with my dh regarding co-sleeping

[monbon]

Help please, need some reassurance regarding co-sleeping situation.
Have been co-sleeping with dd for the past 6 months. Partly because she still wakes up a lot in the night and I am exhausted! and also because I love it!
While I was pregnant I read all about attachment parenting and asked my dh to read the book also but he refused saying that he would be behind whatever I thought was best.
Recently he has been putting pressure on me to put our dd in her own cot, so reluctantly I have tried putting her in it when she initially goes down but once she wakes up I take her back into bed. Anyway, this has been going on for a week or so and tonight, dh dismantled the cot and put it in her room - while I was trying to get dd to sleep which really annoyed me!! The thought of putting her to sleep in her own room makes me feel sick I don't really know what to do because nobody I know co-sleeps with their baby and I dare not admit to dh's family this is the sleeping arrangement as MIL would think I was insane. I just feel like a complete failure

Swedes2Thurnips1 I thought co-sleeping was beneficial for the child and the mother (I guess not so much the father in this case) but I suppose from reading these posts it doesn't work for everybody or every child, and yes inthegutter, it's what works for your family. To be honest I have no idea if dd would sleep for longer in her cot, although when I have tried she still wakes up often and right now co-sleeping is best because it means dd doesn't wake up fully, I can bf her to sleep stright away and I can get more sleep which means I can be of more use during the day.
Am trying to get her to sleep longer, have bought 'no cry sleep solution' hoping this will make a difference!

Completely agree that you must all love it to enjoy co-sleeping - we certainly all sleep very well together, all cosied up to one another . I wouldn't mind us getting our bed back to ourselves, but my daughter isn't overly keen - she loves sleeping with us. She has her own bed and bedroom next door and does sleep there sometimes, though.

Message withdrawn

I co-slept with DS until he was about 8 months old, then he went into his own room.
We never have either of our children in our bed now ebcause it's bloody annoying, they kick and spread eacle and snore and none of us get a good nights sleep.

If your DH doesn't want to sleep with DD in the bed anymore then you have to take some notice, it is his daughter and his choice too.

I do think he should've not taken the cot down and that there are better ways of stopping co-sleeping arrangements but if you won't budge then what is he suppsoed to do?

my DS from a very early age loved being in the bed with us and would use every trick in the book to achieve it. he did sleep better in the bed with us, but i didn't. DH was oblivious to whatever arrangementwas going on. i was too worried i'd squash DS or pull the duvet up too high and suffocate him so always did my best to get him back into his own cot. sometimes i'd be so knackered i'd find him in bed with us, fast asleep, a couple of months old, and wonder how the hell he managed in. maybe he was a very early walker more likely i'd gotten up in the night with him, fed him, fallen asleep and forgotten all this had happened.

if i had my time again in this situation, i;'d have bought one of those cots that attaches onto the side of the bed.

We've co-slept with His Nibs since he was about 3 months old (he was a bit squashable before that). He's now 20 months and we've no plans to give up for the foreseeable future. It requires a bit of flexibility, and it's not uncommon for one or other of us to decamp for part of the night if he's a bit twitchy.

Not everyone's cup of tea, of course, but you're not alone!

Its good that we all live in a westernised coutry with enough rooms to move to, and enough rooms to have nurserys. If you where living in other parts of the world you would be co-sleeping with all your kids, the in laws and probably a goat and 3 chickens.

Ang guess what...you would still get pregnant

Lol. We co-slept with DS for the first 5 months - we didn't plan to at all, but he would only sleep on his front and I thought if I am going to let him do that there is no way I'm not going to be as close to him as possible - so he actually slept on my chest! Looking back now I have no idea how I managed, but at 5 months he was too big and rolled over himself anyway, so went into his room without a murmer (sp?).

DH didn't mind (actually was also totally oblivious) as none of us would have got any sleep if he hadn't been on his front in with us. Then when he was in his cot DH always got up and brought him in to me for night BFs.

Now DS (2.3) doesn't sleep at all if he comes in with us, just plays, so we only do it if he was really ill (although I wouldn't mind it being a bit more frequent, but now DH would definitely be against it).

Agree with all the posts that you need to listen to and compromise with your husband, as your relationship with him is just as important as that with your DC. I wouldn't mind doing it again with DD (due in March) but I think that if there isn't a "reason" (i.e. she sleeps on her back, etc) then DH will be against and so will go along with him.

"Its good that we all live in a westernised coutry with enough rooms to move to, and enough rooms to have nurserys. "

Not all of us do, what with the cost of buying a suitable family home these days. I know more and more people raising their children in one or two bedroom flats.

In some ways, perhaps that prevents problems like this from developing - both parents have to get used to the sound of baby's breathing and they have no choice but to share a bed with each other. IME that usually leads to more intimate relations .

