A glimpse into cosleeping with a neurodivergent baby

The POV Series

Hi friends. So glad you opened this one up — it’s a good one.

Lauren Sloan (late-30s) lives in Kansas and is mom to three boys spanning in age from 3 to 17. She transitioned from nursing to supporting highly-sensitive neurodivergent babies/toddlers after her harrowing experience with her youngest son.

Lauren is sharing that story with us today. It brought tears to my eyes as I read it, imagining what she went through for so long. And then later on, as I was driving, I thought about Little Tiffany. (Me.) My story isn’t the same as Lauren’s little boy, but I was highly-sensitive and neurodivergent and I absolutely needed physical proximity to help me sleep. And I didn’t receive it.

(It was back in the late-80s, and it’s a story for a different day.)

I hope Lauren’s story impacts you, whether you suspect your baby is highly-sensitive or neurodivergent, or not. Afterwards, say hi on Insta @spiritedbabysleep or here on Substack at

Spirited Baby Sleep

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My son was born in 2021, at the height of ongoing pandemic-related restrictions. The world was still locked down in so many ways, and that isolation became the backdrop of my postpartum experience.

From the very first moments of his life, I noticed things that felt… different. He averted his gaze from the start, resisted skin-to-skin contact, and seemed utterly overwhelmed by stillness or quiet. He needed constant motion — rocking, bouncing, walking — just to maintain a fragile sense of regulation.

But at the time, I didn’t have language for any of that. I only knew that I couldn’t put him down. Not for sleep, not for a shower, not even for a few minutes without a complete nervous system unraveling.

Even in the hospital, the messaging was loud and unwavering: “Do not sleep with your baby. Under any circumstance.” Nurses reminded me constantly, some gently, some more firmly.

I remember one nurse leaning in and saying, “We’ve had babies die because mothers think they can sleep with them. Don’t let it be you.” I wasn’t just warned — I was frightened. Threatened, even.

The implication was clear: if I brought my baby into bed, it would be a willful act of negligence. And yet, from the very first night, he couldn’t sleep unless he was on my body.

So I did what I thought I had to do. I took him home, set up camp in a rocker/recliner in our master bedroom, and tried to survive. The noise followed me: “You’ll spoil him.” “Let him cry.” “He needs to learn.”

But nothing about his cries felt like something to push through. They were desperate, panicked, dysregulated. He was suffering. And soon, I was too.

He never — not once — slept independently in his crib. Day or night. I spent every moment of his sleep cycle rocking him in that chair. At night, I would only sleep when he allowed me to recline just enough to nurse him to sleep — sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes less — before he startled awake and the cycle began again.

More often, I would doze off involuntarily at 2 or 3 a.m. in the chair, only to jerk awake in panic because I had stopped rocking him. It was never intentional. It was exhaustion.

I shared this with my provider at my six-week postpartum visit. I told them, “I’m having to rock him all night.” I was met with another firm reminder: “Whatever you do, don’t bring him into the bed.”

By that point, my mental health was unraveling fast. I was in a spiral of postpartum depression, severe anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and something I now recognize as postpartum OCD. Rage, too — a frightening, foreign kind of anger that came from exhaustion and helplessness. And still, my baby wasn’t sleeping. And neither was I.

By four months, he tolerated brief periods in the reclined chair, maybe 20 to 30 minutes, before jolting awake and demanding the rhythmic, aggressive rocking to resume. I began experiencing visual hallucinations — flashes of light in the corners of the room where there were no lights. I was beyond the threshold of functioning.

And still, I thought I was doing the right thing. I believed I was protecting him. I was following the rules. I was keeping him out of the bed.

Then, a dear friend of mine from nursing school — who also happened to be an IBCLC — came to visit. She asked gentle, open questions. It didn’t take her long to recognize the severity of the situation, or the danger we were in. Not just emotionally, but physically.

She calmly explained the risks of sleeping upright in a chair — something that, ironically, carries a higher risk than bedsharing under safe conditions. She showed me the cuddle curl. She helped me practice side-lying nursing. And most importantly, she introduced me to the Safe Sleep Seven.

It was the first time I learned there was a framework for bedsharing safely. That I could protect my baby while honoring his nervous system’s needs. That my only options weren’t suffering in a chair or letting him scream in a crib. That there was another way.

That conversation changed everything. It gave me back my agency. It gave my son the sleep he needed. And it gave me the first threads of healing.

Transitioning to safe bedsharing didn’t magically fix everything. It wasn’t a cure-all for our sleep struggles, nor did it instantly dissolve the postpartum depression and anxiety I was facing.

But it was a lifeline — something solid to hold onto after months of freefall. It was the shift that finally allowed us to stop spiraling and start stabilizing.

