How does co sleeping work once they're mobile esp in evenings?

[monstergoose]

I'm having horrendous sleep issues with my 5mo dd at the moment, she used to self settle for both naps and at night but for the last month shes been awful and getting worse. She'll sleep in her pushchair or car for naps but absolutely not in her cot (apart from when I actually climbed in the cot with her to feed her to sleep!) but at night she just won't settle. I feed her to sleep lying down and she goes out like a light after a good feed. But no matter whether I wait 5 mins or half an hour she pings awake as soon as I put her in her crib then just won't go back to sleep despite being tired, eye rubbing/stamping feet, the works. Tonight I've sat by her crib for over and hour now with my arm in to comfort her whilt she screams blue murder.

We often co sleep after the first feed of the night now as I can't face going through the screaming when i put her back in her crib again at night so I'm happy with co sleeping then. How does co sleeping work in the evenings though when your not actually in bed with th though? At the moment I can leave her on the bed as the crib is pushed right up next to it as a bed guard but in a few months when she's crawling I obviously won't be able to leave her on the bed...what do I do then?

Do I need to persist with trying to get her in her crib for at least the first part of the night (which = horrendous screaming)?

DS is 21 months and we have co-slept with him since he was very little. I feed him to sleep and get out of bed once he is sound asleep. He hardly ever wakes up, and when he does he yells for me.

I have never worried about him rolling out and hurting himself. We have attached the side of his old cot to our bed so he will not accidentally roll off in his sleep.

We use a bed guard to stop him rolling out. Being in a sleeping bag makes them a bit less mobile too.

Yes, I was going to suggest a sleeping bag to. DS has just started rolling over and will do so at any given opportunity when you put him on his back, but can't do it in his sleeping bag.

Another one that used a sleeping bag and a bed guard to stop rolling. Once crawling I put cotbed mattress on floor. Fed ds there and then sneaked away. I can't remember the name of them...used foam sticks from amazon to stop him rolling onto floor. He was a wriggly one!

As a side note, ds now goes to sleep in his own bed with no problems. I think the feeding to sleep on his mattress helped the transition to his own bed. X

I put our mattress on the floor. Sounds a bit extreme but it is really comfy! So if DS wakes up he wouldn't hurt himself.

That said he cries before trying to move when he wakes up and I'm not there and never makes it off the edge when moving around in sleep.

I also have a baby gate on my bedroom door so he couldn't escape out the bedroom and the bedroom is baby proofed as much as possible.

We pushed the bed into a corner, so two sides were wall, and used bed rails to partially cover the other two sides. Fed to sleep on bed in sleeping bags and never had any problems.

As soon as he can crawl/cruise, start teaching him to roll onto his tummy and slide of the side of the bed feet first. I found there was only about two months where my two were capable of getting to the edge of the bed but not capable of getting safely down. We respond to any monitor noise very quickly though!

Oh yes, baby proof the room and stairgate the door :)