If you co-sleep please can you help?

[GuessHowMuchI]

I posted recently about our 8.5 nearly 9 month olds sleep regression. As advised by some mums, I tried co-sleeping last night for the first time (never felt comfortable doing this previously). I just wanted to ask people who co-sleep for some tips about how to make it work as I found last night v difficult.

At the moment our baby is doing a lot of roly poly / shouting out / babbling / twisting / turning / crying etc whilst in cot. It's like having a different baby as previously he was only waking once and was sleeping soundly . Anyway even after bottle he won't settle in cot and his brain seems wired and all over the place bless him. So last night when it was clear we were going to be in for hours of this again, I tried bringing him into our bed. It's a super king size, DH on one side, me in the middle leaving baby half of the bed. I was paranoid and put pillows on the floor down the side.

He did indeed fall asleep soundly which was great, only waking once for a feed and then settling again. However I didn't sleep a wink! At first I felt really uncomfortable lying on my side but unable to bring legs up under me as that's where baby was. My hips felt sore in this position (still bad after pregnancy). I also didn't know where to put my arms iykwim? It felt natural to drape an arm over him but I was worried it would be too heavy so I tried to keep my arms by my side. So I felt very stiff and my neck was at an awkward angle and I couldn't sleep. There was also a bit of anxiety about him as we have never co-slept before - I never felt safe doing it when he was little.

So I've had a terrible night, only an hour or so sleep. Baby had a lovely rest thankfully!

If you successfully co-sleep please can you advise comfortable sleeping position? What was I doing wrong? Where is baby in relation to you, how high up the bed are they, etc? (I looked at the Lullaby Trust but the diagram seems to show a tiny newborn rather than our big baby!)

Thank you!

I cosleep and it did hurt at first as I was really conscious of my limbs and baby.

Now we just get on with it and found our rhythms together, but we sleep mostly in a separate bed to husband now as he gets too worried about squishing him (he’s one and massive!)

You do end up with your arms over your head a lot, and it can be uncomfy until you get used to it. Mine seems to know when I need to turn over and decides he need to feed urgently so I can’t.

Bottom arm goes up over his head. Nothing wrong with cuddling him with your top arm. There should be room to bend your knees a bit. Hope you get some sleep next time.

Can I jump on your thread (sorry OP), to ask what people do about a bed guard? Our littlest is the same age, and I assumed we'd just put one on the side to make sure she was safe, but I can't find any that are suitable for a double.

With regards to the OP, I'm sort of on my side, arms under head and along my body. Maybe a bit more on my front as well rather than just on my side, which allows my top leg to come up a bit. Sorry, it's really hard to describe!

We always slept with baby in the middle, up high so not really under duvet. I just slept normally.

Bottom arm under your head and over theirs, you can drape your arm over them. I had to co sleep with my youngest from birth and always draped an arm over him and he is absolutely fine. The bonus is that if he moves, you will wake up as he will move your arm. I also found that I could sleep mostly on my stomach absolutely fine, or just move him up a little so that I could put my knee up. Also used to put a pillow under my top knee as well.

With the cover you can either sleep in some sort of sleeping bag or super warm clothes, or I used to sleep in a bra and kind of tuck the cover around me and pull the top corner right up through the bottom of my bra between my boobs to keep it secured. He was in his own little sleeping bag so didn't require any sort of loose blanket.

What best works for us is either baby in the middle, but always higher than us or in a co-sleeping cot (we have an ikea one and took off the side to our bed). If she doesn't settle in the cot sometimes I end up pulling her close to me but I know is safe as she can't fall. Once she is sleeping I move her to the cot just slightly pushing her.

In my personal experience, I generally just stayed away from mine so there was no need to worry about where to put arms, legs, sore hips, etc. I would sleep as normal as I always do, but not close enough to baby that things I did would be an issue, if that made sense. As for the question about a bed guard, I've never used one as when we co-slept with first, we pushed the cot up to the outside of the bed and that acted as a bed guard (it was attached to the bed, so no risk of a gap) and then second time around, baby slept to the inside. Dh and I have two beds pushed together, so dh slept in the other bed and ds slept in the middle of us (but not in the middle of the same bed, so safe), but basically on the inside rather than the outside. Putting baby on the side of the bed against a wall is another option, as long as there are no gaps between bed and wall.

In terms of what you are describing about movement, this is unfortunately really common at 8-11 months. It would be an issue whether you co-sleep or not, as they are basically practicing to be mobile (crawling, standing, walking) but a lot of that happens in sleep so they move around a lot because the brain is really active. What I've found helps is just making sure you have plenty of space so that baby can safely move around but not disturb you too much. With our first, dh slept on a mattress on the floor so we could have the whole bed for about 6 months because that was the best way for all of us to get as much sleep.

We had a cot attached to the bed, so it made a continuous sleeping space. DD and I would sleep holding hands. As she got older she moved to sleeping in the crook of my arm, with me on my back but slightly angled towards her, the benefit of this being that she would feed herself and I didn’t need to wake up too much.

I was the same when I started Co sleeping but you do eventually get used to sleeping in a different position. Just be careful about putting pillows on the floor. I thought about doing this too but there's a risk of baby falling silently on the pillows and suffocating so it's best to avoid doing this! Xx

@LittleMissNaice bed guards are only suitable when your little one gets to 18 months old, before then they are a suffocation risk.

What works me is putting the mattress on the floor, only one adult in the bed, swapping the side the baby is on over night, sleeping with a pillow between your knees and behind your back.

I find a pillow between the knees an absolute must!