How to stop cosleeping without sleep training?

[Caterpillar432]

My LO is 6 months and we’ve coslept since he was 2 weeks old but I’m so ready to have my bed back but I’d rather not sleep train/CIO. Any advice of how or where to start? Or does anyone who was in the same boat have any experiences to share?

He currently wakes every hour and feeds back to sleep. Cosleeping does have it perks with us both being able to get back to sleep quickly but I think he only wakes every hour because of my boobs presence as he never feeds for long so I don’t think he’s hungry every hour. I’m hoping maybe he’ll wake less in his own room. Although if he wakes just as often, I’ll be going back to cosleeping!

If you're not willing to sleep train you'll need to wait until he grows out of it. Most kids do around 3 or 4.

@MolliciousIntent I guess by “no sleep training” I mean no intense crying. I understand there will be an element of “training” to get him used to it, I just don’t know where to start!

If you're willing to keep getting up in the night, then to start with I'd just feed him to sleep and put him down in the cot. Maybe warm it first? So it's not such a shock. Then whenever he wakes, go in, feed, put him back down. That's what we did when ours were little, and then we worked on self-settling after they were used to the cot.

Honestly it’s just a case of time until the child is ready to sleep alone. For me it was around 2.5yo. I chose to give my children the comfort of my presence and my cuddles for as long as I was needed, I don’t believe in leaving kids to cry. Mine are now at school, well adjusted and happily sleep alone.

Hi @Caterpillar432 i had my bubba in October, she wouldn't settle in the cot that is right next to me with one side lowered so she coslept with me, i found myself on the edge of the bed alot as i wanted her to have enough room.
I started giving her a bath in the evening, fed her and try to keep to a fixed bedtime, also dimmed the lights, no tv in the room and she started to settle in the cot all night!
Hope the above helps x

sleep training does not equal cry it out.

There are lots of gentle sleep training methods

I coslept/breastfed from birth, and that feeding at night isn’t just about being hungry or not, it’s the comfort/security that helps them go back to sleep easily. There’s a good chance stopping and moving into own room won’t make him wake less, it’ll just mean you’re having to go to another room multiple times a night and settle them in a way that takes longer. 6 months is often a particularly hard sleep period (as is 8-10 months) but they will develop out of their waking at their own rate.

The No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley is a popular book on this subject.

Just marking my place as we're in the same boat! Just a thought, does you lo have a comforter/lovey? My eldest did and this really helped her sleep. We're going go try and introduce one when dd is a bit older.

Those of you that coslept, how did you get baby to bed early enough? I feel like my LO could do with an earlier bedtime and I’d love an hour or so with my DH but I have to go to bed same time as DS normally sometime between 8-9pm.

I bought the book 'teach your child to sleep' as I was so sleep deprived I needed something less 'wordy' than the 'no cry solution'.

I selected the 'gradual withdrawal/retreat' method

Whilst it did involve some crying I was always there to comfort him.

It took a while but after a few months he went from waking every 1-2 hours to sleeping 12 hours a night with 2 good naps.

Making it a gradual transition helps - we went from cosleeping, to cot at foot of bed, to own room with one of us on a mattress within reach, own room mattress further away. The final stage was in a chair outside the door. Somewhere in the middle of this (about 23 months) we night weaned. It took a long time and there was some crying but we worked at a pace which avoided him getting distressed. Tag teaming so each of you get some uninterrupted sleep is really important as a survival technique!

There is no such thing as ‘gentle’ sleep training imo

to be fair OP your baby is only 6 months old. To be polite, you’re just gunna have to accept that the chances of your baby falling into a decent sleep routine long term is waaaay off at the moment and probably won’t happen for a long time! It’s biologically normal for babies to wake up at that age. Your baby will go through so many developmental leaps and changes and the number 1 thing that’s usually affected is sleep. Even if you’d never coslept chances are you baby would still continue to repeatedly wake up.

I would look at spending 90 minutes before bed time winding down and relaxing, dull lights, bath etc. I would keep the cot in your room for now so it’s more of a gradual change. Get your baby to associate the cot with sleeping, try putting them in the cot when their sleepy or for naps during the day

fwiw my 15 month old is still in our room (through our choice, he’s in a cot). It’s only the last 8 weeks that he’s started sleeping through

I never got any time with DH, I constantly had a baby attached. That’s nature for you, for survival reasons babies cling to their mother! I went to bed about 8.30 with the baby. DH stayed up to watch TV by himself. Not what we wanted but we had a baby and it was temporary.

