Will stopping co-sleeping make nights better?

[Mummagumma]

I love co-sleeping with my 8.5 month old DS in many ways. However, the sleep situation at home is just getting a bit out of hand.

DS wakes extremely frequently - probably on average every hour, but more so in the hours before I join him in bed (getting earlier and earlier these days) and from 5am onwards.

This is what currently happens:
DS lies next to me in bed and feeds, gradually getting sleepier. Then he pulls himself back to wakefulness, starts waving arms and clapping hands, rolls on his front and getting excited. DP puts him in his pram, and rocks him to sleep.
Once DS has dropped off, DP scoops him up and puts him back in the bed next to me. DS stirs, latches on, or turns the other way and cuddles my arm, and goes to sleep. Sort of. He'll stir half a dozen times in that first hour. After a couple of hours of charging up and downstairs to re-boob him, I'll give up and go to bed. DS will wake constantly throughout the night. Sometimes holding hands and patting his thigh helps him resettle, but usually it has to be boob. It is paramount to get him quiet again ASAP, as we have paper thin walls and the neighbours wake.

Naps are bad too - all take place in the pram and require lots of rocking, with me sat in a dark room rocking back and forth for an hour three times a day.

I feel that maybe the time has come to move him into his cot alone, but not his own room (one-bed flat) and use PUPD to try to get him to settle. Before I lose my marbles and my relationship! The lack of sleep and loss of any time with just DP is really hard. When DS is asleep we are just on tenterhooks the whole time waiting for the inevitable wake up. We haven't watched telly in weeks, as we never made it to the end of a show!

So, I guess I just want some opinions from people who gave up co-sleeping, and tried PUPD, or anyone - maybe just some reassurance that this is the right thing to do now. I so want to continue co-sleeping, but the cons are outweighing the pros.

It does sound like you need to stop co-sleeping.
You will find that you sleep better without having DS in the bed with you. Waiting for him to wake up all the time is exhausting and must be preventing you from sleeping deeply and properly.
Although it may take a few days, your DS needs to learn to sleep on his own without relying on feeding to sleep every time he stirs. Self-settling is an important skill that he will need for the rest of his life.
Don't worry too much about your neighbours, it will only disturb them for a few nights.

Afraid I have to agree with RuthChan. It may help you to warn your neighbours that you are changing where your baby sleeps and to expect a couple of nights disruption. For the same reason, it's prob best to start on a Friday, so that the worst nights are hopefully over before everyone has to go to work on the monday.

I haven't been co-sleeping, but did try PUPD on my non-napping, waking at night baby when he was around the same age as your LO is now. Granted, he wasn't sleeping anywhere near as badly as your LO, but he learned to get off to sleep on his own REALLY quickly. I was nervous of doing PUPD, as I think you are, but it was nowhere near as bad as I had feared. Preparedness is all!

Good luck!

I've been co-sleeping with my DD (7mo) and like your DS, she had a really strong feed-to-sleep association to the point that she was needing me to feed her back after the slightest wake-up - not good for her or me.

We live in a flat and have a similar problem to you with neighbours and noise.

In the end, I just had to go cold turkey, as PU/PD and Ssh/pat just made her worse when she was protesting because she wanted to be on the breast.

The most important thing is to get the first bedtime settle right - theoretically (and in practice here) the rest then gets easier.

First two nights, DD protested for 20 mins or so before going to sleep. By night 3 I was putting her down awake (after a feed) and she was getting herself off to sleep without a peep. She's still not an expert at self-settling overnight, but she's already heaps better than she was. Now the number of times I put her to the breast has gone down from a minimum of 5 to between 1 and 3. This is in less than a week.

It's hard and upsetting to hear your DC creating because they want Mummy's breast, but in the end, unless you're prepared to wait it out for a long time, I suspect you'll have to break that FTS association somehow.

We did the deed over the weekend as the other posters suggested.

Good luck! You'll need to be strong, but it sounds like you need to take action.

Also, you may be surprised - as I was surprised - at how quickly your DC gets the hang of the change.

Incidentally, DD now sleeps in her own separate zone - within easy reach of me in the bed, but not cuddled up to me. That would be unfair, as I don't want her latched on all night and that's what she expects if I put her right next to me. But it still counts as co-sleeping!

I agree with the others.Rocking,feeding,movement in the pram are all hindering your DS from having a good night's sleep.Because he can't self settle he needs some of these things to get back to sleep.
I would definitely try and sort these things out now as one of the other posters said you need to teach your son the sleep skills he will have for life.Also...I have a friend who is still doing all this with a 2 year old!

There is a sleep clinic called Millpond who have a book.I found it really helpful when I had to give me DD some help.They also do consultations over the phone.

Good luck.

Thanks for all the advice. I spoke to someone at the Millpond last week, and am considering getting them involved, but there are some teeth coming through at the moment, so he's understandably not very happy about that.

I don't understand where I missed the transition between 'whatever means necessary to help them sleep' as a newborn and 'really should be settling himself' as a bigger baby!

DP and I feel bad that we've clearly made him need us to get to sleep, and it so sad when we can see he's trying to get to sleep alone but just can't do it.

Don't beat yourself up, Mummagumma - there is no clear transition and loads of us have to take the reluctant step of sleep-training once certain sleep support habits get too ingrained.

Some babies just need more help to sleep than others, it seems. I don't think there's much you - or anyone - can do about that. It's certainly not your fault that you're in the situation you're in. Babies and their needs change all the time and each one is different, so second guessing the best parenting approach is a redundant exercise. We all just muddle through in the end!!!

Good luck, remember: TTSP!!

Hi,

I am currently in just the same situation. My DD is seven months and we've co-slept since the beginning. It's all got out of hand, I'm exhausted, I never see my partner, and my DD just wants to cuddle up and suck my boobs all night long.

So we started sleep training last week. It has been going ok. We're not doing controlled crying, but a gentler method that I guess is PUPD. It's bloody hard work and is taking us longer than it has taken a lot of others on this thread, but I think my baby had the worst sleep problem in teh world. Ever.

We're down to a few feeds a night instead of a million, and she's sleeping in the cot. She can also settle herself to sleep for the first part of the night, but struggles after that.

But we are making progress and Rome wasn't built in a day and all that.

Sappholit, I just wanted to see how you got on with your DD's sleep training? My DS seems to be taking a lot longer than we'd hoped to 'get' the PU/PD method and I was wondering if it worked for you in the end?