Is Bedsharing & Outdoor Naps for You?

The Scandinavian Way is to skip sleep training and lean into the least stressful and most flexible ways to get some rest, throughout the ever-changing childhood stages.

Mar 16, 2023

Hi friends!

If you also have kids that are allergic to sleep, I’m so glad you are here: you have finally found a kindred soul. If you don’t, but feel like getting babies and kids to sleep is unnecessarily time consuming and stressful, not to say costly—if you buy programs and hire experts—you will find this Scandinavian approach eyeopening. And, fair warning, if you haven’t heard much about Nordic sleep secrets, you might also find this all quite shocking: it’s a different way to do things.

That said, there’s no question that the Scandinavian Sleep Methods are the least stressful in the world, and the most successful, if not necessarily to get your kids to sleep, but for you to get more rest and relaxation, and for you to maintain your sanity until your kids snooze like teenagers.

When Your Kids Don’t Sleep Like French Babies

When I was pregnant with my first child, Lucas, I decided I’ll bring him up the French way. I read Bringing Up Bebe, and I loved it. It all sounded dreamy: simply by doing the 5-minute pause, babies would start sleeping through the night by three months with no further sleep issues. As the kid would grow, he would also listen, or obey when you asked him to do something, and ate everything, and didn’t completely run your life.

My Finnish mother kindly warned me: “I know you have these plans, but you never know what kind of kid are going to get. The plans might work, or they might not”.

They did not.

One And Done Approach to Sleep

Recommended by our Brooklyn pediatrician and doctor-recommended sleep coach who was also a psychologist, we were advised to go for the cry-it-out method once my baby hit a certain weight, and told us that it would be 3 to 5 nights and done. And everyone would be sleeping.

The problem was that it didn’t actually work the first time—and was traumatizing for all of us—but still, following our pediatrician’s advice, we tried again a few months later. It “worked”. I felt like I had won the (sleep) lottery. For a year.

Then, sleep deprived again, I stressed myself to bits studying and trying countless less-traumatizing but still intense-to-manage sleep-training methods. Nothing worked for long.

Then, when Lucas was 5 years old and his younger brother Miles was 3.5, and both were frequently wandering out of their beds to ours, another sleep consultant directed me to put a gate on the door, which I did, and when they quickly started climbing over it, someone else threw the idea of locks on the door (a door handle or knob with the lock on the outside, so you can’t open the door from the inside)—it’s a sleep training method that many American parents and even celebrities have mentioned using.

I finally came to the realization that this was all about to go too far: I wanted sleep but getting some shouldn’t be this stressful for both my kids and I.

I then decided to do what many Scandinavian mamas were doing—which was nothing—and just let them climb into my bed, until they naturally started sleeping in their own best, most nights, on their own.

How to Get Kids to Sleep Like a Nordic Baby

With my third child, I decided to do everything differently.

I immediately started with the easiest and the least stressful way to get your baby (or toddler) down for a nap, which is outside.

Most Scandinavian babies nap outside, in their strollers, all year round—and it works like magic without you doing anything except bundling them up and placing them in the stroller. You avoid two years of being stuck inside in a dark room trying to get them to settle for a nap, only to have them wake up a short time later, and you also don’t need to be rigid about naptimes.

This is how it works. You can do this if you have a house with a backyard, or a city apartment with a balcony. You don’t even need to walk the stroller, unless you crave a walk and some fresh air. You simply park it, and crack the door slightly open or place a monitor in the stroller.

In Scandinavian countries, you see babies and toddlers napping in their strollers outside of cafes and restaurants and even in parks, and it’s perfectly normal: in the US, you can’t do that, so I recommend you do this only on your own balcony or backyard.

If your child doesn’t immediately fall asleep, rock or walk the stroller for a few minutes and do it less and less each time.

I was finally able to take advantage of this luxury with my third son Jonas and realized that the only downside to this was that I couldn’t leave him to sleep in the stroller outside at night. It was the only place where he truly slept for hours and “like a baby”.

The Nordics are not fans of outdoor naps just because they make life with a baby so much easier: outdoor naps tend to lead to longer, more restful naps, more oxygenated brains, and strengthened immune systems: they are preferred over anything else.

TIP: I love Nordic stroller bassinet sleeping bags and stroller foot muffs: I have four different ones for every weather condition from frigid temps to hot summer days from Norwegian brand Voksi.com. Just a shout out because I love the brand so much.

Another shout-out to Reima.com, which is the warmest and comfiest Finnish outdoor wear for babies and kids that I also wore as a child, and it’s what my kids wear now.

