Cosleeping Safety

[Usagii]

I am cosleeping with my 10 month old son. He is extremely active, and has been walking since 9 months. He always ends up in my bed and sleeps through the night if he’s in the corner of my bed.

So I moved my bed right up next to his cot and moved his cot mattress up to the middle level so it’s the same level as my mattress.

The end of his cot is higher and he can’t fall out but he still ends up in my bed and I worry about him falling off my bed. Should I maybe just remove the side of his cot?

I see pictures of people’s cosleeping cots on Pinterest but wonder how they prevent their babies from rolling off the end of their beds?!

[crazycatlady5]

Hi Op, this is the set up we have and it does worry me. We’re at 9 months and she’s just started properly crawling. I hold on to her sleeping bag in the night and to be honest I’m such a light sleeper I tend to notice whenever she moves. I’ll be following with interest though!

[Jenala]

When my cosleeping first born started to crawl I made a 'floorbed' - basically put his cot mattress on the floor and bought a single which I laid next to it. I put this in his room. Then I could cuddle him to sleep and then either stay sleeping next to him or roll away and get in my own bed.

[crazycatlady5]

@Jenala so I imagined you baby proofed the room? That’s part of what I’m nervous about worried about the safety of the room.

[Jenala]

Yes, attached chest of drawers to the walls and put a stairgate on the doorway so we could leave the door open. Nothing else in his room is dangerous. Left toys out, he never got up to play with them or anything. We still have a stairgate at the top of the stairs closed at night because now he's 2 he sometimes gets up and blunders around.

It worked really well for us, can't imagine doing it another way. When I was pregnant with number two I couldn't get up and down off the floor as easily so put a queen size double in there with a bedguard as he was 18m by then and old enough not to crawl off the end of the bed etc.

[FATEdestiny]

From a practical point of view, the safest thing to do is a floor bed. Mattress directly on floor, cot on lowest mattress heights with one side removed.

After this, you have to accept baby m8ght fall off the bed. You can't pen-in a bed like you can a cot, a bed guard only protects against one section of the bed. So some things to mitigate the risks would be:

• put cushions on the floor all around the bed. A friend of mine took ownership of a couple chappy falling-apart sofas that were Freecycled or given away on Facebook. Tipped the sofa caucus but used the sofa seat cushions around her bed for this purpose.
  

• pool noodles or wedges under the bottom sheet around the edges of the bed will reduce the risk of accidentally rolling out of the bed while asleep
  

• teach baby to get off the bed safely. This can be taught from crawling and could easily be mastered before the child is walking. Teach baby to crawl backwards to the edge, dangle legs down while holding on with hands and then drop. Similar skills used geting on/off a sofa and claiming/decending stairs, so practice these too.
  

• have a monitor on high sensitivity so you hear and can respond quickly to any movement.