Tonight's the night

[twinkleberry]

this is my first post on mumsnet so here goes.

DD is 4 months old and has been sleeping in our bed since she was born. She will also only fall asleep on the breast,when out in her pushchair, in the car etc, so does not yet know how to fall asleep on her own. she does sleep in her cot for the first part of the evening, but she is already asleep when she is put in. As she still wakes for 2 feeds during the night I have always found it easier to take her into our bed than to have the 2hr plus battle each time to get her back in her cot.

however now I long to have our bed back and be able to wrap myself up in the duvet ;-), so after discussions with the health visitor tonight is the night that we will start to get her sleeping in her cot all night. HV (who has done this with 4 of her own) advises to warm the cot first, put in an item of clothing that I have worn during the day and once she is put down in the cot not to pick her up again but to re-assure her with our voices that she is ok and extend the length of time between each re-assurance

I am now getting really uptight about this - I really want to do it but am concerned that we may crack, and that DH is going to find it especially stressful.

anyone out there done this before and got words of encouragement or hints and tips...............

Best of luck. My DD was a co-sleeper until she was 10 weeks old as she HATED the moses basket etc with a passion. We ended up moving her into her own room as myself and DH were off away for the weekend and my Mum was having DD at our house over said weekend. Mum is smoker, heavy sleeper and hasn't co-slept since I was tiny, so it really wasn't an option to continue co-sleeping. We seemed to catch her at exactly the right moment (not too early or too late) as we had absolutely no trouble from day 1.

Best of luck and let us know how you get on.
WSM
xx

P.S. Welcome to Mumsnet

message withdrawn

Hello Twinkleberry!
Remember that you only co-sleep for a proportion of your DS's sleep anyway: presumably she has naps alone, and is used to sleeping in her cot in the evening. So don't feel you are imposing something awful, cruel and strange on her! (it's guilt that usually undermines you when the crying starts, IME!)
Good luck....

Also: don't start until you and DH are really of the same understanding about what and how you will do it!

Best of luck, and let us know how it goes.

I co-slept with dd until she was 16 months (in a single bed!). I ended up getting help from the NCT bf line after asking for advice on how to quit bf as I was exhausted. She encouraged me to sort out the sleeping issues first. Unfortunatly dd has never been a good sleeper - she is now 2 1/2 and despite having slept reasonably well since 16months in her own bed, she has started waking up crying in the night

Erm, what was the question....I think your HV's advice about the cloths and warm cot are good (wish my HV hadn't been quite so useless...). I did a similar technique with dd. Not controlled crying, but something caled the rubber band method. It involved being in the room with her the whole time initially, moving around, but being quiet and not very interesting, and then moving further away, and coming back, going out of the room for a few seconds and then coming back etc. It worked really well and she was asleep really quickly (I think it was 15minutes) the first time, it took a little longer the next time.

It worked initially, and then on the nights it didn't work I started lying on the bed with her and then edging slowly closer to the door. The next night I sat on the floor, the next a few feet away, the next I sat by the door, and then just outside the door. It was a long and frustrating process, but infinately kinder than cc. I think, also something that helped was moving out of her cot and into her own bed, but of course your dd is much to young for that.

Hmm, hope that waffle is of some use. Good luck, let us know how you get on, oh, and welcome to mumsnet (great name btw )

Thank you for all your support

well it didn't turn out to be nearly as traumatic as we thought

I put her down at 8.30pm and she cried for 1hr 40minutes (not continously, I went in and stroked her face and spoke to her after 5 min and then extended the gap by 5mins each time, she would stop crying and smile instantly when she thought she was going to get picked up, and scream her head off the second she realised I was leaving the room again).
She eventually fell asleep at 10.20pm. she woke up at midnight and 4am, both times she hardly woke when I fed her so it was easy to put her back in the cot again.
she woke this morning at 6.45am and is the same happy baby she was yesterday morning, so no damage done

as for me - well I got to cuddle DH and reclaimed my title as 'Champion Duvet Hogger'

I think that is a brilliant success for her first night on her own - well done you must be really chuffed. Fingers crossed for tonight for you.