Co sleepers: how do you get out of bed without your child?

[NamingGame]

Ds is almost a year old. Till recently he has always slept in his own cot (next to my bed) but for the last month or so he's been a horrible sleeper. Wakes up all the time and is inconsolable. At some point during the night I usually put him in my bed and he sleeps better there than in his cot so we both get some rest.

My problem is that I don't know how I can get up while he is still in the bed without risking him falling out of the bed. I make a wall with my massive duvet on one side and on the other side the wall is me. However, he's a very active crawler and the moment he wakes up he tries to crawl out of bed. He can easily get over the duvet wall. I'm a super light sleeper so so far I've always woken up when he has.

I'm going back to work soon so ideally I'd like to be able to get up before him so I can get ready while he's still sleeping. However I can't leave him in my bed unsupervised and I can't put him back in the cot as that would wake him. Dh has to get DD ready for school so he can't help.

What do other people do? How do you stop your baby from crawling off the bed? Is 1 (or any age at which they are crawling) just too old to co sleep?

Mattress on floor or against the wall. You can teach them how to get off a bed safely before they are 1 which helps.

I've co-slept with three children and only one of the three actually gets up and crawls around, and he only does this occasionally. Mostly they just wake up and cry, or roll in the direction they think I should be in. I use a bedside cot - I used a converted one for DS1 but DS2 and 3 had purpose built ones (much less useful!) so they were just a bit too long for them at a year but they work as bed guards anyway.

We had monitors - I find audio only ones kick in quicker so I could be in there, but I definitely had more than a few seconds' warning anyway.

I think if your baby is that active then the only thing to do is settle him to sleep and then put him down in a cot. You can always move him into bed part way through the night if you don't want to be up and down to a cot all night, but let him do the first evening stretch without you in a cot with proper height sides.

Sorry. I think the answer is "most babies don't do that".

Oh in the mornings! Well yes they definitely crawl around then. Can you get ready in the room? Surely DH can jump in to supervise while you shower etc?

You don’t.. guess that’s one of the downsides

Floor bed was our solution. DD now has a double floor bed in her room and sleeps through more often than not but it’s handy having the option to share with her when she does sleep badly.

We’ve left our mattress on slats on the floor as we’ve just had DC2 so don’t want to get a proper bed frame again until he’s out of the baby phase / reliably in his own bed.

Honestly spend a week getting him back in his cot, rather than trying all of these things. I'm
Sure it'll be fine.

Mine would definitely fling herself off a proper bed. Our main bed is really high with a wooden floor below and no way to even push it against the wall, so we've always co-slept in her room.

We started with a single mattress on the floor (she was small then!). Now upgraded to a small double floor bed.