My baby still needed motion to fall asleep. That didn’t disappear with bedsharing. In fact, I can count on one hand how many times he fell asleep nursing in bed during that first year — once. Just once. So we had to work within his unique needs.

Our rhythm became this: I would rock him to sleep in the chair, then gently transfer him to the bed, where I laid in a side-lying, cuddle curl position. Once there, he could access non-nutritive suckling, and that kept him asleep for short stretches — usually 30 to 60 minutes before needing to be rocked and transferred again.

It wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t “by the book.” But it was safe. And more than that — it was sustainable.

After months of sleeping in unsafe positions and having virtually no consolidated rest, even a single hour of uninterrupted sleep felt like a gift. The shorter stretches — 30 minutes here, 45 minutes there — were still more rest than I had been getting. And over time, those little wins added up.

Within a few nights, the visual hallucinations I had been experiencing — flashes of light in places where there were no lights — stopped. The constant state of panic in my body began to ease. There were days when I could think clearly again. I could prepare a meal. I could respond to my older children without snapping. I could breathe.

That’s the part I think so many people miss when they talk about infant sleep in binary terms: good vs. bad, independent vs. dependent. But sleep isn’t just about the baby. It’s about the entire ecosystem of the family.

When I started to sleep—even just a little—I was no longer functioning in survival mode. My nervous system had the space to soften. And when I could settle, he could too.

We began to snowball in the right direction.

Eventually, we settled into a rhythm. At night, we practiced the cuddle curl — my body curled protectively around his, his face aligned with my breast, blankets away from his space. During the day, naps often happened on my chest — his preferred way to sleep for much of his early life.

That chest sleeping, especially during naps, wasn’t just a comfort thing. It was deeply regulatory. The contact, the warmth, the sound of my heartbeat — these weren’t optional for him.

They were his scaffolding for nervous system stability.

Since beginning Spirited Baby Sleep, I’ve supported and connected with hundreds of families raising autistic, neurodivergent, and highly sensitive babies and toddlers.

One of the most common, consistent threads among these families is a strong and ongoing need for chest sleep. It comes up constantly — babies who cannot sleep without full-body contact, toddlers who only nap while lying on their caregiver’s chest, preschoolers who return to chest sleep during times of stress or illness, and even children as old as six, seven, or eight who still seek that kind of proximity at bedtime.

The pattern is undeniable. And for many of these children, it’s not a preference — it’s a need. Chest sleep is often the only way their bodies and nervous systems can access rest.

The more I’ve witnessed this, the more I’ve come to understand that chest sleeping meets a wide range of sensory and regulatory needs that are incredibly common in the autistic population.

It offers deep pressure, rhythmic movement, warmth, scent, the sound of a heartbeat, the rise and fall of breath — all of which help calm an overstimulated or dysregulated nervous system. Many of these children have difficulty with body awareness (interoception) and feel disconnected from their own internal cues.

Chest sleeping helps tether them back to their sense of safety. It’s regulatory, grounding, and neurologically supportive. And yet, mainstream sleep advice rarely makes space for it. Most of the families I work with have been told that chest sleeping is dangerous, indulgent, or something they must urgently “break.” But in practice, for these children, chest sleep is often the only accessible on-ramp to rest.

There is no formal research specifically focused on chest sleeping in autistic children — or at all. Much of what we understand about its benefits comes from practice, observation, and applying what we know about sensory processing and co-regulation.

I’ve leaned on resources like Sweet Sleep by La Leche League International, Dr. James McKenna’s book and body of work on mother-infant sleep physiology, and social media accounts like Tiffany’s @cosleepy, which bring this conversation into real life.

If you are reading this and navigating your parenting journey with a highly-sensitive or neurodivergent baby, I want you to know that it’s not uncommon to be dismissed — especially by people who genuinely believe they’re helping.

Medical professionals, relatives, friends… many will tell you not to worry, that your baby will grow out of it, that you’re just anxious or overthinking. But that kind of reassurance, when it ignores your lived reality, doesn’t calm anxiety — it compounds it. It leaves you questioning your instincts, doubting your observations, and feeling even more alone in what you’re navigating.

I want you to know: you are not imagining things. You’re not making it harder than it is. And you’re not alone.

There is support — real, attuned, informed support — that won’t ask you to quiet your concerns, but will help you understand them. It might take time to find, but it’s out there. Don’t settle for walking this path alone.

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Editor’s Note: If you are sleeping chest-to-chest with your baby in bed, this Chest Sleeping FAQ Guide will help you do it as safely as possible.

And if you’re sleeping with your baby on your chest or in your arms in the recliner, rocker, sofa, etc. stop and move to the bed! You can read about the risks of “sofa-sharing” here.