Word.ws English Dictionary

breastsleeping

breastsleeping noun: the practice where a mother cosleeps with her baby while breastfeeding. Also the present participle and gerund of breastsleep.

Noun

breastsleeping (uncountable)

  1. (neologism) The practice where a mother cosleeps with her baby while breastfeeding.
    • Chris sleeps right through while I put an arm around Tabitha while I'm feeding and keep the duvet down. I have woken up once or twice and panicked - that's what I don't like about breastsleeping. I stopped breastfeeding Henry around nine months. We had to do controlled crying so he would stay in...2017 March 14, Tamsin Kelly, quoting Charlotte Catton, “Breastsleeping: Is This How New Mums Can Get More Sleep?”, in The Huffington Post, archived from the original on 23 Oct 2021
    • What if objects had an active role in shaping our health behaviors? Using my experience breastfeeding my baby, I explore this question through a journey from strict adherence to standard biomedical advice for safe infant sleep to heading the urgings of my body, specifically that of breastmilk...2018 June 5, Jennifer Woody Collins, “Fluid Materiality in Health Communication”, in Health Communication, volume 34, number 11, Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 1377...

Also used as

breastsleeping is also the present participle and gerund of breastsleep.

Examples of breastsleeping in a sentence

  • I have woken up once or twice and panicked - that's what I don't like about breastsleeping.2017 March 14, Tamsin Kelly, quoting Charlotte Catton, “Breastsleeping: Is This How New Mums Can Get More Sleep?”, in The Huffington Post...
  • "Breastsleeping"—a combination of co-sleeping and breastfeeding— is our species' heritage.2022 March 6, Darcia F. Narvaez, “Safe Infant Sleep and Breastfeeding Are Partners”, in Psychology Today, New York, N.Y.: Sussex...

Origin of breastsleeping

Compound of breast + sleeping. Coined by American biological anthropologist James J. McKenna in 2014.

Questions about breastsleeping

What does breastsleeping mean?
Breastsleeping means the practice where a mother cosleeps with her baby while breastfeeding.
How do you use breastsleeping in a sentence?
I have woken up once or twice and panicked - that's what I don't like about breastsleeping.
What part of speech is breastsleeping?
Breastsleeping is a noun.

Words near breastsleeping in the dictionary

  1. breasts the tape
  2. breasts up
  3. breastsful
  4. breastshot
  5. breastsleep
  6. breastsleeping
  7. breastsleeps
  8. breastslept
  9. breaststrap
  10. breaststraps
  11. breaststroke

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: breastsleeping (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “breastsleeping.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/breastsleeping. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.