Co-sleepers - please come and give me some advice about maybe returning to co-sleeping after months in his cot

[ChairmumMiaow]

I post quite a lot on the sleep threads, as we struggled with our 1yo DS's sleep quite a lot in the early days. At 6mo I was so exhausted we resorted to moving him to his own room and using CIO briefly to get him sorted. Since then we've been trying to get him to sleep through the night.

He was nearly there and then he's gradually got worse and worse at being put down (we always put him down asleep - and are happy to do that) and then got ill and I just put him in with us, where he settles really quickly (and in the evening we can still wriggle out and have some us time)

He (and we) slept better than I expected. It reminded me that as much as I like many hours of uninterrupted sleep, I also love having him in bed with us. DH is completely supportive of whatever I choose, so its up to me really. However, if we decide to stick with the cot, a lot of the settling burden is on him as DS is quite heavy and I can't easily walk him around as he likes (takes 5 minutes if we get the timing right but can take 15 or 20, and my arms are dropping off by then).

Also, he's started asking for milk more, and we're wondering whether, as much as we'd like him in with us, we're setting ourselves up for an all-night feeder.

We think we've got a few choices:

a) have DS back in bed with us (and bring the cot back in as a bedside one to give a bit more room)
b) put up the toddler bed where we can lie down(top half) with him and hopefully settle him more easily (we tried a single mattress on the floor but he always woke up when DH tried to get down with him)
c)persevere with the cot to get him back to where he was before Xmas

So has anyone gone back to co-sleeping after a break? I'm so worried about being inconsistent, or making his sleep worse to a point where I'm exhausted again, but I want to do what is best for him in the long run (so long as we can cope with it)

I'm a real overthinker, and can get bogged down in what I 'should' be doing.

Arrggh. Help?

Bumping for you.

Ah, Miaow. I've been in the same situation with DS - and do the old overthinking too! - so I can relate.

We did some reactive cosleeping in the early weeks with DS - I'd never heard of it back then - and we all got crap sleep, compounded by feelings that we were getting it all wrong since others told us that it was bad/unhealthy/making a rod for our backs. Looking back, I can see that it didn't work on a practical level because DS, his dad and I were all trying to sleep in a 4'6" bed. Nightmare. So we moved DS into his own room, which adjoined ours, and he stayed there until we moved house a month before his second birthday. We, too, tried controlled crying and although it helped and wasn't as dire as some parents find it to be, I still really regret it.

Anyway, when we moved house, DS didn't settle well, and so to begin with I laid with him at bedtime until he nodded off. This just evolved, really, into cosleeping again, but this time with much more space - at one stage, two doube beds next to each other. I have never looked back, and DS is now four-and-a-half. He loves it, and so do I TBH, and I think it has been really nurturing for him through some difficult times. The key is having enough space, which you've clearly thought about.

IMO, what matters is that you all get restful, restorative sleep, and that you're all happy - as a couple and family - with how this is achieved. If you can achieve this through co-sleeping, go for it. Your DS will let you know when he's ready for his independence - and he won't be 15!

anyone else?

Well we've been doing it for a few days now and although DS is waking more often for a feed, he flops himself off when he's done and wriggles back into his gap between our pillows, which works quite nicely.

However yesterday he only had one nap, and went off like a light, and into a really good sleep. We think this might have been the problem so I think we're going to go back to half and half - start the night in the cot, then bring him in when he wakes, which feels like the best of both worlds if he will settle at the start of the night.

We'll see how the one nap business goes.