How to Sleep Like a Scandi Mom or Dad

I’ll warn you right here and now that in the US, this is controversial. In Scandinavia, this is not controversial, and just normal.

When I finally stopped stressing out about the sleep training, I leaned into what many, though not all, Nordic parents do: bed-share. If it leads to more shut-eye, and less bedtime battles and less wakings at night, and they can avoid getting up from bed, they simply let their babies, tots and even bigger kids to just come and snuggle and sleep next to them.

I know what the American recommendations say, and you should 100% only follow what you feel comfortable with. So, please know that I’m not recommending this, I’m just simply telling you about the Scandin way.

The official Finnish midwives organization recommends bed-sharing from the newborn stage (in Scandinavia, babies are delivered by midwives, not OBs) because it allows for more sleep while breastfeeding at night, and safer breastfeeding (if a mom falls asleep breastfeeding while sitting up, the baby can fall), and makes it easier for the mom to breastfeed and breastfeed longer, and breastfeeding makes SIDS much more unlikely (in Scandinavia SIDS is almost nonexistent and happens nine times less than in the US). The organization says:

“What’s most important is that each member of the family gets as much sleep as is possible with little kids. Naps are ideal for parents too. Sleeping arrangements will keep changing as kids grow, so it’s better not to worry too much about how and where a baby sleeps, or if a baby gets used to bedsharing.”

I bed-shared with my first kid for the first 3 months before our temporary sleep training success, my second for 6 months after which he moved to the crib until he started diving out, and my third for two years: him spending the first part of his night in the crib, and the rest next to me, so I wouldn’t have to get up again.

I once tried nursing him sitting up, in an arm chair, with the intention of resettling him back into his bassinet (maybe it could work with this third kid!), but I fell asleep and woke up right before I actually dropped him. I didn’t try it again. I would simply lift him next to me, and he would breastfeed and fall asleep, all the while I slept.

With my third, I didn’t even worry about trying to get him to fall asleep on his own—it was simply too stressful and too much work with 3 kids. Nursing him to sleep took few minutes and I could lie down and close my eyes, whereas trying to pat him to sleep, with him laying on his back in his crib, screaming at my face to pick him up, hurt my arm, was stressful, and hardly ever worked (I once pat him on and off for almost 3 hours).

That said, bed-sharing is not for everyone, and the Scandinavian way is to find what is easiest, least stressful and most comfortable for you, and maximizes your sleep.

When You Need Your Bed Back or Won’t Share It

I bed-shared with Jonas, until he started moving so much in his sleep, that I absolutely could not sleep at all, being kicked in the back, or being climbed on, all night long. Or, worse, he would wake up at 1am wanting to play and party for hours. At that point, he would also just dive right out of his crib each time he woke up there, usually hurting himself.

To solve this problem, some sleep experts recommend crib tents, so that the child is essentially stuck in his crib, a gate at the door (which I had tried with my first two) or that dreaded lock in the door.

I put him in a big boy bed, and, because I had just become friends with a European child sleep consultant (shout-out to my friend emiliecarosleep.com), decided to try her non-sleep-training sleep—training advice, which is similar to the Scandinavian approach when absolutely nothing is working and no one is sleeping in any way.

Keep him up till he’s really sleepy.
Have him fall asleep in his own bed (which now took seconds as he was so sleepy).
Cut his naps to 15 mins, so he’s sleepier at night (not ideal but the party nights were not either)
Little to no reaction when he woke up at night (shhh, or, if that didn’t work, make up an excuse why you need to go back to your own bed ie. “mama’s back hurts, so I need to lie down”)

Simple and shockingly effective. And basically scream-free, except maybe the wake-ups unless he’s in a fun environment.

Short snooze, still outside.

Nothing is Permanent

The Scandinavian expectations on kids’ sleep do set you up for a more realistic ride: you don’t feel so terribly bad, when nothing works and when it all changes, all the time.

My bigger kids still sneak into our bed from time to time, and when it gets too much and they are all in there and I can’t even fit in, Emilie suggested I motivate them with a 7-day sleep chocolate calendar: collect a piece of chocolate in the am when you sleep in your own bed all night.

This new attitude has also helped me not worry so much about the myriad ways my toddler still tries to gain access to our bed, the latest being:

At 12:01am, me waking up to a sound of door slamming shut.

Silence

Me sitting up in the bed, trying to figure out what’s happening

Slowly, as my eyes get used to the dark, I see a 3-foot figure in a white sleep sack silently staring at me, in the corner of my bedroom, with two eyeballs glowing in the dark.

Silence. No one moves.

“Jonas?”