Kim Hawley lives in Washington, DC and supports families all over the world as a lactation consultant and holistic sleep coach. Last year, we dove into safe bedsharing on her podcast and became fast friends. I frequently send new parents to her when they need 1:1 sleep support.
As I got to know Kim better, I found out that she is legally blind. I had so many practical questions about bedsharing — I wondered what it was like getting her guide dog used to the new baby, how they set up their family bedroom, and if her sight had anything to do with bedsharing in the first place.
Kim was kind enough to give us a peek into her unique experience as a parent with a baby in her bed. Hit play above to listen to our 9-minute chat during your next contact nap.
Or you can read the transcript below, if that’s easier!
And make sure to scroll to the bottom of this page for a quick update regarding the LA wildfires. 🫶
KIM HAWLEY:
When we first brought my son home from the hospital, my guide dog slept next to my side of the bed — he always had. He was eight, he was not a young dog. And I was like, I'm not changing things on him. A baby's going to be a big change, so on and so forth. And so we put the bassinet at the end of the bed.
And that lasted, I think, one night. I had a C-section... And getting out of bed was hard, let alone walking a few steps to pick up my baby when he woke up.
And then I was like, All right, dog’s going to my husband's side of the bed! Sorry, Ralphie, you get to sleep next to somebody's side of the bed at least. The bassinet's going literally right next to me.
So then the baby was sleeping in the Arm's Reach bassinet and then the Pack ‘n Play, because he was a chunker and the bassinet only had a 15-pound weight limit. He was 15 pounds at two months because I had an oversupply.
TIFFANY BELANGER:
So did you have all the lights off in your room, or did you have a nightlight? Maybe what you could do really fast is just tell us about your sight. Like you said, you can see a little bit —
KIM HAWLEY:
Yeah! I mean, it's really hard to explain because my eyesight has always been the same. It's genetic. I was born legally blind, which does mean I have some vision, but not a lot. And so it depends a lot on lighting and contrast. And where it is in my field of vision, if I'm focusing in on it.
But most baby care tasks, I wasn't really doing visually. Like diaper changes by feel. We did a lot of baby-wearing our kiddos when they were young, very much in arms, because then you have a better sense of what's going on with them, but also a lot by sound.
Any parent learns their baby’s sounds, and what those mean. And when you're not relying on your vision for those cues, you are relying on sound for more awareness.
So, no, we didn't do lights on overnight at all. Maybe when my husband was helping me in the first week or two, when you're still learning to nurse and all that kind of stuff. And so maybe we turned on a low light for him, to help me get positioned. But after the first couple weeks, I did most of the nighttime parenting by mutually-agreed choice, not my husband trying to get out actively doing it, but I just coped better.
TIFFANY BELANGER:
So, at least here in America, what a lot of families do is follow the guidelines that your baby should be in your room for the first six months. And then right at that 6-month mark, especially if they're sleep training, they'll put their baby in a separate bedroom. Is that something that —
KIM HAWLEY:
Yeah, so I had always planned to have him in our room for the first year — like minimum the first six months, ideally the first year. And I came from a maternal and child Public Health background. My job was infant mortality reduction at the time that my oldest was born. So I knew I wanted to be room-sharing for the first year.
But it felt weird… Once he was here in my arms, as a real baby, the idea of putting him in another room did not feel normal to me. Didn't feel right to me.
TIFFANY BELANGER:
So is it because of your career that at the time that you did not want to bedshare? Is that the main reason?
KIM HAWLEY:
Yes, yes. Because I mean, I bedshared with my mom for the first, I don't know, three years. And I knew that, growing up.
I also have a background in Anthropology. I knew that most people bedshared around the world, but I was like, Oh, well, the guidelines have changed, so I'm not going to do it. I'm going to follow the guidelines because that was my professional environment.
And so that's why we were bedsharing-but-not-bedsharing before we fully admitted that we were bedsharing, if that makes sense.
TIFFANY BELANGER:
Do you have any memories of that time when you were bedsharing with your mom, can you remember what that felt like?
