Co-sleeping after 6 months

[CrazyKitkatLady]

So I occasionally co sleep with my DD (currently 4 months) and what we’ve done up to now is boot DH onto the sofa and me and DD share the king size bed with her in the middle and me on one side of her. I’m trying to work out a way to have DH in the bed as well as obviously the sofa isn’t very comfy for him!

Everything I’ve read says not to have baby in between parents and have them just by me which is fine but that would put her closer to the edge than I’m comfortable with! I’ve looked online and all the cosleeping cots I can see are only up to 9kg / 6 months which would be too small basically immediately as she’s a big baby or bed guards that say they’re for toddlers 18 months + so what do people do for the bit in the middle?! There’s no way to configure the room to have the bed against the wall as that’s the most obvious thing I could think of but just doesn’t work in the space we have.

Any tips would be gratefully received!

We just put our son in between us once he was big enough to roll off. I think he was about 10
Months? We have a massive bed, don’t smoke and don’t co-sleep if one of us has been drinking

Look up sidecar techniques, basically attaching any normal cot or cot bed to the side of yours like a large version of a next to me

We used a co sleeping cot that attached to the bed and DS slept with his upper half in the cot and his lower half in the bed sideways on. Worked fantastic!

We have either used a sidecar cot (a full size cot that can last up til 2-3 years attached to the side of the bed with one side removed). Or we've created a family bed. With our first, that meant dh slept on a mattress on the floor as we couldn't really justify buying a second bed, but we did have a spare mattress. So we slept all in the same room but not necessarily on the same level.

The second time around we had a different house and could be more intentional. We got a second (single) bed and put the two beds together. Dh sleeps in the single. I slept in the middle (early on), but now as youngest is older, he sleeps in the middle (he's nearly 3, no way dh is going to roll on him from a completely different bed). When he slept on the outside, we kept the cot pushed up against the bed, but you could also get a bed guard if you don't have the space.

Mine have slept with me til 3 (eldest until 3.5 and youngest is about to turn 3 and still sleeps with us), so if you think it's something you may do long term, it's worth considering long term changes to make it work. It's the best way for us to all get sleep as I have insomnia and even dh getting up to do nighttime settling in another room is really disruptive to my sleep.

We also "side-carred" a full size cot by putting it up against our bed with one side off. We had to buy furniture risers to get it up to the right height.

There is a great Facebook page called the Beyond Sleep Training Project. Whatever your views on sleep training, there are lots of posts about this on there, with loads of useful advice on co-sleeping.

I co sleep with my 8 month old. We just pop him in the middle of us and have done since he was 4 months. Now he’s 8 months, it’s safer because he would just roll out of the bed if DH wasn’t the other side.

We put a sort of foam wedge under the sheets to create a bumper at the edge of the bed. We got it on amazon, it was the same material as a cot mattress so not a suffocation risk, and goes under the sheets so no gaps to get stuck in etc. It won't stop a really determined roller, but it was enough to stop my 2 rolling out.

We put a single bed in the 'nursery' and DH slept there. After a year DD mostly moved to the single bed, though they still sometimes end up swapping in the night.

Magic bumpers!

We have DS's cot at the side of the bed with one side down so it's like the Next 2 Me. The reality is I end up in the cot and DS ends up starfishing in my place

Thanks for the tips everyone! Loads of really helpful ideas