Going from co-sleeping to a cot at 12 months - any point?

[BabCNesbitt]

DD is nearly 1, and since birth, the only way we've managed to get her to sleep is by a combination of bouncing, singing and BFing. This can take up to an hour, which gets exhausting! She's co-slept with us since she was born, on a king-size mattress on the floor, and she still feeds at least two or three times a night after we've come to bed. (She'll also eat at least once between being put to bed and our coming to bed.)

Ideally I'd like to find a way of getting her to fall asleep without all the palaver, but I can't imagine even patting and shushing working if she's able to just crawl off the bed yelling her head off. TBH I haven't really thought about how we might get her to sleep without all that, but I just wondered if anyone managed to continue co-sleeping while doing some kind of sleep training, or did you have to move DC into a cot for it to work? And is there any point in moving her into a cot at this age?

Read this and it might be for you drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html

If it is, I'll post again in the morning with my experience. We did it when our dd was 12 months.

Oh, I have seen that before (but thanks for posting it, as I'd lost the link!) I'd definitely like to do something like that as far as tapering off feeding during the night goes, but I wonder if it would eventually work for the initial putting to bed, too?

(BTW am in US - not being kept up in the middle of the night!)

I think it is worth it. We did semi-co-sleeping using a bedside cot until about that age (can't remember exact age) but bedtimes were getting more and more difficult, time-consuming and exhausting for us as DS got more active.

We realised that the bedtime routines which we developed for a little baby were actually helping to keep a toddler awake. We moved the cot away from the bed and put on the "fourth side", and started using the "Baby Whisperer" methods for teaching him how to get to sleep and stay asleep under his own resources. It made a HUGE difference to everyone's sanity.

We did it at 20 months. Ds3 now goes to sleep by himself in his cot. Still wakes up and comes into our bed in the night.

It was actually easier than I thought to get him going to sleep himself - I wish I had done it sooner!