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?

Hmm well DS1 was in our bed pretty much from birth - easier for BF, which failed so he was always hungry, so always trying to feed, then he liked being really close to us and sleeping on us, so it felt like that’s what he needed and we were happy to oblige for all or sakes. And has just started sleeping through consistently at the age of 3, although we have to lie with him for about 10 minutes to fall asleep at bedtime and every few nights have to go into him at night.

DS2 is 8 months old and has never co slept since we got home from hosp on day 2, was always left to self settle from the beginning just through the nature of being the second, and sleeps in his cot 7pm-5am reliably.

I think it’s down to different babies but also ds1 had a few more complications as a new born and cosleeping was what he needed. But I do also think that the co sleeping led to more wake ups, yes, because he was a very light sleeper and even our duvet rustling made him stir. And then the wake ups became a habit 🤷🏻‍♀️

I had absolutely no intention to co-sleep. Then DD was a baby who cried all day and night and only slept 40min at a time. We ended up co-sleeping. She was diagnosed with CMPA and silent reflux at 5 months. 5 months of utter hell. Even after that she woke up every 2-3 hours; I stopped co-sleeping around 6 months as she slept in longer stretches. She woke up every 2-3 hours until she was 15 months. In our case it definitely wasn't a case of co-sleeping creating the issue.

And I think the sleep clinic poster does make a lot of sense because what she’s describing is affecting adults also- we’ve all read the articles about poor sleep hygiene and sickness, obesity, mental health issues

We conslept until around 20 months, DS was still a terrible sleeper. He moved to his own bed and slept through by the time he was 2

I was very against cosleeping (bedsharing) when I was pregnant with DS, and refused to do it when he was newborn. I was so obsessed with the danger, But he wouldn't sleep unless he was on me and as a result I fell asleep whilst BF on the sofa a bunch of times. Now thats dangerous. Around 6 months his sleep was still an utter nightmare so we started cosleeping. I wouldn't say his sleep improved, but being ab,e to BF whilst lying down/ not waking up fully definitely improved my sleep. I did a lot of research into "safer" cosleeping before deciding to do it, and found research saying that from about 4/5 months, provided you follower the safer cosleeping guidelines, there's no increased risk of SIDS to an infant from cosleeing. We're still cosleeping at almost 2 and I love it. It started out of need but now I just love cuddling him at night, waking up to him etc. He sleeps through and has done since I night weaned but I won't move him until he asks to sleep alone (or some practical circumstances necessitate it). I'm not pregnant with our second and will try and do like we did before and have her sleep in a bassinet until 6 months then start cosleeping. But if I get to the point where I'm likely to fall asleep on a sofa again then I'd rather deliberately cosleep as that's much safer.

"Now pregnant" that should say, not "not pregnant"

Well DS1 did [want to sleep alone], certainly by the time he was 4, because I'd let him come into bed if he was ill or had a bad dream and he'd wriggle around and then ask me if he was allowed to go back to his own room (!) we co-slept permanently until he was a bit older than 2 and then partially until he was closer to 3 - I don't believe that babies somehow learn to wake up at night because they enjoy the kind of interaction they get at night. Except possibly in the situation that they don't get anything like the same kind of focused attention during the day, but I feel like this is an unlikely situation for most families who are engaged with and attentive to their babies day and night.

People often bring it out as an argument - oh if your favourite restaurant opened a buffet on your street corner you'd be there at 2am every night! No I wouldn't unless I was already awake anyway Who can control when they wake up from sleep? I don't think babies are any different from older people in that respect although of course even baby brains do recognise patterns and we will tend to wake and fall asleep naturally at set times if we're in the habit of doing so, and we will have periods of lighter and deeper sleep during which we're more or less likely to be disturbed, respectively. So sleeping alone might lead to a more restful sleep if the periods of light sleep are coinciding with something which causes the wake ups.

Somebody earlier, I think Batteries noted that when she was a young child she learned not to disturb her parents at night but she didn't stop actually waking up. It fits with my understanding - I don't think that sleep is something you can do consciously therefore it is not something which can be learned. Behaviour around sleep can be, and the environment around sleep is important, but the actual acts of falling asleep or waking up are not something we can control, IMO - and the same is true for babies and toddlers.

I suppose the environment part would be the argument that co-sleeping leads to more night wakings (I refuse to count this as "poor" sleep, because I don't think it is helpful to use subjective terms like this) but I don't know that it necessarily does. I don't wake up any more when my husband is sleeping with me vs when he is not. I do wake up more when he has a cold and insists on snoring all night, but - it's about looking at the situation and if there's an aspect of the situation which isn't working then yes it's worth thinking whether something is exacerbating it.