KIM HAWLEY:
I don't, but I do have memories… Well my mom is a pediatric nurse and she used to work nights when I was in early elementary school, and I do remember sneaking into her room when she would take a nap before work and falling asleep there, and then my parents would carry me back to my bed. Because I felt safer. I liked the idea of going in there before she went to work and getting to fall asleep in their room. And they were happy for me to do that.
TIFFANY BELANGER:
That's so sweet. One thing I wanted to ask was… You said you didn't have a floor bed because of your guide dog, which totally makes sense. When your kids started to get mobile, how did you protect them from rolling off the side of the bed?
KIM HAWLEY:
It's funny, we didn't feel comfortable relocating my guide dog, but we totally kicked the cat out of the bedroom! Right? Because we don't want the cat, I mean, even before we were bedsharing, crawling into the bassinet or anything like that.
By the time we were full-time bedsharing, he could roll both ways. He was four months and we just put him in-between the two of us, and I felt very comfortable with that. We created a good bit of space. We were very mindful about the covers, and he was in-between us.
Mind you, I knew my safe bedsharing guidelines, but it wasn't like it is now. You couldn't access quite as much. It wasn't as easy. So it didn't occur to me that some people might not think that was the safest thing, but I still, in hindsight, think that it was quite safe. We were being very safe about it, and he didn't move in his sleep. He was a snuggler. He just kind of snuggled into me. And it was not until he was much older that he would wiggle around some, but he never tried to get over someone's body, so he was just always in-between us.
My daughter was different because we had a family bed at that point, and we had set up a sidecar on her side to help her create a little bit more safety on that side. And then a mesh bed rail, which I know are a bit controversial, but I felt pretty safe troubleshooting that at that point to create a little bit more safety around the edge of the bed.
TIFFANY BELANGER:
I love mesh bed rails, and yeah — every parent's got to make their own decision.
So your kids are a little bit older now. Are they both sleeping in their own room at this point?
KIM HAWLEY:
(Laughing) We still do a lot of family cosleeping, to be honest. And that's what we want to do, not because we can't have them sleep elsewhere.
I mean, we're just really low-key about it. They have their own rooms, but we've never been like, “Go sleep in your room.” We didn't even try with my daughter because that's also our guest room. So it's easier for us that she stays with us because if we have to fully switch it over to her room, then we have to make some different choices about when we have family visiting.
And I mean, we can kick her out, but there are things that we have, like a TV, in there. If she's sleeping in there, we're not having a TV in there. So there's things that when it becomes fully her room that we would have to change.
And so I feel like it's just something that depends on the kiddo and depends on how you're feeling about bedsharing, and what that looks like. Because we're pretty content with how our sleep setup is, so don't put a lot of effort into anything else.
KIM HAWLEY:
Eye-masks, earplugs... Those don't really seem like safe things to have in the bed in case they come off of you. And! If you are used to seeing and hearing your baby, you should be able to see and hear your baby.
Like, I don't think that a deaf person shouldn't bedshare. A deaf person is going to have ways of being aware of their baby that are totally not on my radar!
It's not on my radar because that's not how I parent. But I would fully believe that deaf parents can bedshare safely because that's their reality. They're going to be used to being aware of their baby without hearing them.
But that's where I got feisty — I was like, “You don't have to see your baby to bedshare.” But I wasn't really thinking about the eye-mask piece. So yes, okay, you probably shouldn't have an eye-mask. Because that could be a strangulation risk.
TIFFANY BELANGER:
Totally! And my roommate in college used to sleep in those foam earplugs from back in the day — they're like bright orange or something. And she woke up, and she was chewing on it. Somehow it had fallen out. She had a dream where she was eating a gummy bear and she woke up and it —
KIM HAWLEY:
What?! Seriously —
TIFFANY BELANGER:
I'm serious! They fall out all the time. Imagine your baby choking on that!
Be sure to connect with Kim on Instagram and let her know you appreciate her sharing her POV with us!
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