co-sleeping through the ages - what happens next?

[Hulla]

DD is 9 months old and we have co-slept since the hell that is the 4 month growth spurt. I have really enjoyed it, dd has been more settled and I finally started feeling normal again.

However, the last few nights have been dreadful. She wants to lie on her tummy on her cot (attached to our bed) but after an hour or so she wakes crying and looking a bit panicked, crawls around her cot until I pick her up and settle her in bed with me. She'll feed and then when she's had enough, push herself away from me with her legs and sprawl out. 5 minutes later she wants to feed again but she's too far away and cries because I'm not right next to her. Repeat 10 times through the night.

I am exhausted again. Is this a phase? What will she do next? She is already crawling to the side of the cot/headboard and using it to stand up. Is it just going to get worse?

I had intended to leave her in bed with us for as long as she wanted but I can't cope with a lot more of this.

So if you co-sleep/have co-slept I'd love to know what you think?

Anyone?

Can you take a side off the cot so she can move across herself but still not fall out?

I would expect this to be a very short phase... maybe she is uncomfortable with teeth or something? Or agitated over a developmental breakthrough like crawling or pulling up? I'd bet that if it has only been like this for a few nights, it will sort itself out soon.

Thanks both of you. The cot side is off so she rolls between our bed and the cot. A friend suggested that dd will just get wrigglier from now on. She's my first so I have no idea about cosleeping with a 1yr old/toddler etc.

I still cosleep with my DS who is 2.9. He has gone through very wriggly periods but then settles down again. Is she in a sleeping bag? That has helped lots in terms of containment

Oh, that's exactly the set-up we have - a bedside cot with the side off, level with our bed. We slept with dd1 that way till she was almost two and a half, and are currently sleeping with 12mo dd2. It isn't my experience that they get particularly wrigglier, though I suppose it might just be an individual matter. It sounds to me as though your dd is having trouble sleeping rather than being a wriggly sleeper, and I tend to put that down to teething. Whatever is bothering her, if it is only a very recent problem, I really wouldn't panic yet - I bet it resolves itself.

Oh thanks so much. I hope it settles, I love having her with us. She's not in a sleeping bag spice, she has her own blankets and she does kick them off/crawl from under them actually.

She has just had a top tooth, I suppose the second one might be on it's way too.

Oh that's reassuring then, thank you. I think I'll get a sleepng bag too and see if that helps.

Second the sleeping bag suggestion - that's what we do and it seems to work well. Means she can clamber on top of me for a cuddle in the night without getting chilly or disappearing under my duvet.

Hi Hulla, we don't co sleep but DD is a real wriggler at night - would often go in to her and find her upset and upside down in cot with blankets off. A sleeping bag has definitely helped though. Fingers crossed it helps your DD too.

Thanks Aranea & DrCosy, I haven't had a chance to buy one today and I think she'll have grown out of her other ones (from her moses basket/Amby days).

However, last night was a big improvement. She slept soundly in the crook of my arm until almost 3am and didn't start any fidgetting until 5am but that might have been cold so I'll try the sleeping bag and see what happens.

Glad to hear she's sleeping better!

i found that teeth usually came out in pairs. the second one was 5-10 days after the first one. and yes DS wriggled loads on those nights and slept brilliantly at other times.

Am thinking of doing the co-sleeping with the cot like a side-car. to do this I have to raise the cot base up to bed level. How do you get around the safety element. DD (13 months) has already fallen out of bed a few times, I don't want her falling over the side of the cot.

Thanks Moocow I guess I should enjoy the break. I can't see the second one yet but I might try and have a feel for it later. She was a bit whingey from about 6.30am today (but still slept until 8am) and I think she was cold. Definately going for the sleeping bag today.

Debs I don't know the answer to that one I'm afraid. I stay with dd when she's in bed (she doesn't go to sleep until about 9pm these days) and the other side of the cot is against a wall - although she could crawl off the bed/ climb over the end of the cot I guess.

Debs - not quite clear what you mean. Do you have a proper bedside cot? We've got one where you can slide the side over the top and down the other side iyswim so that it can either have 4 sides or 3. When I put dd2 to bed, I put the 4th side on. And after I've gone to bed, I take the 4th side off as soon as she wakes in the night.

I used to just leave it off all the time, but even before she could crawl she managed to fall off when I wasn't there by rolling around onto the bed and off past the end of the cot. So I realised it wasn't safe!

Oh, I took Debs post to mean over the side of the cot. Thinking of the raised bottom meaning my dd could probably throw herself over the side. If we used it as a normal cot we'd lower the base so she couldn't climb out.

Oops, sorry for my waffle Debs!

Ah, sorry. I think our bedside cot must be constructed differently, because the height of the sides is raised when the mattress is raised so you don't get that problem. Is a clever cot

Aranea, do you mind telling me where yours is from? We just adapted dd's cot.

Bought a sleeping bag in her size today. Sadly excited about trying it on her tonight.

It's quite old, as we bought it when dd1 was a baby. Think we must have bought it 5 years ago now! It was a John Lewis one, I think it was called Global. I don't know if they still do them.

They're cute in sleeping bags, aren't they?

just had a quick search and it seems to have been discontinued, but I think this brio cot looks similar. hth!

That looks fabulous, thanks Aranea. I think we might get one of those with the next dc.

I slept much better last night because I wasn't up all night fixing dd's covers. Sleeping bag was a great tip. Thank you!

That does look good. Our cot has a drop down side but it is just fixed on a metal pole and if you take it off then the cot is still rigid so we were just going to do that. She is a bit of a minx though and will probably fall out of the bed

We have the same arrangement here too, cot with side down and mattress at same level as our bed, he rolls in and out - 16mo now. Another blanket-kicker, so now it's cooler we're using grobags which are helping and seem to be limiting the extreme rolling!
Ours is an old mothercare cot, the side goes underneath, which does mean that keeping the mattress high makes the remaining 3 sides not so high. I don't worry too much about this as I tend to wake if he stands up - but I've made a point of teaching him to lower himself down feet-first off our bed, so that when he comes out of the cot,he can get down safely.
Am wondering about when he's too big for the cot - want to continue co-sleeping - we can borrow a cotbed to keep mattress at same height, and I picked up one of those bed rail things. Slight hi-jack - Areana, can I ask what you did with your older DC?

Well we kept her in the cot till she was about 2 and a half. We never did actually put the side up with dd1, so we put our bed away and used a futon instead. With the cot down as low as it would go, it was level with the futon and she was able to get in and out with no danger of hurting herself.

Then I wanted to start moving away from co-sleeping. So I got a very low divan bed for her and wedged it in next to our reinstated bed. I used to spend quite a lot of the night in her bed. After a couple of months I moved her bed into her own bedroom. But I suppose if we'd wanted to carry on co-sleeping I would just have put the divan bed next to the futon to make enough space.