Transitioning 6mo cosleeping baby into his own bed

[Cuteasa]

I have a 6mo ds who has been co-sleeping with me/us for the last 4 months. We have an attached bedside crib but he never slept well in it and eventually we gave in, brought him into our bed and since then he sleeps a solid 12 hours every night (waking for feeds), plus 3 good naps a day.

I know we're onto a good thing, and I don't want to ruin it, but now he's 6 months he's getting a lot more mobile and I worry about him falling out of bed so I want to start transitioning him to sleeping in his own bed in his own room.

Does anyone have any advice? Or should I not be looking my sleeping baby gift horse in the mouth and try and just make our bed safer for a more mobile baby?

I really wouldn't go from your bed straight to cot in own room all in one go. That is a huge change and I would imagine your DS will find it difficult.

I would plan that he wont be in his own room for a while yet (to set your expectations at a reasonable level) but start gradual changes to help him out of your bed. My suggestions for gradual changes would be:

• Sleeping on the side of your bed next to his sidecar cot (rather than in the middle of your bed, if that's what is happening now)
• Sleeping in his sidecar cot but with you curled and cuddled around him as you lean into the cot
• Sleeping in sidecar cot with your leaned-in cuddles only when he stirs or wakes
• Sleeping in sidecar cot with just your hand/arm as reassurance when needed
• Sleeping in cot with four sides back on, but with you willing to lean hand over side to reassure as needed
• Move cot a short distance (like cm or whatever) away from your bed.
• Move cot further away but keeping you in your DSs eyeline.
• Move cot upwards or downwards a bit, so that DS is not eye to eye with you in bed.
• Move cot to Daddy's side of the bed
• Move cot to the end of your bed
• Move cot to far corner of your room
• Move cot into DSs own room!

As a final thing, padding across into another room to do night feeds and night settles really is no fun at all. You might find it all more easily done and his own room being established as the place for nighttime sleep, if done once he is sleeping through without feeds or wakes at all.

Thank you, that all sounds like good advice. I was planning on going slowly - more for my sake than his: I'm going to miss my baby cuddles!

You still get baby cuddles in the morning when they wake, so it's not all gone.

My nine year old and five year old still come into our bed in the morning when they wake for massive family snuggles for 30 minutes before we get up.