co-sleeping and worry

[Emster30]

4-week-old DS will not settle in his crib and most of the time I end up having him in bed with me. we follow all the rules for safe co-sleeping, and i have the duvet tucked right under me. however this morning when i woke up the duvet was over DS's face. he was fine, just squawking a bit, I don't know whether this was protesting at the duvet or hunger (he had been asleep for 5 hours, the longest ever!). i also then worried that he should have woken earlier but the duvet prevented it or something. aargh. I didn't tell DH as I worried he'd be cross.

i guess i need to make more of a concerted effort to get him to settle in his crib. although I'm breastfeeding, i can only feed on one side lying down and even then I need to take my bra down etc, it's not the automatic latching on thing that co-sleeping is meant to be good for. plus at 2am when he still hasn't got to sleep it's so much easier just to feed him to sleep lying next to me and not have to put him in his crib for the zillionth time and wait 45 seconds for him to wake up and scream.

any advice?

We co sleep and have done all along. Dd2 sleeps on top of the duvet with a cellular blanket over her and I still have the duvet over me. I pull it down when I feed her. Couldn't cope with her crying if I tried to put her in her cot in the middle of the night.

I suppose I could try having him on top of the duvet (he sleeps in a grobag), though then DH might somewhat run out of duvet on the other side of the bed!

Can I ask what you do to stop your DD falling out of bed? DS isn't rolling yet but I worry anyway. We have an Ikea bed with about 10cm of wooden bed frame around the outside of the mattress so I don't think any of the bed guards you can buy would fit.

I'd like to get one of those bedside cots but again I don't know how it would work with our bed, and they are very expensive. DH says he will make one, but when?

This is our 3rd dc in our bed and we bought a superking duvet so no one runs out of duvet even with dd2 on top. I have a couple of extra pillows I put between her and the edge and when I'm feeding her lying down I also put my arm around her. Between feeds she's back in the middle and me and dh prevent her from falling out.

Hth

Hi Emster30

DS and I sleep under an adult sized cotton cellular blanket (do a google search and you'll find a few online retailers) and I have the duvet over my bottom half. DH has the rest of the duvet. That way I don't worry too much if the blanket rides up over his face. DS generally stays on my side as well.

When they are very tiny it is easy to feel the bed could swamp them and so I also slept without a pillow when DS was tiny. DS is coming up 6 months and I feel more comfortable with him next to me and really enjoy co-sleeping now!

Re the bed frame - could you push it against a wall? Or, if you have space, push the cot bed (if you have bought one yet) flush against the bed frame and pad out the wooden 'shelf' in between the cot bars and your mattress with a large folded towel?

I brought a bedside cot from Ebay for £36.

DD was in it til by my side and i just moved her into bed with me for a feed and moved her back. Sometimes she would stay in with me and the bedside cot acted as her barrier

You can buy bedguards too.

DD now sleeps mostly in her Amby nest because she self settles in it and sleeps all night most of the time- is a baby hammock an option?

cgi.ebay.co.uk/Mothercare-Bedside-cot-/320576122065?pt=UK_Baby_Nursery_Furniture_ET#ht_500wt_1154

if that helps.

Oh and we brought a sleep positioner too- that helped DD feel snug and secure so she would sleep fine in cot (til she started rolling and we had to stop using it and the cot as she rolled and got stuck which she cant do in hammock. Once she is rolling freely will put her back in cot)

Our bed sounds like yours - an Ikea one with a wooden frame. We dismantled the frame (well, stood it up on its side against the wall) and put the mattress directly on the floor. I also use a Lindam bed rail on the other side of DS, because our room has too much clutter in it to be safe for a baby. Like you, I started co-sleeping out of 'necessity' rather than choice so I didn't want to fork out for a bedside cot.

Now at 7.5 months I still find it great, but DS sleeps on a single mattress pushed right up against mine, so we both have our own space but I can feed him lying down.

Feeding lying down does get easier with time - as the baby gets better head control they find it a lot easier, and you get better with practice too. DS has never got the hang of the automatic latching thing, though.

If you did have a bedside cot which worked, you could have a change mat under DS and when you've fed him, slide him back into his own space.

