New Mother - 10 wk old shares our bed... help?!

wrote

My big question for co-sleepers is what do you do when the baby is old
enough to roll around and therefore isn't safe alone in an adult bed
and they need to be in bed at 7:00 and you want to stay up until 10:00?

Mandy (fairly rested)

We lowered our mattress to the floor so if he falls he isn't falling far at
all.

rj

wrote:

PLEASe HELP! I just really need some advice... I know some people
turn their noses up to sharing a bed... But I don't care.... I have
noticed several people who have stated that it wasn't difficult to make
the transition into their own beds... How'd you do it?

When my son was born, I spent two very long months trying to persuade
him to sleep in the travel cot (which I think is the same thing as what
you call a pack and play) on the basis that all the books told me I
should get him into good sleeping habits from the start (apart from the
ones that told me that I should just go ahead and let him sleep in my
bed for as long as he wanted and ignored the issue of what would happen
if that wasn't what _I_ wanted.) After two months worth of time and
effort with no apparent result, it finally occurred to me to ask myself
just why I was doing all this when the whole point had originally been
to save myself trouble. I figured that transitioning him when I wanted
to might or might not be a problem, but I _knew_ the way I was doing
things now was a problem, so doing things the easy way and co-sleeping
wasn't likely to be any worse.

When Jamie was just over a year old, I got him to take naps and evening
sleep in the cot by using a method from Tracy Hogg's "The Baby Whisperer
Solves All Your Problems". She's a highly irritating author, but I did
find this one section of her book to be extremely useful. (Unlike
"Secrets Of The Baby Whisperer", which I found worse than useless.)
Basically, when it was bedtime I went through the whole bedtime routine
thing, got him ready to go to bed, put him in the cot, and then gave him
a cuddle and put him straight down again every time he pulled himself up
to standing - I literally laid him down as I was putting my arms around
him. I just kept doing that until he finally fell asleep. It took 47
minutes the first time, eight minutes the second time, and after a
couple of days he was down to falling asleep with me standing by the cot
patting his back for a few minutes. He did cry quite a lot on the first
night (although he wasn't crying for the entire forty-seven minutes),
but I was OK with that - since I was standing right there, I knew it was
just confused-and-fed-up crying rather than feeling abandoned.

A few weeks down the line he was having a lot of nights when he was
refusing to go to sleep when I laid him down in the cot and patted him,
so I moved to leaving him alone in the room and popping back every five
minutes to lie him down again and tell him good night. I figured that
by this time he knew that going into the cot meant it was time to go to
sleep, so he might be upset but he would at least know what was going
on. This time, he cried for twenty minutes the first night, about
twenty seconds the next night, and within a few nights he was going down
without a peep.

Things I wish I'd done differently:

1. Not even bothered with the whole
getting-the-baby-into-good-sleep-habits-from-the-start crap. I was
right - it really was vastly more hassle than just doing a bit of gentle
sleep training later on. Co-sleeping and not worrying about it was so
much easier.

2. Bought a Moses basket. I think at least some of the problem may
have been because the travel cot just wasn't comfortable enough for a
small baby, and I think I'd have saved myself a lot of hassle if I'd
been willing to buy a Moses basket.

3. Sleep-trained a bit earlier than I did. Not that this was really an
option, for a couple of practical reasons, but I think he'd have dealt
with it just fine a few months earlier than he did.


HTH.


All the best,

Sarah
--
http://www.goodenoughmummy.typepad.com

"That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be" - P. C. Hodgell

wrote:


My big question for co-sleepers is what do you do when the baby is old
enough to roll around and therefore isn't safe alone in an adult bed
and they need to be in bed at 7:00 and you want to stay up until 10:00?

We put the mattress on the floor. Then we put a bedrail on her side of
the bed. If I left her there, I put a pillow on the other side of her.
And finally, you'd be surprised how easily you can teach a baby to
get off feet first if she happens to wake up.

