13 month old fell out of bed - questioning co-sleeping

[Flumpydumps]

Evening all - the current set up is my DS cot has one side taken off, and is attached to our bed (mattress in line with ours, no gap etc) as we are co-sleeping. However, the cot is more for decoration as he always ends up sleeping in our bed with us.
Tonight, we were getting ready for bed. DS was sat on the bed and I took my eye off him for a second, and saw him literally flip over the side of the cot and fall onto the floor. He is fine in himself, a bit of a bump to the head but settled with cuddles and comfort. I think my reaction scared him more than anything. I called my mum in a panic and she started saying ‘it’s time he is in his own bed anyway’ and that we needed to ‘lower the cot to the lowest setting and get the side on, he might cry but he needs to sleep by himself’.

He isn’t a great sleeper anyway and never has been. However, we have got ourselves into a much more settled sleep routine lately, where he is only waking up 2-3 times a night for a bf, and settling straight back down after. I’m also going back to work part time next week and really don’t feel this is the right time to be making big changes when his sleep is temperamental anyway. I feel like I’m being judged by family - myself and DP didn’t intend to co-sleep before DS was born but it was attempted out of sheer exhaustion and worked. Neither myself or DP have any desire for him to change our set up which is working.

It would be helpful to know if others have been in a similar position. Either with family making comments but also I want DS to be safe - now he’s fell out once, I’m terrified it’ll happen again but if I lower the cot, it won’t be in line with our mattress. Hopefully this makes sense, I think the fall has given me a bit of a fright and made me doubt myself!

Also I've read about people nightweaning whilst co-sleeping so one doesn't have to mean an end to the other. Just do what works for you and your family. No one else has to live your life so we can't possibly say what the right thing for you to do is.

@EatDrinkEatDrink

My children continued to feed in the night until I stopped breastfeeding. My first stopped at 13 months and second was 2.5 years, I'm still feeding my 10 month old around the clock and have no intention of making him stop. It's tiring and once they start eating food they don't really need it, but I wasn't into the whole leave them to cry thing. My older children are 4 and 6 now and sleep in their own beds no problem, they still came into our bed in the night until they were around 3 (started the night in their own bed probably from around 2.5). There's an obsession to get babies to sleep in another room and leave them to cry to "train them", I find it bizarre. I'm in a group and they all started this from 6 months old, why bother having a baby if you didn't want your sleep disturbed? If your setup is working (get a bedrail and it's fine) don't change it. I returned to work a month ago, it is hard having disturbed sleep and working, but I'd rather I was tired than the baby was upset.

Why bother judging other families and how they go about dealing with infant sleep? Focus on your own, what the rest of us are doing is nothing to do with you and what you’re doing doesn’t make you a better or more pure parent btw.

Here - kellymom.com/ages/weaning/considering-weaning/nightweaning_jack/

@elenacampana agreed there can be way too much judgementon baby sleep at times. Having a little one is tough and everyone has to do what's the best thing for them. For some that means co-sleeping which seems to get as brutal judgement as leaving a child to cry for some reason. Life is definitely better if we all support one another.

A floor bed works for us. We switched at 8 months because of falling out concerns and now we all get as much sleep as possible. Also, babies don’t need to be ‘taught’ to sleep, they already know how to

The cot being at a height where he can fall out the side is dangerous. That needs fixing.

Keep cosleeping if you want to but do it safely.

thebigpurpleone

Are you under the supervision of a health professional regarding the weight? It sounds like he's comfort feeding at night and needs the feed to go back to sleep when he needs to learn how to self settle.

Yes open to paeds and a dietician, with regular monitoring. I agree it’s likely more comfort at this point but also thought he would reduce/stop when he was ready. He’s my first child though so I don’t have experience of this. Any insight is greatly appreciated

OP, all the talk about self-settling is a bit of a red herring, it's a bit of a myth that is being peddled by the sleep consultant industry. It encourages people to sleep train by making it sound like a 'skill' that they 'must' teach their child so as to do right by them. In reality you are absolutely right that sleep is developmental and children get there when they are ready. Sleep training is for the parents when they are otherwise too exhausted to function well during the day.

raisedgood.com/self-soothing-biggest-con-new-parenthood/?fbclid=IwAR2-ZUTDePPn59iobm-d6Ztm4joaChPKfW6L5pkxa1MWuXitSzPqCVqQWe8

I think what happened is that you got a fright and it has made you question everything when this wasn't quite necessary. The only problem was that the cot was still in the higher position when it should be lowered to the lowest position once baby can sit. Otherwise the sides aren't high enough to prevent falls. However, this doesn't mean that you need to stop co-sleeping altogether or night wean or sleep train for the sake of 'self-soothing'. You just have to change your setup slightly to keep DS safe. Can you move your bed against the wall, and DS sleeps between you and the wall? Or can you get a lower bed / higher cot so that the sides are high enough but the cot still flash with your mattress? Or use a floor bed for a few months until DS is old enough for you to use a bed guard on your bed?

