Bedsharing: where do we go from here?

[BananaHammock23]

My DS is almost 1 and has never been a great sleeper. Most we’ve ever had is a 5 hour stretch out of him at about 16 weeks.

I BF and used to feed to sleep then transfer to the cot where he’d spend maximum 2 hours. Tried all the drowsy but awake stuff, never worked for us. He just wakes constantly in the cot and neither of us have the stamina to keep going to we ended up bed sharing. We now don’t even bother with the cot because he wakes every 15-30 minutes and needs resettling; which isn’t good for him or us!

So the current routine involves him being fed or cuddled to sleep in our bed (same for naps unless we’re out then he sleeps in his pram). He wakes between 2-5 times a night and goes to sleep very quickly with a feed. I’m not really fussed about this part tbh - it is what it is!

What I would like is to have an evening back to myself. We’re going to bed at 7pm and watching TV with him in the bed, which isn’t ideal! Those who bed shared, what did you transition to and how? I’m not sure if we’ll ever get him in a cot now so thinking about perhaps toddler beds or something of the like.

Can you get back up once he's asleep? That's how we moved on to things with DD – once she was asleep in our bed, I'd just get back up and go downstairs for the evening and we kept doing that until she naturally kind of transitioned to her own bed (and she still appears and gets into ours in the night, but that's fine). It did come hand in hand with night weaning though, so she wasn't waking for feeds.

@Hugasauras yes we can! It’s what we were doing successfully until he started crawling. It’s too unsafe to leave him now. He doesn’t cry when he wakes up, just crawls straight off so we have to watch the monitor so vigilantly that we may as well be in bed 🙄

You absolutely can get him to sleep in a cot. It’s the safest thing for him. Just be really patient and persistent. It is worth it to get your evenings back!!

I don't have any advice my DD is exactly the same! She is 20 months, high needs and has never slept through the night. I co-sleep and feed her to sleep every time she wakes up. I would love to know if there's a way out of this

I had this situation with my DS. We also gave up on the cot because he just wouldn’t settle no matter what we tried. He slept well in our bed but we were spending our evenings in the bedroom with him to make sure he didn’t crawl or roll off the bed.

We set up a floor bed for him in his own room. It’s just a double mattress on a very low loft style frame so he can crawl or roll off without hurting himself. We have a gate on the door of his bedroom and there’s nothing in there that he can hurt himself on. We have a monitor in there so we get him to sleep on his bed and walk away. I still get in next to him when I’m ready to go to bed, which is why we went for a double mattress (planning to change this soon as he’s more settled overnight now at 20 months).

You could also try putting your own mattress on the floor or a very low frame. We decided to buy a separate bed for DS as we wanted to get him used to being in his own room. Good luck!