co sleeping with a toddler and newborn, advice needed please

[umboo]

hello

my 23mo ds comes into our bed for most of the night, after starting off in his own bed. dc2 is due in a couple of months and i plan to co sleep, ideally partially and the rest of the time in the baby hammock but hey if it gets too much then i'm happy to fully co sleep with the newborn too

i need tips on how to co sleep safely. i just did a google search and found a useless article on babycentre about how i shouldn't use a duvet and co sleep, and i shouldn't co sleep before 6 months.... when thanks to MN i know both these things are fine if done safely (re the duvet issue, i learnt on here about keeping ds above the duvet in a sleeping bag :) )

my main questions are:

1. what things should i do and not do with the newborn? (only started co sleeping with ds from about 4 months so don't really know about the very early days)
2. what things should i do and not do with 23mo ds?

my concerns about ds in particular are that he likes to sleep on my side, we're trying to get him used to sleeping in between us so that baby can be on my side- but with mixed success. the problem is that on the 3 occasions i've managed to get him to sleep in the middle he's ended up with his head in between the pillows. they haven't covered his face, but obviously its a risk. he really likes his head on a pillow so how do we manage this one?

many thanks in advance.

Bump :)

Hi there. I'm in the same situation DS starts off in his own room then usually comes in around midnight or 1 for the rest of the night. DC2 is due in August.

Similarly we didn't start co-sleeping until around 4 months as before that DS slept fine in his Moses basket.

What I'm planning on doing is using a side car cot for DC2 and having DS in the middle. Sometimes either I or DH disappear to the spare room if we're getting cramped, so I assume this will continue (probably more frequently than now!)

I would continue trying to get your DS to sleep in the middle, just making sure the pillows are out of the way, although I would assume that by 2years the risk of suffocation is far reduced than with a baby because they are able to move out of the way (disclaimer, I don't know this, just assuming, as you can buy toddler pillows).

thanks for your reply :) i like the sound of a side car cot, but as we have the hammock and two moses baskets (!) i can't really justify another purchase!

i agree the pillow thing is less of a risk than with a newborn, its just the getting stuck in the middle of the pillows that freaked me out a bit....

will persevere with trying to get him in the middle, just need to find a safe arrangement of pillows! it doesn't help that me and dh both sleep with 2 pillows each- its the top ones that move. i really need the two pillows as i'm still nauseous and sleeping at an angle helps a bit. but i could see if dh could ditch one of his pillows...

I fairly recently looked at the safe co-sleeping guidelines and it is not recommended to do it with a baby and another child. Not sure of the website now but it comes up on mn quite often.

get a bigger bed, as big as you can afford and enjoy

would love a bigger bed but not sure if we can afford one :)

lol love the idea of ds1 getting annoyed when dc2 cries- it would be much preferable to getting frustrated or angry with baby which is more what i expect!

I was told it was OK to co-sleep with two as long as you are in-between them. I only have the one atm but will probably sleep with two in the future.

When dd was newborn we co-slept with her lying on my chest, as it was the only way she'd sleep.

i have done this, just put baby on the wall side, (we have a futon so height not an issue) then me then the toddler on the other side.

mine have always been in grobags and i used a single duvet for myself so i didnt have to worry about a big double accidentally covering the baby up :)

oh and we have a toddler bed right next to our futon, its the same height as our futon so toddler could easily be moved into that when asleep so we had a bit more space and if they woke they could just crawl back into bed with us :)

WRT the pillows issue, we have a special cushion that dd sleeps on when she comes in, and our pillows are either side. Then when dc arrives in sep, s/he will sleep on my side with a bolster to stop falling out. Mind you, we deliberately bought a massive bed!

I have always co-slept with ds1 - he was a real velcro baby. I was expecting and prepared to co-sleep with ds2 from the off but it turned out that he liked his own space - in the beginning anyway!

He came into bed with me regularly from about 4mo. We took the side off a regular cot and pushed it up against the bed mattress. He never sleeps in it but at least he won't fall out! Dh has his own room I'm afraid but it works fine. Ds1 also has his own room but doesn't sleep in there He sleeps on my other side.

I use 2 flat pillows and keep the duvet away from ds2. He sleeps in a growbag. Oh and our bed is kingsize so that helps too. Although I always seem to get squashed anyway!

If you have a newborn in the bed surely you can't be using your pillow anyway so that won't be a problem? That is what my leaflet on safe co-sleeping said.

hardboiledpossum when ds was young and up until very recently i would sleep with my head on my pillow but always with my arm outstretched above ds' head so there was no chance of him shuffling up to my pillow. the problem was that he soon got used to using my arm as a pillow which gave me a dead arm a few times while pregnant! that's when i started to let him use the pillow too, as he was old enough by then.

hotheadpaisan i can't afford a new bed, and i agree i wouldn't get much more room anyway! i expect its dh who will end up finding somewhere else to sleep....