It does all get easier as they get older! Congratulations on your baby. :)

thanks all! some good tips there. i have put in a bid on that cot, thanks thandekra. i had looked on ebay but that is much cheaper than others i saw, and it's not too far to collect either.

you could use a lindam bed rail altho not deffo safe when they start to pull up to stand
i always had duvet up to my waist then pulled across my r shoulder only with bubba on my left
btw i thought it wasnt advisable to sleep with baby between mum and dad, i thought increased risk 1. overheating and 2. dads not doing such light sleeping and more likely to roll and crush
we went to mattress on floor at about 8m plus lindam rail after bedside cot for ages (with rolled up towel on wooden bed edge)
i didnt realise i could feed lying down till she was 7m no wonder i nearly was dead with exhaustion, so not sure when they learn to latch on themselves
at 14m i still dont have the energy to settle her in her cot at night

DS co-slept with us until about a year old. He also slept on top of the duvet in a grobag. Our bed sounds similar to yours in that the mattress sits inside a wooden frame. We used the Baby Dan Sleep 'N' Safe bed guard, the only issue being we couldn't fold the guard down - so I had to clamber over it getting in and out of bad.

tugamommy there came a point where she didnt want to sleep right next to me, guessing it was about 7m ish, so i wouldnt know from that point on, i guess i started to sleep heavier

Tiredpooky. Maybe an issue but it's a big bed (superking) and dd2 is much nearer me than dh and on top of the duvet so not going to overheat. I sleep with an arm around her as well and even if dh did roll from his position on his left side he still wouldn't be on top of her but she isn't going to roll out either as he's between her and the edge iyswim. But we were on holiday recently and it was just an ordinary double bed in our room so he went in with ds. I guess the solution is different for different beds/families.

We managed to convert our normal cot to a bedside one, if the ebay one doesn't work out.

To counteract the wooden edge of your bed, you will need to pull the cot mattress over, and stuff the other side with something firm like rolled up towels.

DS does the automatic latching now, but never did when he was small - the lifesaving thing about co-sleeping for me in the early days was just having the freedom to doze while he fed and/or drop off afterwards without worrying.

Have you tried wearing a dressing gown in bed instead of having the duvet over you? You can have a cotton blanket over DD and your legs, so you have something over you that way, but it's less of a worry. I didn't put DS on top of the duvet because duvets tend to reflect body heat (if you've ever slept on top of one yourself you'll know what I mean!) and I didn't want him to get too hot.

We use an ikea cot with the side taken off as a bedside cot, once DS is sleeping a bit better we can just put the side back on and we have a normal cot back! We have an ikea double bed too (Hemnes if that helps)

We tied the bed frame and cot together with bungees, moved the mattress towards the bed so there is no gap, and filled the gap on the non-bed side with towels inside the cot sheet.

I love it, as I can just lean my top half into the cot to feed, then roll back once DS is done - nice and easy, both very happy. We are having issues with DS coming to find me in the big bed now though, so the co-sleeping may be coming to an end :(

the trouble is that the wood bit is at about the same height as our mattress. i think we could cover it with a towel for padding and then a sheet. unfortunately we don't have space to store the bed frame, or for a bigger bed than a double... i think a bedside cot has to be the way forward. mind you, for most of last night he was very happy in his crib.

wow-why did i never think about the changign mat thing!this is my secind cosleeper child and even though he is 10 months old i might just try that idea

I nicked the idea off someone else on here!

'It's all thanks to Mumsnet' is the saying in our house. :)

yes i put baba on the changing mat in middle of bed- like his own mini mattress- works a treat and keeps him sort of in place- plus the urine also in its place.

I've seen some people using foam bed guards which you can put under the fitted sheet. Not sure how well they work but I was thinking of trying one out now that DS is getting older. Right now we only co-sleep when I can't get DS to settle. I like it but don't like doing it so much when DH is in bed with us too.

we had a sleep positioner too (but hard to breastfeed in it)www.amazon.co.uk/Summer-Infant-Resting-Sleep-Positioner/dp/B0035ER14Q/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=baby&qid=1282984684&sr=8-2