co sleeping and no evenings

[sombrilla]

Please help!

I have co slept pretty much from birth with my 5 month old and it is so lovely, but I have no evenings!
He falls asleep in his cot with a dummy and patting on his bum/back but every night wakes up every 30 mins until I eventually give in go to bed and bring him in with me around 10. He has a feed and then sleeps beside me with maybe 3-4 wake ups for milk (I don’t really keep track as he is BF and I can feed half asleep).
I don’t really mind the co sleeping and am happy to continue but would like to be able to have and evening downstairs with my husband without running up and resettling him every 30 minutes. Also if I get up for anything at any time in the night (even for a wee!) he will wake up.
Is this something he will grow out of eventually or will I have to do some sort of sleep training?
My older one is 3 and sleeps beautifully so I know that it is all just a phase but I also don’t want to spend the next 2.5 yrs sitting in a dark room every evening from 730-10!

It will come, I think it's developmental maybe? I tried coming down and leaving DD when she was about 6 months and it didn't work. Now she is 8 months and I put her to bed about 7.30-8pm and creep away. She usually wakes up after 30-45 mins but I feed her for 5 mins lying down and can go back down for usually two hours or so. Probably doesn't sound like much of an evening but it is when you're used to none!

I remember with my first she just started staying down at around 8 months. It wasn't really anything I did. Hang in there.

Ah thank you so much! What did you do for naps?
Currently he has 3
915ish-10 in a sling on the school run)m
12-2 this is on me otherwise he wouldn’t sleep longer than 30 mins
430-5 this is usually in the pushchair at the park after school or in sling on the weekends
I would love the midday one to be in the cot so I’m not stuck under a baby every day for 2 hours but is this realistic? Would I have to completely stop co sleeping to get the longer cot nap in the day?
This is all new to me as I didn’t cosleep at all with my first and he only napped for 30 mins at a time no matter what, even held. We only got longer naps after sleep training at 8 months.

Why not have him in the sitting room with you? He obviously needs to be physically around you at the moment. I never put mine upstairs in cot when I was downstairs, just took him up when we went to bed. I too co-slept for quite a long time. It all worked out well, my child was content and neither husband nor myself were inconvenienced by him being part of our evening. He slept and woke as he wanted and was happy.

He’s still young yet, don’t panic.
I was able to give my first a bottle at bedtime and that made him sleep a little longer.
Unfortunately my second refused a bottle or dummy.

Babys under 6 months need to be in the same room as parents to sleep anyway so this is the same for everyone at this stage. As he gets older you will gradually be able to slip away - by about 8/9m with both my girls i could leave them in bed and go downstairs.

One of my twins was like this - except she would feed to sleep and I would hold her in my bed. At 11 months we decided some gentle sleep training was needed. She still feeds to sleep but goes down in her cot and wakes anytime from midnight to 6am, at which point I bring her into our bed. Until a couple of weeks ago I was stuck in the bed with her every evening, and couldn’t move because she would wake up. Having evenings back is great. Maybe you could try sleep training? I think it’s advised from 16 weeks corrected.

It'll come - he's still so tiny.

DS 16 months is BF and we co-sleep. He now sleeps 18:30-22:30/23:00 ish. By then I'm ready for bed and take him or if I've already gone to bed ill get him.

He wakes again about 2-3am ish for some milk but very rarely wakes me and then wakes around 06:30-07:00.

He naps for 1.5-2hrs mid day ish in his cot. I introduced cot naps around 8 months as I needed to get on with jobs and he kept getting disturbed in the sling etc.

I still feed him to sleep and then transfer him to the cot. If I'm at work then he just cuddles my partner / my mum and falls asleep and then they transfer.

It really does get easier. I miss the sleepy cuddles. I really do understand how frustrating it feels right now but it's really not for long and life can wait.

That should read sleeps 18:30-23:00 ish In the cot!

I graduated from holding for naps to putting baby next to me on our bed. Over a couple of days this ended up in the next to me/travel cot next to the bed. This was around 6 months and was quite a quick process with no 'cry it out' at all. It was just a gradual move from arm to lying on the bed to me leaving the room.

Good Luck. It is a mental tie you have to break too. I found when i was ready to it was fine!