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Moving away from cosleeping

3 replies

bigbaggyblue · 21/05/2023 15:10

My daughter is three weeks old and EBF. I have found/am finding breastfeeding so hard but really want to stick with it. We never intended to cosleep and do have a next 2 me crib but we quickly learnt she wouldn't settle and so after two nights my partner moved into the spare bed and my daughter and I cosleep, she feeds to sleep. We are getting a decent nights sleep with this method but cosleeping still makes me anxious and I miss sharing a bed with my partner.
Is there any better time to try again with the next 2 me and any tips to help her transition. We did buy a Purflo nest in the hope to move her into that in bed with me and then eventually move the next into the next 2 me but as soon as I try to move her she wakes up and is back on the breast.

Thank you 😊

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kitty1993 · 21/05/2023 21:12

It's so difficult we did exactly the same, me and dd co slept all night and DH moved to the spare room and it stayed like that until DD moved into her own room at 5 months and even now I still end up in her room with her. She's 8.5 months now and we've only just started cutting back on the co sleeping but mainly because she's crawling and it no longer feels safe.

I found that she would go in the next to me when we got to around 7 weeks and she would stay in there from 9pm-3am and then 3am onwards she coslept as it was harder to get her back down. Co-sleeping did get us both a lot more sleep and I even used it for naps during the day so it can be a really useful tool, but I get how hard it can be especially when you want your own sleeping space back. It won't be forever xx

Supermathsdoc · 27/05/2023 12:13

My baby is 4m and at 3 weeks I was in your exact position.

I was worried about co-sleeping beyond the initial few weeks and so I kept trying with the next to me for naps and at bedtime. Mostly it didn’t work but every now and again it did. I also put a sleepyhead in there for a week or so, which I know is illegal, but it helped ease the transition.

By the time she was 10 weeks she took all her naps in the next to me and then by 12 weeks I could put her down in the next to me when she was down for the night. Like the PP I do bring her into bed after night wakes depending on how much energy I feel I have in the tank for potential subsequent wakes!

Ive read that you can move them gradually further and further away from you in the bed until they are in the next to me but I think for my baby she needed to feel a bit more enclosed for a while than the next to me allowed. The sleepy head provided a helpful bridge but this approach may not (understandably) be for you.

Supermathsdoc · 27/05/2023 12:19

Also the breast feeding got much easier at 3 months when the cluster feeding stopped and generally the feeds got shorter. At around the same time she needed way more ‘help’ to get to sleep.

Things just kept changing so often that I found the sense of fear around things she would or wouldn’t do lessened because they could change at any moment!

congratulations on the baby, you are doing brilliantly, it’s incredibly tough at the start x

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