To wonder about cause and effect - cosleeping

[Goostacean]

I’ve noticed that I’ve met several mums with babies (10-18months) who don’t sleep through and have never slept through, and they cosleep in the bed.

Are those with bad sleepers resorting to cosleeping longer term, or does cosleeping disrupt sleep?

I’ve barely done it- just for a few hours when baby was merely weeks old between 6-9am sometimes, after baby had spent the night in the cot. We always had very bad sleep in the big bed, and are all far happier if I return baby to the cot. I can’t help but wonder whether not cosleeping would solve/improve the sleep issues these babies have?

I’m a long term cosleeper - typing this beside my sleeping 9yo, who has long since moved into her own room but asks me to join her. Sleeps perfectly well on her own at her dad’s, on sleepovers, or in the spare room at my fiancé’s house. She doesn’t NEED to cosleep - she likes to. And I like to as well.

She didn’t sleep through the night until she was 4.5. She was a grazer and liked to feed a lot at night. But once fed, she settled beautifully, and slept well between feeds.

But she’s never needed as much sleep as her peers. Was the only non sleeper at nursery lunchtimes, and that wasn’t down to my cosleeping, I wasn’t there! At 9, she’s fine sleeping 10pm to 7am, when some of her friends are asleep at 8pm. She sleeps through, since she was 5, but doesn’t always drop off quickly to begin with.

I don’t think cosleeping made her worse. It certainly kept to me sane!

I think the answer to your question is both - some will sleep better without cosleeping, some with. They’re all different. What matters is how happy everyone is with their choices. I might have had a year longer than needed of broken sleep... but I’d rather look back and no I never left her crying or wanting me. To another woman, their own sleep may have made them a better and happier mother - so they were right to let their child cry for a while, and the child no longer has any memory of it or impact from it.

We’re just all different, babies are all different.

We co-sleep. Its the only way I'd have managed to get myself to work when I first went back. And now it's because we have a big bed, my child sleeps much better (all the way through most nights) and everyone is happy. So i don't think it's always the case that cosleeping reflects a poor sleeper....more the stage your child is at.

Yes - different things work for different babies and parents. My children never woke up at night as I co-slept from day one. I breastfed while I was half asleep and the baby was asleep. Maybe they would have been fine in a cot but we never tried it so I don't know.

Nope. My son didn’t sleep through for 3 years. Hated co-sleeping from day 1.

Second son loved co-sleeping at first but sleeps 9 hours straight (at 4 months) in a cot next to the bed.

Some babies sleep great, some don’t, some strategies help some babies, some babies nothing will help. Getting a baby that sleeps well is down to luck imho).

My baby is 11 months and I have just started putting her down to sleep in a proper, high- walled cot.

Previously she’d been next to me but on her own mattress as both husband and I like space when we sleep.
All my little ones have got tired at 6/7pm and gradually become absolute nightmares at around a year old when it comes to bedtime.

When they start taking over 45 mins just to put to sleep, I start sleep training.

She’s going to be happier and so will I, but we will still co sleep in the wee hours and she is right next to my bed.

I think they both need their own space and the security of you to sleep soundly which is a hard balance to strike and very dependent on rhe family.

I find mine crawl all over me too much when we co sleep for extended periods of time, so judge it by their behaviour and what is going to be least distressing on a day to day basis.

I have friends who have studiously co-slept and never implemented self soothing bedtimes (because how can you without a cot) and the children have been terrible sleepers for years, sometimes taking three or four hours to put to bed. Not in this house

Thinking back, we actually had a live experiment going, as from age 1-4 I worked away 4 nights in a row per fortnight.

When I was home - cosleeping and overnight breastfeeding.

When I was away - own bed, no milk in the night (bottle refuser, cups in the day).

She woke less when she wasn’t lying next to the milk source! But actually, I don’t think she did wake less - probably woke as often but self settled when there was no-one there. She certainly didn’t self settle every time - especially when she was younger, she’d call out for a sshhh and a pat back to sleep! But definitely woke her dad up less than me.

