Is it possible to bf and NOT cosleep?

De lurking

I did not co-sleep with my first. Spent lots of time getting up in the
night and then I had trouble falling back to sleep. It wasn't a huge
issue then because I could just sleep during the day with the baby. Now
with #2 I am co sleeping out of necessity (sort of.) It's just the
easiest way for me to get a decent amount of sleep so that I can be
alert during the day to play with, etc. my 2 year old and the baby.

Susan

ted wrote:
Did any of your bfed babies sleep in a crib/away from you at nights?
How did you manage that?

Thanks.

toypup wrote:
"HollyLewis" wrote in message
...
This is purely anecdotal but IRL the mom/baby pairs that slept
seperate were all sleeping through the night by 18mos. Night feeds
were down to one by a year and generally much sooner. I know one
other person IRL that breastfed and co-slept and both her kids are
like mine. Nurse all night long well past a year ;-)

--
Nikki
Mama to Hunter (4) and Luke (2)


I suspect there generally is a correlation, but that doesn't in any
way mean that co-sleeping *causes* night waking. I suspect it's far
more often the other way around. :-)

I do think you've got it right.

I don't think it *causes* night nursing. Certainly there are babies that
can co-sleep and don't night nurse. I do think it *encourages* it :-)
There might be a baby that can easily move back and forth between
co-sleeping and crib sleeping but I've never really heard of one. Has
anyone else known a baby or toddler that will co-sleep on some nights and
just as happily spend all night in their crib or bed the next? The waking
just to find mom only creates a problem if the child needs to be in bed
significantly longer then the adult. I need to be in bed about 6 hours.
That left me 6 hours of running to a kid every 40 minutes and spending 30
minutes to get them back to sleep....and I nursed them back to sleep so I
shot my own foot so to speak ;-) Perhaps if I could have laid in bed for 12
hours they'd have never woken up enough to need to get back to (nurse to)
sleep??? Each situation is so unique!!

I had one of both. Hunter would have nursed all night regardless of where
he was, he reverse cycled. He also just would not sleep away from me so we
co-slept starting on week 2. I'm pretty sure the co-sleeping resulted in
increased frequency and duration of night nursing for Luke. Both continue
to wake at night looking for me but it is no longer a problem because they
sleep long enough that I'm ready for bed myself by the time they wake up.


--
Nikki
Mama to Hunter (4) and Luke (2)

Nikki wrote:

I don't think it *causes* night nursing. Certainly there are babies that
can co-sleep and don't night nurse. I do think it *encourages* it :-)

I agree. Caterpillar will sleep for a couple hours at a time if I'm lying
facing her, but the moment I roll onto my other side, little hands are
pat-pat-patting me, and if I ignore them, it turns into wiggling, then fussing,
then crying. Not all of her night-nursing is needed.

But she reverse cycles, because I'm gone so much during the day. So I don't
think all of her night-nursing is habit.

I think she would have been fine as a crib baby, but we couldn't bear to not
hold her all the time when she was tiny, and when she was older, we were used to
having her right there. Baby#2 might be a crib baby, but probably not.

Phoebe

Phoebe & Allyson wrote:

I think she would have been fine as a crib baby, but we couldn't bear
to not hold her all the time when she was tiny, and when she was
older, we were used to having her right there. Baby#2 might be a
crib baby, but probably not.


I was pretty sure I wanted #2 to be a crib baby. I co-slept right off the
bat with the intent of switching at 3mos. Then at about 2-3 weeks I
discovered *he* slept much better in the crib. Mostly because if he was
right next to me he wanted to nurse at every move (or I nursed him) and then
he'd get crampy. In the crib he'd just move around and go back to sleep (I
did nurse some). So, he'd spend the night in his crib until about 4am.
That was the plan. Then at 12 weeks I went back to work. It felt *wrong*
to have him out there by himself when I was gone all day. It was hard to
keep getting up out of bed at night when I had to work all day. I missed
him. So I brought him to bed.

It feels so right when they are little. :-)

--
Nikki
Mama to Hunter (4) and Luke (2)

I don't think it *causes* night nursing. Certainly there are babies that
can co-sleep and don't night nurse. I do think it *encourages* it :-)

Well, like I said, my experience was the opposite. When we put DS down in his
crib at bedtime, he invariably woke up during the night and usually would not
go back to sleep in what I considered a reasonable period of time without
nursing, which meant I brought him into my bed, because I was not interested in
sitting up with him in the middle of the night.

