co-sleeping parents: how do you put DC to bed?

[Chacha23]

right now dd is four weeks old and too young for a real schedule, she just feeds/naps with us until we go to bed around 9:30.

But at some point I'll want her to start her night earlier, say around 7pm... how do other co-sleeping parents manage to do this without going to bed themselves? I doubt she'd fall asleep in our bed without me, and it probably wouldn't be safe to leave her there anyway...

I used to put them to bed then get up again.

But they were in a basket in the living room til they were 3 months or so.

We didn't take him to bed till he was nearly 1 but I would feed him to sleep and then get up once he's rolled away and repeat until I wanted to go to bed. If he's really unsettled due to teeth for example I just stay there with my laptop and read MN and or watch something on I-player.

Until about 5 months ds just slept in a sling on me - I would eat watch telly and feed him when he stirred. Meals often had to be one handed but was easy enough (dp cooks) - and I have some v romantic memories of dp feeding me whilst I fed the baby

DS is 5.5 months and recently I've started a bedtime routine, putting him in pyjamas, feeding him in our bed (I breastfeed lying down). Sometimes he feeds to sleep, sometimes he doesn't. But he'll be pretty mellow anyway. Then when he falls asleep I quietly leave the room. We have a barrier on the side of the bed and I put a big pillow on the other side of DS.

He'll usually sleep either until we go to bed at which point I dream feed him. Or what also happens often is that he wakes up after 1 sleep cycle (45 minutes) at which point I'll go in and either shush/pat him to sleep or feed again.

Good luck, it's definitely doable to have a proper bedtime routine while still co-sleeping at night.

I am so glad I had a cot!

with my daughter who used to co sleep i used to put her to bed lay with her feed her stay in bed for about 20 mins get up after that although i loved co sleeping so did dd it was a very hard transistion to her own bed but co sleeping routine was easy enough :)

I had a bedside co-sleeper sort of cot (on the same level as the bed and open to the bed). So, we could put our LO to sleep in the usual way and then leave him in the bedside cot just fine and used a monitor. He still wanted boob to get to sleep, but was happy enough left there.

I co sleep with ds 2.4 and always have. When he was smaller I'd feed to sleep downstairs then just take him up with me when I went, now he's older I still feed to sleep but get back up after about 20 mins