Calling all sleepless co-sleepers......

[chicca]

DS (Now 7.5 months) has been in bed with us since he was born with the odd couple of hours here and there in moses basket and then cot. He clearly loves being in bed with us and although he wakes all through the night (every 2 hours at least) a quick bf will get him back off again ( I know it's mostly for comfort).
I am really knackered but still able to function (not sure how).
Is anyone else co-sleeping and happy about it?
Most people are looking for ways to get baby OUT of the bed but is anyone still doing it and happy with the situation?
I'm sure at some point (when cot is actually put up!) we will have to go through CC or whatever. But despite tiredness, bad backs, dodgy hips etc.DH and I are ok with the status quo.

Skerriesmum - He sleeps all night in his own bed if one of us is in the sofabed in his bedroom!!! And he's got to have a cup of watery juice by his bed which he drinks through the night...... delaying the night toilet training!!

But we are surviving and we get about 6hrs sleep a night.... now we just have to get dd to sleep past 5am!

clayhead - you give good message!

molar no3 showed itself today...does that mean one more to go before dreamtime comes back?

Still co-sleeping with DS3 but trying to wind it down.

Started a little bit of CC on Saturday night - it was not planned but he woke up ten blinking minutes after I put him down - it was 7.30 p.m. and I was in the throes of putting the older DSs to bed so left him in cot and went in every few minutes to reassure. He fell asleep about 8.15 p.m. Having put him through it, it seemed counter-productive to pick him up next time he cried, so just patted/reassured etc each time he woke up until some time after 2 a.m. when I took him into bed with me.

Last night, he fell asleep after 10 mins of grumbling ( no real crying), subsequently woke up threee times but fell back to sleep by himself each time with just a few pats and words of comfort from me. When he woke up at 2.40 a.m. I brought him into bed with me, although I think he would probably have settled back to sleep again on his own, but as he's never gone so long without a feed before I thought I should pick him up then.

So tonight I might try and get him to last past 3 a.m.

Ideally he would sleep in his cot until 5 -6 a.m. and then come into bed with me for a feed and a snooze until 7 a.m.

Oh Dinosaur, I think I would be/will be exactly the same as you. It is really interesting to hear the breakdown of your night. Did you fill DS3 full to the rafters with food first? I reckon that's the only way I'll know he's not waking for food when we eventually get round to CC (if we do).
I guess I am just nervous of the possible bad reaction - shaking etc the next day. It seems to work for most people but what if we are the 1% (or whatever it is) that it doesn't work for??

we co slept with dd for first 3 months (4 months now) as she refused to sleep in her cot and i was too tired to fight. i was a human dummy too and she woke up every hour or so for a little feed. a few weeks ago i started feeding to sleep in her nursery and placing her in her cot at about 8pm then picking up for a dream feed (baby still asleep) at about 12 midnight and she slept anywhere from 3.30am - 6.30am. when she woke i'd take her into bed and have a cuddle and sleep, i love looking into her face so much i don't care what anyone says - i enjoyed it but decided to try her cot so i can get some sleep as i'm back to work soon, i really miss it though. i used to lay in bed looking at her most of the night which might be the reason i was so tired

defo think a big bed helps - i've a super king too and it's great. i dream of the future with lots of kids all piled into the bed on a sunday morning

enjoy every amazing minute of it i say

Interesting topic as DD (7 months) cosleeps with us. Usually she goes down about 7.30-8pm by herself in the middle of the big bed, we creep in around 10ish onwards she wakes anytime from 4-6 for a feed has a quick feed and goes back to sleep to about 8ish. All her naps are in the bed as well. I'm starting to get worried though as she is rolling more and more not when asleep when she is getting herself to sleep.

Fingers crossed we will move soon and she will have her own room I would love her to be like dinosaurs says and sleep all night on her own to 5-6 then come in with me for the last hour. DP isn't as thrilled about co sleeping as me mainly because he is scared in case he rolls over on her (not that he has ever) I end up sleeping on a tiny bit of bed but I can sleep anywhere and still have a full nights sleep.

I don't tell anyone we cosleep either its like a shameful secret why I don't know?

chicca, the first night we did it, I felt confident to leave DS3 because he'd eaten a big tea, had an enormous breastfeed, and had a spoonful of medised for his snuffly nose.

