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?

There's a long way between co-sleeping, which can be practiced safely, and putting your baby in another room before 6 months. Your baby may well sleep better in another room, as will you, but it's not recommended as safe precisely for that reason.

I suspect that (apart from a small minority who plan to cosleep while expecting) it's often the result of having a baby who doesn't sleep well. So there is a correlation but not in that cosleeping causes bad sleep, more that bad sleep causes cosleeping. Because ultimately people need sleep to survive.

I'd much rather we changed the dialogue on it to safe sleeping practices, and then parents wouldn't hide it for fear of being told off and could receive the advice to make it safe.

I have co slept on and off with my twins. They have been horrific sleepers (partly because there are 2 of them and also I think that they were low birth weight and pramature babies who nursed). We have been to sleep school twice, I have followed all the advice and they are still bad sleepers. I started co sleeping when they were a couple of months old because I was so worried I would fall asleep while nursing them and drop them (they woke every 1 to 2 hours their first year and I was an exhausted mess).

I have tried at different stages to get them back in their beds, but I’m too tired to spend hours trying to get them to sleep to then have them wake up over night as well. They are 4 now and are in my bed from the beginning of the night now. We are all getting so much more sleep. I have finally excepted that they just want to be next to me. The only way I will get them to sleep all night in their own room is if I left them to scream and I’m not willing to do that.

I really wish nurses would provide safe co sleeping advice to new parents. Co sleeping is not for everyone, but lots of parents do it and better to have proper information.

As to your question, for me co sleeping is the solution to sleep disruption. I wish I had just co slept from day dot and not wasted all my time and energy on trying to get my girls to sleep in their own cots and beds because I felt that’s what they should be doing (and what all the experts said they should be going).

@NotTaken No, I’m in South America- only half nine here :)

Almostthere15 makes a good point about safe sleeping. I did feel nervous about moving baby out of our room before the official guidelines recommend it. Initially it was a practical choice- we were visiting family for a fortnight, baby slept really well in a cot but the cot wouldn’t fit in the room we were sleeping in. It worked so well that we moved his cot out of our room when we returned home. It’s all risk, really. I’m sure there are babies who have sadly passed away during safe cosleeping practices, but it’s very unlikely, and so are complications from being in a separate room to the parents.

Interestingly DH and I don’t sleep touching in any way, and I wonder whether that affected my ability to cosleep. I never fully fell asleep with baby in the end and it was exhausting.

How does co-sleeping work with a bedtime ( one that is earlier than yours ?) I think teaching babies to send them selves to sleep on their own in the dark sets them up for a life time of good sleep habits (or good sleep hygiene as we call it at work). There is a developmental window for this (4-7/8 months) which if missed makes it much harder to establish good sleep habits later. Most (70%)children will learn to self settle and resettle by 7 months (source AVon Study)

I don't know if co-sleeping disrupts the baby's sleep but it's a discipline thing I think, once a baby is over that initial 0 -3 month phase. A bit like allowing a dog in your bed. Some folks like their dogs in their bed, some don't...

You can't run your home like military command but kids (like dogs) thrive when they know that the adults in their lives are in control. In my view (only one view), parents risk undermining that safe feeling that 'mum and dad are in control' by not setting boundaries around bed, bedtime, private spaces etc. Allowing them to determine where they sleep gives them too much power over their parents, which may have the perverse impact of creating anxiety in them.

The last two posts are really interesting... I find it’s a difficult topic because I’m lucky to have a good sleeper so it’s hard to discuss without sounding smug/rude/dismissive/etc. I wonder the same about bedtimes, though.

However, I’ve noticed that my LO (5 months) is now very accepting of being put down slightly awake, and he also falls asleep for naps alone in his cot (with a musical bear we use every time). It’s taken time to get there but I have tried persistently to get him to accept these actions and I think the routine has helped. I think he feels secure in our bed and in his bed because he’s worked out the layout of the flat, the routine, and he knows I’ll always appear to feed him when he wakes. But that’s the question, to what extent is it luck vs parenting choices I’ve made?

I also don’t know what I want the answer to be- obviously I’d love to be told that I’m parenting perfectly, at least on this issue 😂 But I STRONGLY suspect it’s 95% luck. And that makes me scared to try for a second baby...!

DS is an amazing sleeper and has been since birth (nothing we’ve done - just sheer luck!)
I coslept with him because that’s how he was most settled. He did 6hrs minimum overnight since birth (mixed fed) quickly rising to 8-10-12hrs now. 2wks ago he started sleeping in his cot and has been exactly the same. Sleeps straight through.