But it all depends how you frame it. I never saw it as a “sleep issue” when she woke for feeds with me - I just saw it as her being her. A baby waking and preferring help to go back to sleep isn’t always an “issue”. She can settle herself now, no long term problems caused!

I love cosleeping. In the morning, she rolls over, gives me a big hug and says “I love you mummy - good morning!” It’s great.

No co sleeping here.

DD went into own room at 6 weeks as none of us were sleeping.

From 6 weeks no waking up at all.

I co slept with my son until six months old.... then I put him in a cot in his own room.... and after waking a few times the first few nights hes pretty much slept thru the night ever since.... better than he did in bed with us!
So no I dont think early co sleeping affects ability to sleep alone later on at all....

Hahahhaha smug much

Maybe they co-sleep because they have issues with sleep.

Interesting... thanks for all your replies, everyone! Except the PP accusing me of smugness(!)

I’d love to see some proper research into this, but it looks like the conclusion would be that everyone is different. I wonder whether there would be some trends though, across the population.

Same as a PP, we put LO in a separate room very early- at 3 months, and EVERYONE slept better, so I guess I just find it hard to understand others’ experiences (given that I’ve only lived through my own...!). Really interesting to hear all your experiences- thank you.

If you wanted to research it, there are just so many factors to account for.

In self reporting, there’d be a massive bias. I knew I wanted to cosleep before she was born. So did my sister. My baby wouldn’t settle without me, her baby wouldn’t settle with her. Guess which one of us still thinks cosleeping is marvellous and which says it isn’t?

Interesting as well, is the quality of sleep. There is already research that a breastfeeding mother drops back into good quality R.E.M. sleep faster than non breastfeeding. So I might report being woken 8x (not unusual when my baby was in her first year), but actual my sleep quality was better than a friend who was only woken once - but that once was an hour of pacing a hallway with a screaming baby. My 8x were 5 minutes each of very calm and happy feeds. I’ll never forget that wonderful feeling of being just the two of us in the whole world at 3am with big eyes looking up at me.

For every mum whose cosleeping baby is a nightmare now at an older age, you’ll find another mum like me with a perfectly independent brilliant sleeper. (for now!)

My guess at what you would see as trends across a population are nothing to do with the baby’s settling or otherwise.

My guess is you’d get a trend that women who choose to cosleep (whether their baby is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ sleeper) self report as being happier, than those who cosleep but would prefer not to! (even if their child is a bad sleeper, but better than the cosleeping preference mother!)

I believe there are plenty of cultures where cosleeping is the norm. So pretty easy to research one of those where I’m sure you’d discover that some babies sleep, some don’t.

Most mothers with 2+ children will tell you that!

I think more important than do/don’t cosleep, is making sure people have realistic expectations of baby sleep. If your 4 month old is up 5x a night, yes it’s knackering but no, you’re not failing! It’s normal!

I co sleep with DS (18 months) just because it's culturally normal for us. He sleeps through and has for a while

I work with Children’s Centres and even though all the research points to co sleeping with a small baby as incredibly dangerous a lot of people bang on about how great it is.

Older kids - why would you not want them to sleep alone?

Really good points made above... I find it tough because I feel so bad for those mothers, and I wish there was an obvious answer to improve the sleep situation for them! Having said that, I never managed to get feeding to work in the bed- all the positions we use would have been dangerous for cosleeping, so it made little difference to get up and pop baby in the cot again. Precisely, I suppose, because I’m lucky and he likes the cot! Very self-biasing, you’re right....

I think that BF/FF may be a confounding variable in this. I’d guess that the proportion of BF mothers that cosleep is higher than FF mothers. I understand that BF babies tend to feed more often at night (heard anecdotally), so might be reported as ‘worse sleepers’.

We FF and coslept, though only to about 8 months. Both of our DDs slept through pretty early. I think that having a thumb sucker helped too. DD2 had a dummy and losing it at night and us having to wake to find it was quite annoying. So we ditched the dummy and she just slept through.

