Tell me about how and when you stopped cosleeping

[highheelsandequations]

DD is almost 1 and we've been cosleeping with her in bed between us since she was 6 mo (before that she was in a sidecar crib). Her sleep has been pretty awful since she was 4 mo. Currently she goes down in her cot in her room around 7pm ish, if when she wakes before midnight DP will try to settle her and put her back in her cot, when she wakes after midnight (or after we're in bed) she comes through to us. She has phases when she'll wake and want fed every few hours all night but currently she seems happy with just one or two nighttime feeds as long as she's in bed with us and has cuddles. Anyway, I much prefer this arrangement to spending hours sitting in her room in the middle of the night desperately trying to get her back to sleep (although currently her favourite sleeping positions are snuggled right into me, which is nice, or turning horizontally to snuggle DP whilst she kicks me, not so nice!) but do wonder when/if we'll get our bed back. I'm hoping that when she's ready she'll just go down in her cot and happily stay there all night, but don't know how realistic this is. So if you've coslept, tell me about how/when you stopped, and how did your LOs take it?

I coslept with DD1 in a similar arrangement to you - she started off in her cot, then when she first woke I'd bring her into bed (unless it was so early I wasn't yet in bed). At around 9 months I think I started cutting back on her night feeds (using the Jay Gordon method, but a bit more slowly than he suggests), so she stopped having feeds in the night. I also did the walk in/walk out method (but with much shorter time intervals, 20sec IIRC) for putting her to bed in her cot as she was absolutely dreadful at bedtime. Once she was going into her cot more easily at bedtime I started returning her to the cot in the night instead of keeping her in with me. Her cot at that point was at the foot of our bed with a bit of space between, so she wasn't directly next to us. We kept her in the room with us till she was about 1.5 then moved her into her own room with no problems. The bit that was quite difficult in terms of crying was getting the initial bedtime sorted, but dealing with the night wakings was easier (albeit very tiring!).

DD2 OTOH is still in our bed at 13 months but I'm quite happy with that, although i'm starting to nightwean her as i'd like a bit more sleep. I wish she wouldn't wake me by nutting me in the face though