13 week old only contact naps and co-sleeps, when does it ease?

[Eggplant19]

My 13 week old baby only contact naps (as in literally on my chest when I’m lying down) after 15-20 mins of walking / rocking to sleep. In addition to this he also only likes to fall asleep on my chest every night and then we co-sleep. So this is for 4 naps a day… where I’m glued to the bed!

I’ve tried transfer tricks - hot water bottle, limp arm, white noise! You name it

has this ever happened to anyone else?? When can I expect it to get better?

I’ll admit I don’t mind resting with him of course but at the same time I can’t help but feel this is A LOT and wondering in the next few months he might accept the cot a tad more?

I wish I could give you better news but my now one year old still needs to be rocked to sleep. She started being able to leave her in her cot for naps at about 8 months old and now sleeps the first hours in her own bed and then comes into ours between 1am-6am. It is slowly getting better and she’s starting to sleep longer in her own bed. When we’ve cracked that and she’s sleeping through the night, I’ll work on getting her to sleep without rocking etc. Not every baby goes to sleep easy, or transfers easy, or sleeps through the night early etc. do what keeps you and baby happy, healthy and sane! You’ll get through this and it’ll all work out 💕

Thank you so much! I don’t mind the rocking so much (it’s great exercise)… but regarding the contact sleep I think I’m just going to embrace it and now compare myself to babies that transfer easily! Just going to soak up the cuddles… it won’t be forever

When they are ready.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s such a short time. Relax into it and sleep when they sleep.

It’s relentless isn’t it. One of mine was like this until about 4 months, the other carried on until 18 months. It’s really common and really difficult! I remember wanting just 5 minutes where I wasn’t being touched!

It’s not very easy to sleep with a tiny baby on your chest.

It is normal. Every baby is different. You will miss it when it's gone - which it will, in a flash

2 years I reckon for mine. One didn’t sleep through the night until they were 7 years old.

I think women are sold a fallacy that it only takes a few months and then everything is in a lovely routine but many babies don’t get the memo!!

I know and I feel SO bad feeling like that sometimes. But as someone else said it really is such a short time and then I will miss it. So I’m going to embrace it… I think it’s mainly because I ‘miss’ being able to cuddle my husband but actually we’ve got the rest of our lives for cuddles… only a certain amount of time this little baby will want them

And the fact he’s got so heavy! 😆

Yes so true! Everyone kept saying when he was born “if you can make it to 12 weeks if just gets easier’ and it absolutely has in terms of understanding his cues and him smiling and babbling back but the ‘routine’ is still tiring!

I wish I had given myself permission to roll with what my baby wanted and co sleep from the start with DC1. I did with DC2 and it was wonderful.

My 11yo would still sleep on me every night if she could. Unfortunately for her this would suffocate me and someone would have to prise my cold dead body out from underneath her 😅

I lost my mind around 12 weeks. Everyone tells you it's the magical point when things get easier but for us it was the point where absolutely nothing improved, my DH started getting bored of being super dad and took up hobbies, it starts to become clear how hard parenting actually is and true exhaustion kicked in.

I'd say around 5 months we had some significant improvement. 6-12 months was very up and down. Good weeks followed by terrible weeks with teething and illnesses followed by good weeks again. By the time you have a routine down, they change it. He's almost 2 and he now sleeps through the night without a sound for 5 out 7 nights a week which is amazing.

Yeah mumsnet loves cosleeping. In the real world, many of us like not going to bed at 8pm and not being constantly kicked all night. And with a baby, you can't even sleep on your back or roll over, you have to sleep in the stupid C position or whatever it was called which absolutely killed my hips.

Get your baby used to lying on their back with you cuddled up around them- in the sidelying breastfeeding position even if not breastfeeding, then read a book over the top of their head.
Might ease in a few months or years. Find a way to make it work for you too 😇

This is 100% normal, OP - it’s the way babies are ‘designed’ to sleep, and really good for baby’s long-term security and attachment. As someone who really struggled with sleep with their first, I would wholeheartedly recommend not fighting it and just trying to accept that it will be like this for the next while - I found it so much easier with my second and third babies when I stopped trying to ‘fix’ it.

2 years! He was 9lb at birth as well. I hate to say I regretted having him, but I did. After 2 he was the best thing ever and still is at 20. But those first couple years were pretty shit. Not all babies are that bad though!

My DC who was like this, it was probably somewhere between 6-9 months that I could confidently get them in a cot for an hour or two before they woke up and joined me. Then quite slow progress, with lots of up and downs, till about 18 months by which point they would sleep maybe half the night in their cot. Still very up and down but consistently better from about 2.5 - but still some night wakes until about 4. Now sleeps through almost always. At some point I just accepted the co sleeping and went with it. I do know other people who proactively worked on their babies sleep, with some success - and I was able to get my other child to sleep in the cot through the night sooner (but then they consistently woke at 5:45 am for a year so don't know if it was worth it). I listened to audiobooks a lot...

I know it's cliche, but all babies are different, it's hard when you are in and then before you know it, it's in the past. Tbh I don't really miss quite a lot of it, I'm glad to not feel like a prisoner, but do miss then being little. Try not to compare to others, you're running your own race.

Thank you so much! Yes I think changing my mentality has made it easier. It IS tricky when we have visitors or for example, I’m at my parents this weekend and I’m popping off every hour to their dark room to nap him! I mean it is nice to get peace and quiet though ;)

lol yes, my hips are in pain!! I think we’ll have to bite the bullet and get a super king

That’s very true thank you! I’m glad you managed to get them down for at least a couple hours in their cot. My husband doesn’t come home until 7 with the commute from work and I’m mindful that as his baby’s bedtime gets earlier, if he’s still sleeping on chest, I’ll have to go to bed very early and probably never see my husband apart from the weekend! So I’m hoping at maybe 6 months too he can at least do some stretch on his own

Is it totally necessary to take baby to a dark room or be on a bed? My DS contact napped on and off until he was almost 3. He would be on my chest, in my arms, on a breastfeeding pillow etc but I could be on a reclining sofa, in bed, on a dining chair and he still would have slept. Will baby feed to sleep? That's what I did which avoided the rocking.

Personally I'd try and move away from the very rigid aspects such as on your chest and only on the bed but there's nothing wrong with contact naps. It took my back a long time to recover after being slept on for years in loads of terrible positions.