please help me to co sleep safely

[FrameyMcFrame]

Hi, DP is currently clamping the cot to the side of the bed, side car style. I need some sleep as have been up and down every 2 hours with 4 month old on monster growth spurt.
Wanted to ask if any one has any safe sleeping advice.
Am worried about the gap between the cot and bed, should I stuff t with rolled blankets? what about duvets and pillows? Any other tips appriciated.

chuck your dp onto the couch/spare room
and put baby in with you
dnot use duvet on baby and then sleep away

Push the cot mattress as close to your mattress as possible, then stuff rolled blankets down the opposite side beside the rails.

I used to have DS in grobag but duvet would sometimes end up over him too, so now just let duvet over him.
He sleeps with his head in my arm so my pillow is above him.

Hope it helps with the sleep.

no, shove the cot mattress right up to yours and fill the gap on the far side with rolled-up blankets or towels

you need to keep dc away from pillows (easy enough if they are at boob level) and duvets. While we were cosleeping dh and I used a single duvet each - I kept mind down to waist level and wore a cardigan

We have the same arrangement. I have pushed the cot mattress over as close as it will go to our mattress and then shoved a load of rolled up towels/blankets between the side of the cot that's still there and the mattress iyswim, so the two mattresses are pressed together, rather than trying to fill the gap. I also had plans to make a kind of cover out of an old sheet that would go over the crack, but it hasn't happened and DD has come to no harm (though she does love to wedge things down there ).

I often sleep on my side with my lower arm under the pillows so I can hold them in place and away from DD's face, but then I often don't sleep like this too.

Can't think of anything else helpful I'm afraid - if you do some googling then you should find some useful stuff, though I think it's mainly don't drink/smoke etc.

Hope it goes well - I absolutely LOVE co-sleeping, hope you get as much out of it as I do (and some sleep!).

I am too wordy and too slow!

While it's as warm as it is now, do you find you need covers to sleep? If you do, you could try a duvet cover or sheet on its own, preferably pure cotton. I also used ds2's baby blankets (again, they're all cotton) on myself when the weather was cooler - he was born in early February in very cold weather but by the time we got out of the overheated hospital the weather had got much milder.

thanks everybody for your help, have done rolled up sheets down the side of cot. now he just needs to go to sleep and we can try it out!
the bed is an inch higher than the cot, does that matter?

There's about an inch difference here too, doesn't seem to matter much

Only problem is that now she can stand, I think we need to lower her mattress, so will be a bit of a drop - not really sure what to do!

sorry havent read all thread

i co slept with dd and ds ebf and i always made sure they above duvet and wall side of bed (dp on sofa bed in living room his choice !)

be careful rolling things up cots have open sides for a reason

We co-sleep. IN the early days we used cellular blankets for rolling up (the holes mean that air can still get through if needed).

No pillows or rolled up blankets or duvets anywhere. Can you lay your hands on one of the small bassinets/cradles that actually clip to the bed? Otherwise roll the cot as close as possible to the bed and secure it there using something heavy pushed up against the other side of it so it's secure against the bed. If there's a gap between the mattress and the cot mattress, push them together and try to attach them (industrial strength velcro?) Keep something fairly solid like a draught excluder on the other side of the cot mattress to keep it pressed against yours.
Good luck with the sleeping. It's no fun to be a zombie.

In the end we went for an ArmsReach co-sleeper, which solved the problem (it attaches securely to the bed). Ten months on, she now uses it as an ordinary cot in her own room.