Question for co-sleepers.....

[IlanaK]

If you co-slept from birth, at what age were you able to feed your baby to sleep on your bed in the evening and then leave him there?

My ds3 is 7 weeks old and most evening are spent with him in a sling, or feeding on and off on my lap in the lounge. I want to get to the point that I can lay down and feed him to sleep in my bed and then come out to the lounge. Currently, if I try to do this, he will wake when i leave or soon after.

I did not co-sleep with my other two so wondered if there was an age around when babies would accpet you doing this?

lurking

6 months. Till then she would fall asleep for the night between 7 and 9 but until we went tobed would sleep on our laps or in sling and wake for cluster feeds. If we tried to put her down she would wake and cry after 10 minutes max - usually straight away. Actually from about 4 months we had some joy transferring her into the moses basket in the living room but only by keeping her on the cushion she'd fallen asleep on. At 6 months she was getting disturbed by the telly so we decided it was time for proper bedtime. Then I was able to feed her to sleep but she woke very frequently (every half an hour, sometimes more) so I was spending more time in with her than in the living room. It was quite a difficult time and you'll find many a thread on here as I discussed my options on what to do. In the end we've just gone with the flow. Now aged 14 months she's finally in her side car cot and will go an hour and then two hours in the evening. She still wakes up quite a bit at night, more in fact than when she was under 6 months.

My advice is to do what works and gives you most time to get your feet up. I worried quite a lot that my dd didn't "go to bed" as such. But now I realise it was a relatively short time and I really liked having her in with me watching endless West Wing DVDs.

I don't think my dd is necessarily typical though so I wouldn't assume anything about your ds based on our experiences.

Good luck!

We've been doing this from about 20 weeks but I think we could have done it sooner. When DS was really small he would conk out in the living room quite happily, and not mind DP and I chatting or the telly.

From about 4ish months or so, he stopped conking out so easily and I think this coincided with him becoming much more aware of the world around him.

We discovered a proper 'bedtime' by accident when we'd had a long day out and set off for home at 7pm. DS slept all the way home and then right through the night. We've put him to bed about that time every night and he has normally slept through. (Till 3 nights ago when he started non stop feeding but that is another thread )

At around 8 months dd would consent to a transfer from my arms to the sofa next to me.

About 9m and I was able to transfer from me to her cot which I moved downstairs into the dining room as she would always wake about 10ish for a feed and we'd go to bed together then.

from about 10 or 11 months I could feed her to sleep on my bed then pop her into the travel cot.

around 14months I could feed her to sleep lying on the single bed in her room then pop her into her proper cot.

She would always come in with me from first waking and stay there the rest of the night.

My dd started staying on her own and not waking up till midnight when she was about 2 mnths old, just happend, didn't do anything to make it happend. it seems to be like that with everything - with my ds i always tried to make him do things and was always tired, with dd i just let her decide and it makes life soo much easier