When I was a new mom I refused to rock my newborn son to sleep. Before he was born I read a few popular parenting books that asserted that the only way to get a baby to sleep through the night was to put him to sleep when he was awake and let him self-soothe to fall asleep. Never rock a baby to sleep, the book said, and I conformed.
He wasn’t a particularly snuggly baby, and most nights swaddling him up and putting him in his crib to fall asleep was no big deal. But there were nights when I wanted to hold him all night, to let his sweet-smelling head rest on my shoulder and watch his bottom lip quiver as he slept.