Also I didn't do "proper" controlled crying in that I only ever left him for a few minutes at a time, went in to his room lots and shushed him and patted his tummy and generally tried as hard as I could to make him understand that I wasn't abandoning him.

CC certainly does work, I did it with DS1 and DS2 as well and they have both been fantastic sleepers ever since (DS1 is now five and DS2 is three).

However I had really really hoped to avoid doing it with DS3

Well we're now at the stage where I think it is getting to much for us. I long to sprawl out in bed and think that co-sleeping and bf are keeping me and DS awake an awful lot more than necessary.
I am seriously thinking about giving up breast feeding (DS is now approaching 9 months) as it seems to be the problem.
Has anyone had similar experiences?

Have co-slept with my dds. When my dd3 was 10 months she started to crawl in the bed - would wake up, sit-up & then just crawl to the edge of the bed. Luckily I always woke up but one night she just kept doing this - so I put the travel cot up in another room & popped her in it. She wasn't too pleased but eventually went to sleep. She slept better as she wasn't compelled to head for the edge of the bed all the time. So after a few weeks we put her into her cot at night & she went to sleep just fine (I don't remember any probs but was very tired at the time!!!). She's 22 months now & I stopped bf last month as I'm preg. Best wishes

Milward, how was DD3 getting to sleep? We're you bf-ing until she fell asleep? Did you do this through the night too?

I bf her before before putting her into her cot & then not until the morning. She went to bed late - after other dds - around 9-9.30. Sometimes she fell asleep whilst bf & woke up when I popped her into her cot other times she'd stay asleep. I only recently stopped bf - including bf before bed. Didn't have any probs with her wanting to bf in the night as she did sleep most of the night - missed her next to me though & found it hard to get to sleep because of this. I think that I probably slept worse than dd!!

i go sleep with ds 10mths, always have apart from a horrific cot battle in the first couple of weeks of his life! family sigh but have given up encouraging me elsewise! not sure if i'd openly admit it to other mums seems to be a 'bad parent' stigma about it. Am kind of a lone parent and don't know how i'd manage getting up all through the night, too tiring!

chicca I haven't given up breastfeeding DS3, but he is now sleeping through, in his cot, from 7.30 p.m. to 6 a.m. ish (nearly 6.30 this morning). You don't have to give up breastfeeding!

Co-slept with both mine. Started putting ds in the cot for daytime naps about 18 months and then into the cot at bedtime and he'd come into my bed a few hours later. Also used to sometimes put him into cot early in the morning. This gradual introduction meant he slept OK on his own. dd though will be a different matter - she's hardly used the cot and is still sleeping with me. Am getting her own bed and new duvet covers etc for her birthday next month (3rd birthday!) and hope to get her settled into it OK. New baby coming in the summer so don't want a crowded bed! I have always slept fairly well with mine, some restless nights but preferable to standing shivering next to a cot in the middle of the night.

I'm all for cosleeping! Breastfeeding is so much easier (just lift your t-shirt and you both soon nod off again)and I think it's more natural. Read "Three in a bed" by Deborah Jackson for more information, a great book!
We slept with DS1 until he was nearly 3 and then he would start off in is own big bed but would come to us sometime in the night, but gradually that happened less and less. Now (he's 5 now) he will only come occasionally. If we felt we couldn't sleep we just put him back in his own bed when he had fallen asleep again. We are doing the same with DS2, who has just started in his own bed, but is still in the fase of coming to us in the middle of the night when he wakes up. That's fine. Unfortunately he's a much lighter sleeper and we haven't been able to put him back in his own bed if we wanted, but we haven't persisted with that either. Baby 3 is underway and will definitely be in our bed as well (we might be 4 in a bed,if DS2 hasn't moved on yet, just as we were when DS2 was a baby). As long as you enjoy it, go for it! If you do it for longer, like us, there will probably not be a need for cc, because they want to grow up and move on themselves. And we haven't had a nightmare fase either, which they tell me is quite normal for 3/4 year olds. Do what your heart tells you, but it's worth investing in a big bed and good mattrass.