I on the other hand have had horrific insomnia for about 15yrs so he doesn’t get it from me!

Edited to add DS is almost 7mths.

I’d actually assumed the opposite OP as of the people I know, all the best sleepers have coslept.

I think we all just do what’s best for us/baby at the time. I’ve a friend who’s horrified that I coslept and has commented on it frequently! She had her baby in her own room at 12wks old and used to go in to her up to 10 times a night. I believe safe, planned cosleeping to be a safer option (for me) and I can count on one hand the number of nights DS has disturbed us.

I've just started co-sleeping with 19mo DS because it''s better than walking up and down the hall all sodding night. He has always been a bad sleeper; a good night for him in the cot is a few hours asleep, then waking every 20-45 ish minutes from about midnight. It's far far easier to settle him quickly when we're sharing a king single than when he's in a cot. Early days yet but he has had a couple of nights where he's slept in chunks of over an hour all night so it works for us... and we're doing it because he's a terrible sleeper, not the converse.

Never coslept at night, just during the day while baby was tiny. From early days she was in her cot/basket at night and has slept well this way. I tried to cuddle her to sleep but from 3 months on this has been impossible. She needs quiet and her own space to wriggle and manourve for a bit before falling asleep.
I think all babies and people are different. I couldn't cosleep and glad my baby didn't need to.

Coslept with DS and he transferred to a bed aged 2 and was Brilliant from day 1. The only time he got up and woke us up was to use the loo in the night - he couldn’t reach the light and needed help taking his nappy off (reusable so had poppers).
He has never minded going to bed - and sleeps 11 hours most nights.

The NHS going on about the dangers of co sleeping is probably due to the lack of exclusive breastfeeding in the UK.

I co-slept with mines. DS was a bad sleeper as a newborn (he would sleep during the day in his cot and be up half the night, he had night and day inverted) but this settled when we started co-sleeping, although he didn’t slept through completely until I stopped breastfeeding him at 2. DD slept trough from 4 weeks, altough she stopped sleeping through when she started teething, she was ebf too but just a good sleeper.
I didn’t co-slept by choice, I just needed the sleep, I was doing 24/7 care and exhausted. There are a few times I woke up when DD wasn’t breathing properly (a little nudge and she drew in a big breath) so I do think safe co-sleeping can be helpful.

We coslept with DD until age 2 because we moved into a wreck of a house and then fell pregnant 6 weeks later and it took that long to get her room sorted.

She slept through from 8 weeks old and still does. Even before that she only woke every 3 hours to feed and then back to sleep. Yeah o

We’ve always had a cot bed pushed up to our bed so she has had her own space.

Bedtimes were easy, you make the room dark, feed and then leave. When she stopped feeding to sleep at 13 months I laid next to her with my hand on her back and she would fall asleep. Then she didn’t need my hand and would just fall asleep.

Now at 2.5 in her own room we read 2 books turn the light out and she is asleep in 5 minutes. I still sit with her though because I’ve always loved watching her fall asleep, that quiet time when it’s just the two of us after we’ve been apart all day due to work and Nursery, it’s lovely.

We’ve never left her to cry either, I always want her to know that we are there for her no matter what time or place. She isn’t needy or spoilt which is what people told us would happen when we gave her attention for crying 🙄

Oh and don’t feel sorry for me, I loved co-sleeping and will do it again with DC2.

I think there probably is a correlation but I also think if you're cosleeping by choice you probably don't care! I know for me cosleeping was the way I chose to deal with night waking rather than by trying to encourage independent sleep. I saw it as a choice between fighting for sleep and simply making the wake ups easier to manage. It never really bothered me that they went on for longer because they weren't massively disturbing my sleep in the way that getting up would have done.

If you hang out in cosleeping, extended BF on demand type circles most children parented in this way at night start sleeping totally through at about 18m-3 years, to the point I wonder if that's not the actual norm/point they would sleep through naturally. I do think when you have encouraged more independent sleep whether that's through sleep training or just always making sure the child is comfortable sleeping alone, you'll still get occasional setbacks with sleep until they are around this age as well anyway.

But I do think that a baby who is happy to go into a cot immediately and sleeps through the night very young is unusual, and lucky for the parents opposed to any magic formula causing this :)

I have two DDs aged 3 and 4. With one DD we coslept until she was 6 months and then on and off up to one year old. This was due to feeding issues and the only way we could get decent sleep. We just embraced it, bought a bigger bed and made sure we did it safely. She is now 4 and sleeps in her own bed. She settles quickly and sleeps through every night until the morning.