Leslie

wrote:

My big question for co-sleepers is what do you do when the baby is old
enough to roll around and therefore isn't safe alone in an adult bed
and they need to be in bed at 7:00 and you want to stay up until 10:00?

Bed rail and pillows...

-- Anita --

wrote:
My big question for co-sleepers is what do you do when the baby is old
enough to roll around and therefore isn't safe alone in an adult bed
and they need to be in bed at 7:00 and you want to stay up until 10:00?

Mandy (fairly rested)

That was our cue to transition our baby to her crib - 3 feet from our
bed - when she was six months old. I don't know if it was luck or
what, but she was just fine with it, slept right through the night.

Our plan had been to somehow get her to sleep in the crib at 8 (her
bedtime) until we get to bed at midnight, and then we'd transfer her
back to sleep with us, but it wasn't necessary.

From what I'm reading, this is all such an individual thing that it's
hard to predict what will work for your particular child.

We were happy to sleep with our baby for as long as she would want it,
and would have found solutions to prevent her from falling out of our
big bed if she ended up hating her crib. Our attitude was simply that
we'd adjust to whatever her needs were and put our own needs aside for
these few years while she's still little.

wrote:
Ok... I have been doing a lot of research online lately... It seems
that the "family bed" is everywhere. No matter what I type into the
search engine, this topic pops up in almost every result.

My dilemma, if it is even a dilemma... My 10 week old sleeps in bed
with me and my boyfriend. She sleeps through the night and everything.
I have a GRACO pack and play with the bassinet - she will not sleep in
this at all (She slept in it maybe the first week). PLEASe HELP! I just really need some advice... I know some people turn their noses up to sharing a bed... But I don't care.... I have noticed several people who have stated that it wasn't difficult to make
the transition into their own beds... How'd you do it?

Well first, off realize your baby has become habituated to your
night-time shifting... which was becoming quite difficult as my boy
went from a 7lb infant to a 16 lb pre-crawler before his 4th month. I
HAD been saying each month that we would be moving him to his own bed
(& really it has helped our love life sooo much to have done so.) but,
when I ended up with a hand injury that kept me in the hospital it
turned out that my husband did what we needed to do in the first
place... gave my son a new nighttime ritual. since we are AP parents
my husband began placing our son in the Arm's Reach co-sleeper after
his last feeding and making sure his "burpage" time was done. Then he
would simply rub DS's tummy until the only sign of wakefulness was the
motion of the babies pacifier. It's an amazing thing to watch & we
found the techniques of Dr. Karp ('Happiest baby on the block' DVD &
book) helped lay the foundation of this new night-time ritual. Also,
it's much easier to bed share with 2 smaller individuals & my husband &
I are both naturally over 150 lbs so.. NOT SMALL and we only have a
queen sized bed. It's best to get the largest bed you can find if you
intend to continue co-sleeping because invariably the baby learns how
to control you via the nighttime nudges so that some night I woke up
fumbling for a breast before I realized the baby was just fussing in
his sleep. LOOK into a CO-Sleeper, the first thing that makes them
different is that ours even has a way to attach the crib to the bed as
an extension-- the baby gets all the night-time jiggle he wants and you
still get to enjoy the bed itself to the fullest.. as married people
should.

Sirah -

I wanted to say thank you for the advice... Although she still has an
evening feeding (At 10 p.m.) - we are trying our best to transition her
into her crib... Last night, I swaddled her good and tight and she
slept through the night - no interruptions - in her crib... Now I just
have to work on her getting her into her crib awake - and able to fall
asleep on her own, as opposed to her falling asleep with us and then
placing her in there while asleep...

Honestly - the sleep I got last night was the best I have ever had -
and I thought I was sleeping well with her in our bed.

I also wanted to say WOW - a 4month old ready to crawl... That means
if leah is anything like your pride and joy - we are in for it the next
coupld of weeks... lol..

Thanks so much, take care.