I co slept with my boy until he was about 3. I felt people judged me harshly for it and I didn't tell that many people. One day I met someone who was cosleeping with her baby and I confessed my wariness in telling people. She reassured me and said in her culture cosleeping was the norm but only with the Mother as child got older. Really I said when did you stop sleeping with your mother. Just before she left the country to become a nurse she said. She then said that she had an incredibly close relationship with her Mum and would'nt dream of doing anything else with her children.

My Mother also told me that my Grandmother had 9 children and each one spent at least a year in bed with the parents. I wonder why co sleeping is so frowned upon.

Chicca I've only just read your message about not being able to sleep because of breastfeeding at night. You don't need to put your baby in a cot just to stop breastfeeding at night. That would be 2 quite big changes for him at a time. Why not go for just the one (stop breastfeeding, but keep baby in bed, if you think that that's the problem). He will protest, but when I did that with DS1 (at 16 months, mind you), he cried for an hour and a half the first night, half an hour faint crying the second night, ten minutes winging the third, and the fourth night he didn't wake up for a feed anymore. I still breastfed him once a day to help him go to sleep in the evening until he was 21 months but then he gave it up without a hitch. As I said, DS stayed with us in bed until he waa nearly 3.

I've not had a chance to read all the postings here so I might be repeating something someone else has said but the no cry sleep solution (can't remember who it's by I'm afraid) has a lot of useful information for co-sleepers who are having trouble sleeping. DW (Darling wife, is that right?) and I have been co-sleeping since DD was about 4 months or so and our comparison was waking up every hour or so (with DD in Bed) to Getting up every hour or so (With DD in cot) DD is now 13 months and we've been getting a good night's sleep most nights now for a good few months).
Best bit of advice I could give is get a big bed, and (maybe) put it on the floor so that you can safely slope off into another room when the baby's asleep.

we are kind of accidentally co-sleeping as our draughty old house got too cold at night over the winter for us to leave ds in his moses basket/cot. now of course it's a habit and he associates our bed with sleep and the cot with playing. grrr!

ds is 5mths old and we are going to use the ideas in the no-cry sleep solution (as recommended by fatdad - the author is Elizabeth Pantley - here ), any minute now, honest...

it is really sweet having ds in bed with us, although i do sleep much more lightly and we all wake each other up a lot. the problem for us is that he won't sleep in his cot in the evenings before we go to bed, so I'm going to bed with him about 9.30pm - too late for him and too early for me...

I agree with mumoftreasures, you don't have to do two things at once. I still co-sleep with ds, 18 months, but he stopped bf during the night at 1, I just offered him water from a cup instead and he got the message! That's what I did with dd too.

I think the idea of stopping breastfeeding came last night as I was putting DS to bed. I just have this thing going round in my mind that it's bad that needs to be usig me as a dummy to get to sleep and I should be somehow teaching him how to fall asleep on his own.
Felt better tonight though and he went off much quicker.
As for the night-waking. Depending on who I 'm talking to I either think I am lucky (that he goes back to sleep after a little feed) or seriously out of luck (that he wakes at all at 8 months).
Will follow the no-cry link. I think I am just concerned for the future. Have we started something we can't change?

Not at all, I co-slept with my dd until she was 18 months, still do it off and on but she's mainly in her own bed now. I also fed her to sleep until she was one and cuddled her to sleep for ages after that (we used the method where you gradually get further and further away, i.e. start off cuddling, then sitting next to them, then sitting on th end of the bed etc.). I put her to bed in her own room now, she goes to sleep fine on her own and she's no trouble at all. It depends on how you feel about it, I find that things do change, even if you don't push it as an issue but then I've never been in much of a hurry IYSWIM!

Also, if it isn't broken, don't fix it! If you and your little man are happy then why worry?

We did not co sleep till dd was two and a half, she had a moses basket next to the bed till she out grew it then she went into a cot. At two we moved her into a bed and all was well until about six months later and she started having night terrors so we had her in with us. She will go off ok in her bed and sleep till 2am then she just crawls in with us and i don't have the heart to evict her even though i am preg with no2 and worry about being kicked, i love sharing a cuddle with her and as we have a king size i am happy to let her contimue for a while although it may be a little difficult come september when no two makes an appearance. If you are happy don't let others judge you they won't sleep inyour bed forever, make the most of it whilst you can. If DD had been more difficult to settle into a sleeping routine we would of been co sleeping a lot earlier.