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Before Alisha Brignall’s first baby was born, the battle lines were already drawn.

Her husband, Chris, deemed the bed off-limits — a sacred space for the two of them. Ms. Brignall wanted to keep the baby close, as her mother had done with her when she was an infant. And so the Calgary couple bought both a crib and a co-sleeper, a sort-of crib designed to latch onto the side of a full-sized mattress to keep the baby within arm’s reach.

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I’m afraid parents are feeling they have to whisper — they can’t tell the truth about where their baby sleeps at night

But when Keenan was delivered in a two-hour home birth and the midwife asked her where he was going to sleep, the war was won.

“I said ‘Oh with me,’ and my husband gave me this look,” Ms. Brignall said. “I said ‘I’m not putting him away.’ He stayed with me from then on.”

Breastfeeding was easier, she said. She and her baby got more sleep. She felt closer to her child.

And yet Ms. Brignall was nervous because of “the whole government [warning] and ad campaigns thing,” she said — nervousness that remained in the back of her mind as she co-slept with her next three children (her youngest is 9 months and sleeps in her parents’ bed).