But when we put him down in our bed at bedtime, whether I went to bed at the
same time or rejoined him later, THOSE were the nights he slept through until
morning. Or if he woke, he didn't wake so completely that he needed to nurse
back to sleep and thus he didn't wake *me* up so I never knew about it.

In other words, co-sleeping encouraged him to sleep through; putting him in the
crib encouraged night nursing.

Holly
Mom to Camden, 3yo
EDD #2 6/8/04

ted wrote:

Did any of your bfed babies sleep in a crib/away from you at nights?
How did you manage that?

Pillbug was in a bassinet for the first 10 weeks,
right next to our bed. Then, we moved him into
his crib in his room, which directly faces ours.
The first 10 weeks, I'd pick him up from the bassinet
and sit up against my pillows while nursing, then
put him back when we were done.

When we moved him to his room, we bought the
ugliest, orange plaid, extremely comfortable chair
from Goodwill for $20 and I nurse him on that. I
have a little table right next to it for cloths and
stuff.

I used to use a baby monitor, but I hear him fine
without it, so I do not use it anymore. I'm so used
to do this that sometimes I find myself in his room
without realizing how I got there and I occasionally
fall asleep in the orange chair while nursing. (It's
set up so that Pillbug cannot fall off.)

Each nursing takes 6-8 minutes, plus the 10 seconds
going between the rooms. I fall right back asleep
afterwards with no problems. Pillbug gets up at least
2x a night, if not more.

-- Anita --

HollyLewis wrote:

In other words, co-sleeping encouraged him to sleep through; putting
him in the crib encouraged night nursing.

Go ahead, rub it in ;-) You and your sleeping baby can go camp out with
those self weaners, lol.

--
Nikki (who wouldn't trade her all night party animals for all the world. I
spent a couple years in college drinking all night long myself, maybe it
runs in the family :-)
Mama to Hunter (4) and Luke (2)

In misc.kids.breastfeeding Ellie wrote:

: Although if I could have figured out how to co-sleep comfortably with twins
: I probably would have done.

You prop yourself up with the babies under you and go to sleep on your
knees and elbows. Seriously, I don't kwow how.

Larry

HollyLewis wrote:

In other words, co-sleeping encouraged him to sleep through; putting
him in the crib encouraged night nursing.

Go ahead, rub it in ;-) You and your sleeping baby can go camp out with
those self weaners, lol.

--
Nikki

I guess you didn't want to hear that DS is currently self-weaning, then? ;-)

(He nurses so infrequently now that I think he may be done, but every time I
think that, he asks for mama milk again. Not that I have anything but
colostrum right now, so it's possible he'll pick up again after the baby's
born.)

I had my share of sleepless nights, but fortunately it wasn't the norm. Most
of our sleep problems center around DS not wanting to go to bed in the first
place. It can take him an awfully long time to fall asleep. He's a little
night owl like me. And when he did nurse back to sleep in the middle of the
night, it also took forever, which, I suppose, is why I can't imagine sitting
up to nurse and putting him back to bed afterwards. There's no way I'd've been
able to stay awake that long!

Holly
Mom to Camden, 3yo
EDD #2 6/8/04

Nikki wrote:
This is purely anecdotal but IRL the mom/baby pairs that slept
seperate were all sleeping through the night by 18mos. Night feeds
were down to one by a year and generally much sooner. I know one
other person IRL that breastfed and co-slept and both her kids are
like mine. Nurse all night long well past a year ;-)

Well, my kids obviously never heard that not-co-sleeping would cause them to
sleep through the night and night-wean easily g. Julian was night-weaned
and sleeping through at 18 months, but only because I was pregnant and so my
husband took over nighttime parenting duties. Aurora was waking about once
every 45 minutes to an hour at 18 months, so we did the Daddy treatment with
her at that time, and she night-weaned/slept through reliably by 20 months.
Vernon has just turned two and is still up once or twice most nights for a
nosh, more if he's sick. We haven't done the Daddy treatment on him yet
because it doesn't bother me nearly as much to get up with him once or twice
a night as it would bother my husband right now to take over nighttime
parenting.
--
Be well, Barbara
(Julian [6], Aurora [4], and Vernon's [2] mom)

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