Advice on helping my seven month old sleep independently

[pinkdollyworld]

Need some advice… I co sleep with my 7 month old daughter. I don’t get great sleep as I’m always waking at the slightest thing to see if all is ok.

She falls asleep between 7:30-8:30pm but she has to be held and rocked to sleep. I have a rocker but she fights it so much. She only has one night feed & the. sleeps until around 7-8am.

I can’t even put her at the other side of my double bed, as she wakes up & actually lifts her head up and looks for me until I hold her close to me.

As hard as it is, I love it. We have such a wonderful bond & I love that she wants to be close to me, but it’s exhausting. It’s affecting my relationship as my partner isn’t keen on her being in bed with us just for safety reasons & I agree!

She won’t nap without me in the day either. I’m feeling pretty hopeless about it all & feel like i shouldn’t be complaining, but I really need better sleep & would appreciate even 30 minutes to myself if she would nap alone.

I’m not sure if this is relevant to the current issue but we moved in with family when she was 2 weeks old & has pretty much been co sleeping since she was around 2 months old. She was always picked up as soon as she cried as lots of family were always around so she’s never really had to settle alone. Not sure if that factors in with the sleeping situation now??

The fact she only wakes once a night is amazing for this age. Maybe work on making the bed safer so you are not as alert.

Sleeping in the same bed as DH would not have worked for us. We had a double bed in the nursery and I coslept with my DS there. No blankets etc per all the safe sleep advice. DH slept in the main bedroom. I bought a mesh rail from the Internet that goes all around the bed so I could sneak out safely.

I stopped cosleeping entirely around 14 months (I had stopped a few times before but then kept having to go back when he was ill....which was quite often at that age) and DS started sleeping 11 hours through the night at 18 months, so you'll likely get there very soon.

Felt such solidarity with your post until the only one night feed bit - what a dream! 😂. So this is my second time around. I have a 4 year old and a 7 month old. My oldest co-slept part of the night until about a year and started sleeping through around 18 months. If I get the same with my second it’ll be a miracle but here’s hoping! But my no.1 non-negotiable with my kids is they start their night in their own rooms every single night. Sometimes my DD lasts an hour until she just won’t settle in there anymore but I started at 5 months and as time went on she has got better and the majority of the time I get until at least midnight until I bring her in and it makes so much difference to have my own space for part of the night. Do you have a separate room for her? It never works in the same room in my experience.
My partner sleeps on the couch when he’s dayshift (in the bed when nightshift as we aren’t in it) he knows it just a season. Tbh with his job sleeping together has never been a bit part of our relationship anyway, intimacy and romance can exist plenty without sharing a bed