co-sleepers - can you talk to me about bedding, esp gro-bags?

[nomoresleep]

I'm having no luck searching the archives on this one - must be the sleep deprivation making me incompetent since I'm sure there will have been a discussion on this somewhere!

So I co-sleep with DC2, who is 6 months. He is currently under a 4 tog duvet with me. He's waking every 2 hours and I'm trying the NCSS to reduce this. This involves me scooting away from him a bit, unlatching him before he's completely asleep and rolling him away to settle himself etc etc. I'm getting mixed, well actually very little results with this, but that's for another thread...

anyway, the immediate issue is bedding. Whilst DC2 is wriggling about trying to settle himself, he's coming out from under the duvet and I'm spending a lot of time awake just trying to keep him covered up.

He also wriggles when he goes through light sleep, and if I'm going to encourage him to go back to sleep without me then I need to find a good way of keeping him warm.

Shall I go for a sleeping bag, do you think? And just keep the duvet on me? But will we just end up all tangled up together? What do other co-sleepers do?

no help here I'm afraid - DD to this day (9mos) will stick her feet straight in the air if there's any sort of blanket/duvet/growbag on them, even in her sleep, until it comes off or she wakes up. She never settles in a growbag.

We do with warm jammies w/no feet and warm socks+slippers for bed, but I am starting to worry as it's turning cold and I'm sure she will need a duvet soon.

This is kind of the reason why we started putting our two in their cots at 6 months, and then sneaking out to sleep in the spare room... I really don't know how to help, I felt like mine (twins) were just keeping us awake, and we were waking them up by the time they were this big...it just sort of came to a natural end, probably because there were four of us in the bed. But if you're really not getting any sleep it's a bit much - can you put him in a cot attached to the bed? The sleeping bags on kids are perfect if they're on their own in a cot, but too hot with parents etc. Then hard for you to just have duvet on you as well. hmm not much help. sorry.

I put DD in a gro-bag on top of the duvet.

DD co-sleeps with us and was in a grobag till the summer. Now she is in a fleecy sleepsuit over her pjyamas. She has never been under our duvet, she wouldn't stay under it anyway.

all four of my boys have co slept, for the fist few weeks we had them in bed with us and had them covered with sheets and blanket as they would be in a cot, and made sure they didnt come under the duvet.

we quickly found this a pita and they have all used grobags which worked fine, we have a futon bed, thats extra big and we have it pushed up against the wall on one side, so baby goes on that side of the bed. we also have a double and a single duvet, so if baby ended up in the middle dp could use one duvet and i could use the other, and the baby was in the middle in grobag and not under a duvet.

dp tends to use the double duvet as when he is asleep he tends to wrap the whole thing around himself, so if was helpful for me to have my own duvet anyway so i didnt freeze to death.

we have just put ds4 in his own little toddler bed, it is right at the end of our bed and the same height and he often crawls up, in his grobag and joins us at some point in the night

grobags all the way

Dd sleeps between us in a grobag under a 13.5 tog duvet, it is impossible to make my kids too hot.

Ds 5 still sleeps in a grobag with two blankets and a duvet.

When it gets really cold they both have so much bedding it is hard to find them

Oh and they both sleep in vests and long pjs too.

Thanks very much for the replies!!

MarenMJ - DS does that sticking feet in air thing too! I guess we are facing similar issues then!

8oreighty- we do have a co-sleeper that attaches to the bed but until he's a bit better at self-settling I wasn't planning on using it. Perhaps I should give it a go though.

Poisontoadstool - I think you've got the perfect solution here. But I'm rubbish at keeping covers just to my waist - I just can't help myself and pull them up to my chin when half asleep because I can't bear not being toasty.

Mmm there are no easy answers here I think.

Any other thoughts out there?

ooh lots more thoughts whilst I was posting - thank you!

I am thinking I'll get a gro-bag then

Probably best. I wish now that I had forced DD to get used to one when she was young and couldn't fight it

Same thing goes for hats . So much better to get her used to wearing one BEFORE she can take it off herself!