My daughter is 2.5yrs old, she slept through most of the night until I started weaning at 6 months, my husband or myself didn't get any sleep until she was in bed with us and that was the way until she was 20 months old, I gave up on her cot and invested in a double bed for her, if she needed comfort I would go to her instead of her coming into our bed. This allowed me to leave when she was asleep. At 2yrs and 2 months I let her cry herself to sleep while I waited watching on the monitor, going in and out of her room as needed, she now finally sleeps through and doesn't get out of bed even though I put her to bed at 7pm and sometimes she is still awake at 9.30pm

Dc1 - coslept occasionally. Brilliant sleeper
Dc2 - almost never coslept. Is now nearly 3 years old and still rarely sleeps through.

I’ve wondered the same as you op. A lot of the mums I know who cosleep have awful sleepers. I’ve never coslept and my son has slept through the night since he was 8 weeks old. Nothing I did, he is just a brill sleeper. My sister cosleeps and her 3 year old still wakes multiple times a night and needs to be breastfed back to sleep. I suppose if you have a bad sleeper cosleeping might be the better option.

Mine slept through from seven months and we didn’t co-sleep.

This has been so interesting, I really can’t spot any trends! Although I guess those with good sleepers don’t tend to cosleep because they just put baby down and off they go. Mostly seems to be that cosleepers at least start doing it to make sure the adults get some rest?

I probably should have stated earlier that I mean bed sharing, rather than in the same room or crib by side of bed. Also would be interesting to know what people class as “sleeping through” because it can vary so much between families.

I definitely see the point around why would baby leave the bed to go to their own room, if they’ve got milk and cuddles on tap in the bed. I wonder whether it’s necessary to persist for longer than you’d imagine, to get a cosleeper into their own cot at say 6 months old. Certainly with getting my LO to nap in his cot (he used to loooove sleeping in my arms) it took probably a week...? And that was with several set backs and me giving in to daytime naps on me, to ensure he got some sleep. It also helped to close his blackout curtains properly etc, whereas initially I’d tried with a reasonable amount of light still coming in. Trial and error, but it was easier to handle because it wasn’t affecting my own nighttime sleep.

I don't have a dog in this fight.
But the thing around what happened historically. Until electric light was invented it was the norm to have a little sleep, then get up, have sex, whatever for an hour or two, then have a long sleep. This means going to bed much much earlier than most adults do in the west.
People used to sleep together for warmth and protection. I am sure the focus wasn't on getting a great nights sleep, but on staying alive until the morning.

I’m not anti co sleeping, as stated many times I am a co sleeper. I am starting to hate it though because I do believe long term it’s been detrimental to my family. Short term, yes. We all got more sleep

I guess it all depends on your perspective. For you, right now, four years feels pretty long term. For me, as the parent of a teenager, it sounds much shorter.

Looking back, I think there were times when I wished that dd would just be happy to sleep by herself. Now, I see what a confident and secure teenager she is, and what a strong bond we have between us, and I feel nothing but gratitude for the fact that I was able to respond to what she was telling us she needed when she was little.

DD has no sleep issues now. She is far from obese and has excellent mental health, despite never having been exposed to any form of sleep discipline or parental power play. I am convinced that having parents who responded positively to her needs as a baby did her no damage at all - quite the contrary.

I get that, right now, you feel that you have made a rod for your own back. But perhaps, one day, you will look back on these years and feel glad that you gave your dd the comfort and care that she needed. They are small for such a short time.

@Aqua25 we have a 2 year old who has slept through about four times in his life. He always starts off in his cot then ends up in our bed by about midnight.

I had never considered the option of just getting him a double bed so I could go to him rather than him coming to us, so thank you! I think long-term, that's got to be better for him and for us!

crunchymint the point is not WHY people did it historically (as has been pointed out a few times on this thread) but just that they did it, and it didn't result in everyone being impossibly sleep deprived.

olgadapolga but I bet you also know a lot of families who didn't co sleep, and also have bad sleepers? Most people I know who co sleep did it from the very beginning, when all babies are "bad sleepers" as they're too small to sleep through, so I don't think it's possible necessarily to find that correlation.

I didn't plan on co sleeping. But at 3 days old DD suddenly stopped sleeping in her basket. She would wake up after 5/10 minutes so it wasn't even the transfer from arms to mattress that was the issue, it was her realising I wasn't there. I'd probably been awake for 36 hours when I fell asleep sitting up on the couch feeding her. I went cold when I realised what had happened and I knew that I'd just have to crack on with safe planned co sleeping from then on.

