness of my skin. It calls to mind the monkey experiments we all know about.

The one where they took baby chimps away from their mothers and put them in bare cages with the option of a piece of metal with some fur draped over it, or food. And they always went for the fur.

I don’t like to think of the baby chimp in the bare cage with its scraggy piece of fur.

But how far away is this from a baby clinging onto its teddy, all alone and gazing through the bars of a cot?