Am I totally messing up my 14mo DD?

[monal]

I am a very lazy parent, and working full time. Because I find it easier to get more sleep this way, I sleep on a big mattress on the floor with my dd. She wakes up quite often and I feed her back to sleep. She is mostly only half-awake at most, she cries, I feed her, she goes back to sleep. If I let her cry she cries herself awake and is much harder to settle. When she was littler she was in a co-sleeper cot, and then when she grew out of that we had her in a cot in our room, but the bending over the cot to get her out multiple times a night was killing my back.

During the day when we are at home I put her in the pushchair for naps and she naps fine. When we are out and about she will quite often nap in the sling.

I'm fine with the situation as it is right now, my partner is also fine with it - he either sleeps with us or in another room depending on how much sleep he wants. I don't talk about it at work because everyone frowns on co-sleeping, but even my FIL is terribly judgy and tight-lipped about it because he is convinced it does kids lasting psychological damage.

I'm a bit worried that I'm preventing her getting good sleep or preventing her settling in her own bed in her own room by keeping this up though.

I don't really know what I'm asking, I think I'm just canvassing opinions. I'm prepared to try sleep training of some kind if it will be beneficial to her although I'm dreading it because it will be hard. What do you think?

Ive never shared a bed with dd and she is nearing three, so I cant speak for cosleeping but what I will say is that (1) it works for you (2) it works for dd and (3) people are shits at trying to get you to conform to their version of "normal"

Do what you need and want when raising your own kids and you need to start shrugging off these unhelpful critiques of your parenting.

Noone has ever heard of a 16yr old still cosleeping with their mum so she will outgrow it sometime!

Hi

Glad you've posted this, sounds exactly like my situation!

Im currently trying the no cry sleep solution, but with very slow progress, and he ends up in bed with me every night....

I am also getting a lot of stick for co-sleeping, but surely if that's what comforts them then that's best for everyone, surely better than tears / no sleep!

Sod it, I do similar. I don't usually tell people though! If you want to feel better about it, read one of the attachment parenting books. They'll tell you that what you're doing, i.e. full-on nighttime parenting, is normal, natural and emotionally healthy for your child, and that expecting your baby to sleep alone in another room without waking for long periods is completely unnatural and may even cause psychological problems. Take that, Gina Ford! :-)

Thank you. Maybe I should just buy a book that tells me I'm great, that would probably help. Or buy it in French and leave it at the PIL's house "accidentally."

Um if your dd is sleeping then how could you possibly be messing it up? If it works and everybody's happy then do it.