As a sleeper I'd say she was pretty good, just waking up for feeds, gradually waking less. At 6 months I was able to start the night off with her in her cot and bring her in when she woke. At 12 months she stopped waking in the night and that was that. So to answer your question, I would say the 'sleep problem' came first and co sleeping didn't have a negative effect in the long term.

I never intended to co-sleep - we'd never done even a single night of it with DS1, but DS2 arrived and the only time he slept at night was in our bed with us. So we just went with it.

He's 7 now and a great sleeper. I think for some babies they just want that extra bit of comfort/connection and there's no real right or wrong answer, just managing to survive and get as much sleep as you can.

Milk and cuddles on tap...shouldn’t it be on tap 24/7?

To me, breastfeeding a 2 year old in the night is the same mentality as worrying about your 17year out with friends for the evening. Awareness of your child’s needs doesn’t turn off just because it’s dark out

Although I never fell asleep with DS in the bed, I did used to wake up frantically patting the duvet, convinces that I’d dropped off and he was stuck somewhere...! It was terrifying and I hadn’t even put him at risk, so I definitely empathise with anyone who did fall asleep at some point unsafely and at that point turned to cosleeping.

As for being on tap... I don’t know actually, I’ve been thinking hard about it. I hope my baby knows that when he wakes and makes noise, I do come running and feed him and hold him. We have lots of cuddles all day, of course. But, for example, recently he started latching badly and sucking for comfort instead of milk. After no problems with nursing for months, suddenly my nipple was sore in a matter of hours- so from then on, anytime he did the same thing, I’d unlatch him. Arguably that was removing the full comfort and turning off that “tap”, and all he had then was me holding him, but I also had no intention of being made to bleed for no nutritional benefit. I guess I see sleep the same way- nighttime is dark and quiet time, and if you’re actually hungry I’ll obviously appear instantly, but I don’t want to be sleep deprived from several five-ten minute feeds a night with a half conscious baby who isn’t reeeally hungry but just enjoying a little snack. I don’t know, is that wrong? :S Maybe that’s too harsh, poor thing.

But then I feel that encouraging good sleep hygiene, to the extent baby makes it possible, is in his best interests too- he’s well rested, he’s secure in the boundaries of the home/routine and expectations. Mm. Not sure.

For us there was an obvious cause to the poor sleep, which was the boys' reflux. I'd usually wake to the sound of a few gulping noises and a splutter, shortly followed by them waking with a shriek of pain. DS1 had silent reflux and DS2's is anything but, although luckily not as severe! A breastfeed soothes the acid discomfort they feel quickly and I think is the kindest way to help them. Co-sleeping made it easier to do that and ensure we all get the best sleep and the least pain. At times when it's been really bad, they have actually slept latched all night. That said, I did prefer them in their own bed if they can be happy and comfortable there so my way has always been to put them in their own bed at the start of the night and after any wake ups and only to co-sleep if they won't settle after a good ten/fifteen minutes of rocking/bouncing/bottom patting or whatever helps them get to sleep. I have never worried too much about the safety aspect as it was the midwives in hospital who put DS1 in with me when he was obviously uncomfortable and wouldn't settle. DS2 also slept in my hospital bed which they seemed happy with.

DS1 is two years eight months old now and we never got his reflux fully under control with medication although it improved gradually with age, so we had lots of periods of co-sleeping with him and some where he slept more in his attached crib or his own room when it wasn't so bad. The week of his second birthday the reflux seemed to go completely and he started to sleep through the night. That was the week his refluxy brother was born! He's much more responsive to the medication in terms of reducing discomfort if not his emissions, and a better sleeper as a result I think but he does still have spells of frequent waking when his reflux flares up.

We are reintroducing milk to both boys gradually next week (first attempt for DS2 and third for DS1) and I suspect our bed might be quite crowded!

Prob parents are co sleeping to save their sanity with a non sleeper. You’ve either got one or you havent

Well, we co slept from day 1, so not as a result of any sleep issues.

Also worth noting that of course a sleep clinic will only see problem sleepers. So the millions of cosleeping babies who don't have issues won't be seen thereby skewing the figures. I would also posit that perhaps parents not prone to cosleeping, to 'giving in' to their child's needs in that way are perhaps more likely to sleep train and push on through, whereas those who cosleep are less likely to push through sleep training.

But OP you said your baby was what, 7m?

7m, latch suddenly crap, wants lots of short feeds - teething surely? And that’s gotten hurt.

Moses basket then cot in my bedroom until one year old then in own bedroom for both of mine. Occasionally they would come into the room but I would take them back into their room and sit with them reading, cuddling , talking etc until settled. I would have struggled to sleep with my children in my bed.