OP - maybe try discussing this with your DH when he is in a happy post-coital haze and not feeling so displaced by the new arrival. I think it is often hard for Dads to find their place in the early days...

I started cosleeping with DS when he was 9 months and waking up constantly. He's now 18 months and still in bed with us. I don't consider myself a failure - I feel quite proud of myself for finding a way to cope with a non-sleeping baby with the minimum of angst for the whole family. Part of the cosleeping deal though was that dh slept with us - I didn't want us to end up in separate rooms. So we put a single bed next to the queen bed so there would be room for all. It is very rare for dh to be disturbed by ds at night (ds only wants nightime cuddles from me anyway), so he can't complain about the situation. He also gets more sex when we're cosleeping then when I'm completely sleep deprived.

i co- slept with ds until about 4 months ago and ds is now 2.10 and he has been sleeping much better since then and it was really hard to make the change over although i do believe he slept better in bed wqith me untill he was 2yrs old and started to move about more and was finding it hard to sleep without m until i went to bed.
i don't know how i would have coped without co-sleeping. my friend has started doing in (DS 4mnths) and is getting more sleep and she also felt that 'failure' feeling although most things i do with ds makes me feel like this
you have to do what suits you and baby IMO x

We don't co-sleep with ds (although he was in a cot in our room til 7 mo) cause dh was/is very anti. Its not my preferred option but its his bed too and I do think its important to make these sorts of decisions jointly.

it may not be your style at all but once or twice in the early days dh and I had couple near dingdongs over parenting - linked directly and indirectly to bf.

I simply behaved as irrational as he was working under the simple premise that if he was going to push on this I would push back. This was his baby as much as mine but I was the primary carer and if he didn't like my choices he can sulk for a while and then follow along but things were going the way I found them easier. After all, he was an adult, not the baby.

If your DH isn't hapy with you co-sleeping then I think you should try and get her to slep in her own cot. Where does your Dh sleep?

beeper: "If you where living in other parts of the world you would be co-sleeping with all your kids, the in laws and probably a goat and 3 chickens. Ang guess what...you would still get pregnant"

Though of course you need to keep your wits about you or you might end up having the wrong sort of kids. Baaaaaaa.

DS is nearly 14months now, i co-slept for pretty much the first year off and on then had DS sleeping in his cot pretty much all night (DH was very keen for this to happen and its his bed too etc). Then I did my back in so DH had to get up at night (he never had before), within a week DS was back co-sleeping.....

Monbon, yanbu, I don't think. I certainly think your dh dismantling the cot was being very unreasonable.

However I do think you need to discuss it together as adults.

BE has a great idea; "one suggestion could be to tell DH, he has to do all the night wakenings. i.e. Fetch the baby from the other room to your room for you to nurse her and he need to take her back to the other room and resettle her. I doubt he will agree to it wink and even if he did agree, one night of actually doing it, will have him bringing the cot straight back to your room."

This is exactly what I did with my dh. And it worked. After just one night of this he agreed with me that it was far better that ds sleeps with me while he still feeds in the night. Dh sometimes co-sleeps with me and ds, and sometimes in the spare room (if he has to be up early the next day, or if he has a big meeting or something).

The way I see it, dh and I had eight years of sharing a bed together. And we will have many, many years in the future. So a year or even two out of that bed sharing arrangement is not that much, really.

Another way to think of it is to ask your dh to put himself in your dd's shoes bootees. If he, a grown man, wants to sleep with someone else in the bed, how much more would a six month old baby?

(Also sex can be better if it is not relegated to a last thing at night while you're half asleep thing!)

I think it's not good enough for him to say he'll go along with whatever you decide but then put pressure on you to do what he wants.

Co-sleeping wasn't my (or my dh's) preferred arrangement but we at least discussed our feelings about parenting and neither of us would take a significant decision without consulting the other. It sounds like your dh is copping out, not wanting to discuss the issue but expecting you to work out, and go along with, what he thinks should happen. He obviously is trying to communicate his thoughts and wishes to you. I'd say don't let him get away with doing it in any way other than by adult discussion!

Agree that everyone in the family needs to be happy with it. My partner certainly wouldnt have been happy to be relegated to the spare bedroom (that's if we'd had one! - I would imagine for many young families, a spare bedroom is a luxury they don't have!).But two of my babies were very contented and secure in their own cot alongside us, and the third would sometimes sleep with us but soon settled to her own space. I think the last think night times should become is a battleground where anyone feels they're losing out.

Well, I knew there was a positive side to being a single mum! I co-sleep with both my daughters (5 and 7) in a double bed, and we love it. No man to kick up a fuss.

Could be you maybe like her in the bed to avoid sex.

deste, is your bed the only place in your house where you have sex?

having a baby in bed is not a convenient way to avoid sex. if that was the case, the human race wouldn't exist.