Please don't let your mum doubt you further! It sounds to me as if she is using this vulnerable moment of you being in shock to peddle her own agenda about where your baby 'should' sleep when that is wholly unnecessary and just causes you to doubt yourself as a mum. She should be comforting you, not making you feel worse

I would lower the cot tbh my son is 15 months and he was attempting to climb out of it when it was on the middle setting and managing the get his leg over it so he definitely would have got over it if it was on the highest

I disagree. As do others on here. A 13 month old does not need multiple feeds during the night.

@thebigpurpleone

I disagree. As do others on here. A 13 month old does not need multiple feeds during the night.

'A 13 month old' 'standard' ( ) child might not need milk for nutrition at night but that doesn't mean that OP's very individual DS might not need feeding for comfort/emotional safety at night. Especially after going back to work I found it can be very comforting for both mother and child to still be close at night at least

Sarah Ockwell-Smith writes about this in her little book 'Why Your Baby's Sleep Matters'. Suggesting that a baby wakes up for feeds without needing them is another storyline that shames the mum really. As if the poor baby had a less than restful night just because the mum can't let go or whatever. This is rubbish! The baby only demands feeds when he wants/needs them. Nothing wrong with being responsive to this (provided it works for the mum, which the OP said it does for her).

@EatDrinkEatDrink

My children continued to feed in the night until I stopped breastfeeding. My first stopped at 13 months and second was 2.5 years, I'm still feeding my 10 month old around the clock and have no intention of making him stop. It's tiring and once they start eating food they don't really need it, but I wasn't into the whole leave them to cry thing. My older children are 4 and 6 now and sleep in their own beds no problem, they still came into our bed in the night until they were around 3 (started the night in their own bed probably from around 2.5). There's an obsession to get babies to sleep in another room and leave them to cry to "train them", I find it bizarre. I'm in a group and they all started this from 6 months old, why bother having a baby if you didn't want your sleep disturbed? If your setup is working (get a bedrail and it's fine) don't change it. I returned to work a month ago, it is hard having disturbed sleep and working, but I'd rather I was tired than the baby was upset.

You don't need to understand. Fwiw mine went in their own room from young and I always responded to them. Everyone is different

@LGBirmingham @Justgettingbye

Absolutely. Families don’t need to accept never ending tiredness if they don’t want to. Women can FF if they want to, they can BF if they want to. It really doesn’t matter to anyone else what a family is doing as long as the children are well cared for. How they go about is nothing to do with an outsider unless they are asked for their views.

My baby sleeps well and I’m generally not tired. This could be because of how we do things in our house or it could just be the baby we’ve got. It doesn’t matter as long as we’re happy with the situation we’re living in. She takes her naps upstairs during the day and would be in her own room now if the advice wasn’t so against it. She will be in there right on 6 months I’m really looking forward to it 🙊. I have friends who do things very differently to me, they’ll still have their babies in their beds this time next year - makes no difference to any of us!

So many messages - Thankyou everyone for your insight, it’s given me lots of food for thought and I appreciate its quite a divisive topic. I agree everyone finds what works best for them. For me, I definitely enjoy the closeness and the night feeding isn’t something I find too difficult - of course, this may change when I go back to work so will have a little read of the info provided around nightweaning and chat with DP.

Also sorry if I didn’t make it clear above - I called my mum more for support because DS had fallen, as opposed to asking her opinion on the sleeping arrangements.

Thankyou everyone who has cleared up about the set up no longer being appropriate for DS due to his age. Really helpful as were the range of different options everyone has provided. DP and I are going to look through the suggestions today and work out what we think will work best for us.

Thanks again everyone for all your insight and advice x

[quote elenacampana]**@LGBirmingham* @Justgettingbye*

Absolutely. Families don’t need to accept never ending tiredness if they don’t want to. Women can FF if they want to, they can BF if they want to. It really doesn’t matter to anyone else what a family is doing as long as the children are well cared for. How they go about is nothing to do with an outsider unless they are asked for their views.

My baby sleeps well and I’m generally not tired. This could be because of how we do things in our house or it could just be the baby we’ve got. It doesn’t matter as long as we’re happy with the situation we’re living in. She takes her naps upstairs during the day and would be in her own room now if the advice wasn’t so against it. She will be in there right on 6 months I’m really looking forward to it 🙊. I have friends who do things very differently to me, they’ll still have their babies in their beds this time next year - makes no difference to any of us![/quote]
We moved ds to his own roomst 6 months too and it probably improved his sleep, but boy do they go through a lot of development from 6 months on so nothing is fixed. I also know someone whose baby slept through in her parents room and they moved her at 6 months and she would wake every 45 mins. They now cosleep. I think you just have to try stuff and see if it works for you at the time. Good luck with your bedroom move. Hope it works out for you.