Are those with bad sleepers resorting to cosleeping longer term, or does cosleeping disrupt sleep?

It was definitely the former for us. I had no intention of co-sleeping at all, but it seems my baby thought otherwise. She slept terribly until we resorted to co-sleeping, and much better when we eventually gave into it. On reflection, I feel that it's what nature intended, but I understand why many people prefer not to bed share.

We're long past that stage now. My only regret is that I resisted the idea of co-sleeping for so long. My maternity leave would have been so much more enjoyable if I had been able to get a bit more sleep!

I work with Children’s Centres and even though all the research points to co sleeping with a small baby as incredibly dangerous a lot of people bang on about how great it is.

This actually makes me cross. It was exactly this kind of scaremongering about the dangers of co-sleeping that deterred me from listening to my instincts when dd was a baby. The studies which suggest that co-sleeping is dangerous conflate accidental co-sleeping (such as falling asleep on the sofa with your baby) with planned co-sleeping in a safe environment. The risks are totally different, and it's ironic that better advice about safe co-sleeping might actually help to prevent many instances of accidental co-sleeping due to parental exhaustion!

In countries like Japan, where safe co-sleeping is the norm, the rate of SIDS is actually very low. We need to do a much better job of getting clearer messages out there for parents so that they can make properly informed choices.

Incoslept with all my kids. Little one is 6 weeks old, and I’m trying so hard to get him into the bassinet. Last night he cried an hour solidly, so I brought him back to bed and he slept 5 hours straight. It’s a balance between sids risk (better to be in his own crib) vs getting enough sleep to function (we have two slightly older children, so I need to drive and generally be alert). At least he’s on his back, and I don’t smoke or drink, and I put my head at his height and curl my legs up to protect him.

@French how do you do it safely then?

The point around expectations when pregnant vs reality of baby rings true- our Midwife was very insistent we should get a Moses basket or similar as “babies don’t like the wide open expanse of the cot, after the snugness of the womb”. I resisted buying one in advance (we were emigrating when baby was 8 weeks so didn’t want to buy lots of extra kit) and he slept happily in the cot from literally day one! Just popped him in it, and he was fine- although he did look SO TINY in it. And obviously it could easily have gone the other way.

"@French how do you do it safely then?"

Use light blankets, don't smoke/drink and co-sleep. No Co-sleeping with prem or underweight babies.

I think that it usually in response to a need.

Research done at seven years old shows that those children whose parents didn't co-sleep, don't sleep any better than those that did.

For me, it was unnatural to sleep apart from my Baby.

Simple bed-sharing does not pose any risks. it's really annoying whe another Headline screams about a SIDS case caused by Co-sleeping, only to read it and find that the Parent fell asleep on the couch, or was drunk.

You could use similar evidence to show why we shouldn't bath a baby because of the danger of drowning.

I also think that Mum's who say that they can't put their Babies down, are responding to a need within the Baby, rather than causing the issue.

Are you in the uk op? It’s 01.20 so it’s funny that anyone her can be claiming to get a good night sleep!

DS sleep was rubbish from birth. He wasn't having any of that putting down drowsy but awake, and the longer you left him the more distraught he got. When I went back to work when he was 1 i found it hard with broken nights. That's when we started cosleeping and everyone got much more sleep. So for DS it was the fix.

So DD we got a cosleeper cot and she coslept from birth. She was super easy, 3+ hour sleeps from the start. Because I didn't even have to get out of bed to resettle her, her one night feed didn't bother me at all, so I didn't feel any need to change it. So no she wasn't "sleeping through", but she was no trouble at all.

Was DS an anxious clingy child because of sleeping away from me? Was DD a laid back independent child because of always being close? Or was it just chance they were that way around and if we'd had DD first she'd have been just as laid back as a cot sleeper?

I think you just have to try something and if it doesn't seem to be working for you, be open minded to trying something different.