Co sleepers/Attach parenting: what to do when baby ready for bed first

[SquidgersMummy]

So dd is 8 mth, ebf, co-sleeping also has eczema and gets itchy at night can result in trying to remove face if unsupervised despite ScratchSleeves used to be a 9-9 baby so we would just go to bed together but before Easter was ready for bed at 7.30. She wants to feed and cuddle to sleep and if I leave will somehow know, stir and cry and wont properly settle till I get in bed too. We've been busy this week with outings so had a few late 5-6pm naps - which have pushed bedtime later. Do I intentionally keep this up? We don't have a nap schedule as such. My question is if baby is ready for bed first but used to cosleeping how do you put them down and leave them? Many thanks xx

We co-sleep and put DS to bed around 7pm, I feed him to sleep and manage to detach him when he's in a deep sleep. It's impossible to sneak off when he's still in a lighter sleep cycle. I then go down stairs and have the monitor on. We have duvets & pillows each side to create a nest (he's 18 mo). When he was smaller we had a 3 sided cot attached to the bed. The trick to sneaking away is to wait intil she is in a deep sleep cycle - usually takes 20-30 mins (might be shorter/longer, all babies are different!). I can usually tell as his breathing changes but that took a bit of time. The other way to tell us to lift her wrist & drop it gently, if it falls limply, she's in a deep sleep cycle. If she stirs, she's still in a light sleep cycle. You can also put something that smells if you with her, like a bra or something. HTH

Also, we found Viridian chickweed balm & lush's dream cream really helped DS's eczema.

I've co-slept since DS was 7 mo. I too creep away, but as he's got older (20 mo now) his tolerance of me detaching and leaving has got better. I've found that those early days of lying still and inching away like a sneak have sort of paid off. I've always responded pretty quick if/when he's woken up without me there and now he comes to the bedroom door and shouts if he needs me. Of course as they get more mobile you have to make sure that they can't hurt themselves alone in the room. We sleep on mattresses on the floor at the moment (we used to call it "the padded cell").

Good luck.

SBxxx