You certainly can get into a good sleep routine with a six month old, though it does depend on the child.

OP, my advice would be to feed to sleep as normal, put him down in his crib, and leave. Repeat as often as he wakes. Chances are he will wake less often without the presence of adults grunting, turning, etc.

Mine slept soooo my b better once they were in their own rooms, and I do think the benefits of good sleep on babies' health and development are underestimated a lot of the time.

We sleep trained at 6 months using an app called “little ones” and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Lots of support from sleep experts. Very little crying involved (if there had been we would have stopped)- I would definitely call this gentle sleep training and not “cry it out” - more just a schedule of sleeps, naps, meals and snack. The theory being that once the naps are in place the nights take care of themselves. Within a few days our son was sleeping through for 12 hours and napping well. It did give us less flexibility to be our and about during the day - not everyone’s cup of tea- but totally worth it for us. Our son is now 4 years and still sleeps 7-7 ish. Always sleeps well unless he is unwell.

I left it until 9 months, much easier once they are very well established on food as BF decreases.
I moved DD into a cot in my bedroom and lay next to it (I had pillow/duvet etc so I was comfy), holding her hand. Then moved when she was asleep. She would wake 1-2 times at night on average. Sometimes she’d end up back in bed but mostly the cot. Gradually she would fall asleep quicker. We didn’t do any tears.

Moved to own room at 15 months, same approach. No tears. But you do have to be patient and not expect sleeping through. It was harder than co-sleeping though initially as more effort required.

I have never co slept but would agree with others that 6 months is still quite young for a frequently sleeping through and moving him to his own room isn't guaranteed to bring more sleep.

My LB has always slept well in his own bed and hit six months, now we are up frequently, for long periods in the night.

I have done a bit of sleep training but not really any crying. In the night I don't lift him from bed, try and settle him just with shushing. Sometimes it works, sometimes not and I have to feed. To a certain extent I am just following his lead, as he is only 7 months.

Same with my eldest, she has slept well since about 1 year

Get a floor bed, and start doing your night time routine in there. Lay down, baby falls asleep, you can roll away and go downstairs.

It took my DD a while - I would have to keep popping back every half an hour or so for a while as she would stir, but shes a light sleeper.

DD is 29 months and although at home she still needs me to get her to sleep, she does quite long stretches now in her own bed. She can also put herself to sleep and sleeps through when she does nights at Nanas. Also sleeps fine and alone at nursery.

I go to bed same time as bubba about 9pm she won't settle if i'm not there, she's 11 weeks old. My nephew is 1 yrs old and he's in bed by 7pm and his parents get to spend the evening together.

I was going to suggest this. 6 months is really early to worry about needing to do sleep training I reckon. We put our LO's cot mattress on the floor, he fell asleep and you roll away. It'd be interesting to see whether your LO wakes as often when you're not there - some babies sleep better alone, some sleep better next to a parent, totally depends on their personality.

Another option could be to keep co-sleeping for a bit but stop feeding back to sleep - go with rocking/some other kind of soothing. That also might reduce the wake ups, then once you're weaned off night feeds / as many night feeds then you can transition away from co-sleeping. Depends what your priority is, I'd just recommend changing one thing at a time though so the transition isn't too rough on either of you

Don't know if it's already been mentioned up thread - look up Lyndsey Hookaway on instagram and habit stacking, might help you

How are things now OP? We're in a similar boat....

We did something similar to @MolliciousIntent.
I coslept with our baby from 6-10 months as it felt easier to get to him as he woke so frequently (every hour/2 hours). It got to the point I was so tired and felt he wasn’t sleeping great either and I knew something had to change but didn’t want to let him cry as it would never work and he’d likely get so wound up he would vomit.
We started off by rocking to sleep and putting in cot fully asleep. Every time he woke and cried, we went back in straight away and rocked to sleep. It was brutal the first few nights waking between 10-15 times but eventually he slept all night in the cot.
we then worked on putting him in awake. Sometimes he’d go in fully awake and fall asleep himself no crying, sometimes he’d lie there trying to get to sleep then cry after 10-15 mins and other times he’d cry straight away. Whenever he’d cry, again we’d go straight in and rock to sleep. Eventually the times where we put him in and he’d go to sleep himself with no crying increased and now on average he sleeps in 5-7 hour stretches with 1-2 wakeups which is a massive improvement. We always go in when he cries but he sleeps much better.
only problem is I’m so used to waking frequently I still don’t sleep great. Need a bit of sleep training myself haha.