Our second DD was happy in her own cot and has never coslept unless she is poorly. She now takes much longer to settle, is a light sleeper and sometimes comes into our room at night when she wakes.

My point is that we agonised over our first DD and worried we would be creating future problems with her sleeping by cosleeping for so long but we should have just relaxed and enjoyed it more. In our case it hasn't caused any issues and my motto is now, if it works do it and when it stops working try something new!

Dd1 hated co sleeping as a baby, then as a toddler started having night terrors, and slept in with us sometimes when she woke terrified on the night sleeping - she has always had difficulty getting to sleep, but this improved when we got help with anxiety (she is 12 now)

Dd2 slept with us a lot from the start, not for any particular reason really...it was just nice. The ability to sleep anywhere could be her super power. She is now 11

Ds has slept with us most nights for at least part of the night since he was born and still does, he is disabled, has very bad reflux, a sleep disorder and has had breathing difficulties in the past, sleeping propped upright with him was the only way we were ever going to get sleep. He is now 8

My DD is 3.5 yo. Apart from the odd nap we never really co-slept. UNTIL I took her dummy away at 2yo. Silly mummy

She has a brilliant bed time in her own bed and has done since being a few months old. Every night she wakes up and comes into my bed. If I could stop her waking up or find another way for her to go back to sleep in the night I would. It works for us at the moment but I'm hoping its not forever!!!

I didnt co-sleep but in my experience how well they sleep is largely down to luck. My first (DD) slept through from 5 months, I was rigid with nap/bed times, having a darkened room, putting down slightly awake etc. It worked and I was very pleased with my efforts - how clever I was following the rules so persistently! My second (DS) made it quite clear from virtually the moment he was born that he didnt like the cot or following my rules. He didnt sleep through properly until he was just gone 2 yo. DS does settle well now for a solid 11 hours but they are completely different children and my DDs wonderful nature is sadly not all down to my wonderful parenting

Never co-slept here. Ever. DC went into their own rooms about 3 months old when I stopped bf and we all slept well thereafter. We had zero help with childcare, night time was the only 'break' we ever got. And midnight milky snuggles may be lovely for some, but nothing beats several hour sleep undisturbed kip in your own bed.
Now teens, I think we're all pretty well bonded.

My son is 10 months old and he is put into his cot for both his nap times and when he falls asleep at bedtime.

He typically wakes up at about 10-11pm for a feed and I bring him into bed with me where he then stays until morning. If he stirs in the night and senses I’m next to him he typically goes straight back to sleep whereas if he woke up in his cot and I wasn’t there he’d start crying which would then lead to bouts of disturbed sleep for us both.

I have co-slept with him since he was about 7 weeks old and I love it.

The infant sleep information source looked at all the research on sleep training, cosleeping etc and although the research is so variable that it’s difficult to cross analyse or draw conclusions, the trend seemed to be that sleep habits / routine don’t really matter much under 2 year old.

Growing pains. Teething. Learning to walk. Learning to talk. All those developmental leaps and growth spurts mess with sleep so frequently.

I cannot believe that a baby makes room in their tiny head for absorbing such unimportant information as a bedtime routine. People who find a under one year old responds well to bedtime have a chilled out baby. People who don’t, do not.

Of course parents of good sleepers will insist until they are blue in the face that it’s all down to the parenting but my opinion is nah. It’s not.

Also it’s worth bearing in mind how frequently babies go undiagnosed - from gut health to vision problems, a lot of the people I know who had bad sleepers the child has now been diagnosed with something that makes you go ahhhh, that’s why they needed so much reassurance and parental contact at night. The underlying causative factor may well have nothing to do with the bed or the routine.

First baby coslept and slept until I woke. It was absolute bliss, I was still lying in bed at 12 quite regularly. Second baby did not sleep well in the bed so slept alone but woke far earlier, around 9. So in my extensive study of 2, the cosleeping baby slept far better and for much longer. This is also what most of my friends said.

I co-slept because after trying to "pop the baby back in the cot" for the 20th time that night only for them to wake and scream at me i was ready to fling myself out of the window. But putting her in my bed couldn't possibly have made her sleep worse at this point.

OP I accused you of smugness because there are babies you can just pop in the cot and there are also babies who need parental contact and will scream until their sick if you just pop them in a cot.

Putting a 3 month old baby in their own room may make them sleep better, if you can get them to sleep. However, with the SIDS warning being that babies shouldn't sleep so deeply and you should have them in your room until 6 months I wouldn't advise that.