Advice please. How do I get 7 month old DD to sleep in own room? (Ruined DC1 so clearly am not good at this!)

[SarahScot]

DD is 7 months old and sleeps in a 3-sided cot pushed up to my bed, but recently has spent more time just sleeping in my bed as that's where she'd prefer to be! She still wakes to be fed 2 or 3 times a night, and is pretty much fed to sleep at bed time and each time she wakes up.

DS is now 4 and is still a crap sleeper, usually up once a night and DH has to put him back to bed. He was still getting fed every 4 hours through the night untli he was 11 months and didn't reliably sleep through until he was nearly 2 . . . my point is, I'm clearly not very good at getting my babies to learn to sleep on their own.

I don't want to leave DD to cry it out, can't stand it, tried it once with DS, ignored him until he was sleeping, then when I went through him and his cot were covered in vomit - poor wee baby had had to fall asleep like that, still makes me feel sad now.

So, WWYD? Bearing in mind she's used too sleeping with me and almost always gets fed to sleep.

What bit of it are you finding hard? The number of wakes, or having her in your bed, or both?

2-3 wakings at 7 months doesn't sound too bad to me TBH I'm afraid.

Oh, just saw that you saw the other thread?

FWIW, this time round, I will not be moving DD into her own room a second earlier than I have to and I only have a two bed house so she can't go in with DD1 until she sleeps through . It's so much easier to cope with night wakings in the same room. Especially feeding in a nice toasty bed!

You are not crap! Your DS sounds perfectly normal to me. Children grow into better sleeping patterns by themselves, it's no failure if you choose not to impose some kind of training routine on them.

If you want to move from the co-sleeper cot to her own room, I'd suggest putting the side back on the cot to start with so that she's still near to you, then once she's used to that, move the cot away from the bed, and then move to her own room.

Or you could just carry on co-sleeping until she's big enough for a bed. Then easier to settle her by getting in with her, do musical beds for a bit (sleep will probably get worse immediately after move but should then improve massively) - if you postpone this until she can walk, then you even avoid the problem of having to go in to her as you can get her to come in to you.

Yep, saw the other thread

It doesn't help that my best friend has three DCs who have all slept through from ridiculously young ages (and it's all because she formula fed y'know ) and my SIL is a smug "oh yes, mine have all slept through since they were conceived" type (even though I know she's lying).

Just comfort yourself that your baby is superior in evolutionary terms - hers would have been eaten by predators .