How to stop co sleeping

[Whatwouldyoudo2021]

Please help a desperate mummy out

Baby number 2 is a beautiful 5 month old baby girl, however she can’t sleep unless she is touching me, has my boob in her mouth or on me and it’s really starting to affect my mental health. I really want to love co sleeping, but I just don’t. I need my space I need my sleep. I have a 2 year old aswell who fortunately does sleep but means I can’t catch up with sleep during the day.

Baby girl was born in the summer heat wave, so she wasn’t swaddled as the midwives said it was too hot. Even after her birth she refused to sleep all night unless a midwife walked round with her. She had a brief stay in hospital at 6 weeks old and refused to sleep in the cot there and they wouldn’t let us co sleep so the only sleep I got was when a nurse held her overnight.

I have tried to give her a dummy, I have tried to encourage thumb sucking, she didn’t want either. We started with a snuz pod next to me and now have a full size cot in my room, every time she is transferred she wakes up. She is exclusively breast fed and refuses all bottles

my husband has been in the spare room since the day she was born to give us the extra space. I’ll be going back to work soon and I work shifts so need her to settle and sleep on her own.

I am more than happy for her to wake for a feed multiple times a night as long as I can settle her back to sleep in her own space.

we have literally tried everything and it’s really starting to affect my mental health. Anyone share any wisdom to get her to sleep in her cot?

My 18m old is fed to sleep and has been back in our bed until she's comatose then we can do a transfer to the cot about an hour later. Until then one of us has to lie with her whilst she doses if she doesn't fall deeply asleep while nursing. I really think it's all developmental and the problem is modern pressures on us we then transfer onto babies who are just being babies! So we take it in turns to do the lying there and the transfer and do a lot of crossing our fingers!

There are no quick fixes*, it will take time but you will get there. We started co-sleeping around 4mo and since 6mo committed to start putting DS in his cot for the first stretch. It's been gradual progress but slowly the stretches have been getting much longer, and DS will now let DP rock him back to sleep for his first wake most of the time (this has taken weeks of trying). We've taken things at baby's pace and if all else fails, will fall to feeding to sleep/co-sleeping, but over time it's defintely getting better and I'm happy we've done the right thing.

For the latching, get a copy of No Cry Sleep Solution and try the Pantley pull-off method. Again, not an overnight fix but I used it and it worked for me.

(*not entirely true, but I'm not a fan of these methods).

Following as in the same boat with our 5 month old. Can you hold out until 6 months then start sleep training...I think that's what we're going to do, but one of the gentler methods.