Baby girl as a newborn. Oh my, this picture still makes me melt.
There is still a huge controversy raging out there in parentland about whether cosleeping is good, bad, safe, wonderful, dangerous, or just crazy. We have tried just about every possible sleeping arrangement in our vain attempts to get baby girl to sleep, so I thought I’d weigh in with a perspective looking back on the whole process these past 3 years.
Newborn – 8 Months: Cosleeper
For the first bit, we put baby girl in an Arm’s Reach Cosleeper by my side of the bed. This was wonderful for being able to comfort her and take her out for nursing every two hours all night long. Yes, this lasted months and months, and I loved the fact that I could have her close without worrying about rolling over on her at this age, which freaked me out when she was briefly in our bed.
8 Months – 1 Year: Crib
At 8 months, she was starting to sit up and roll around and was clearly outgrowing her cosleeper, so we tried to put her in the crib, but boy was that a miserable couple of months. My husband and I would actually get into arguments about who was spending more time standing over her crib to get her to fall asleep, and my back injury was still bad enough that I could barely stand up long enough to do this, bracing myself on the edge of her crib for as long as half an hour a night before she would drift off. Yes, we tried letting her cry it out. No, it didn’t work with her, though I know other kids this has worked for.
1 Year-3 Years: Cosleeping
At 1 year old, we went on a vacation where we all had to share a double bed. We brought her into the bed with us, and she slept like a dream. I only had to half wake up to nurse her, she slept for 3 hours at a time instead of 2, and it only took her 15 minutes to go to sleep instead of up to an hour it was now taking her to settle down. Easy decision. However, as many of you know, cosleeping has a downside. She wanted to be in my arms ALWAYS, naptime or bedtime. And–and this is the kicker–attempting a quiet time after she gave up her naps at 2 years old didn’t work at all because it looked just like a time out to her.
Last month, she kicked my neck out of alignment in her sleep, and I couldn’t even stand up from the dizziness when I woke up. I wasn’t seriously hurt, it was just ridiculous how much she was shifting sideways at night and pushing both of us out of bed (cosleeping parents, you know what I’m talking about! 
), so we finally moved her to her own bed in her own room. Why did this take us so long? Partly because she just wasn’t ready to be apart from me at night, at least not from a gentle/attachment parenting perspective. The other reason is our master bedroom is downstairs and her bedroom upstairs, so putting her in her own room meant moving us nextdoor into the guest room for the near future, which was a bit of a pain. But, well worth it. She still wakes me up at 3 a.m. on a regular basis and takes up to 2 hours to settle down for a quiet time in the afternoon and maybe an hour to go to sleep at night, but I have more space to myself, more time to read and relax while she’s quieting down, and we’re all happier.
It’s that thing with quiet time and time out looking the same that really got us, though. I went 6 months running 12-14 hour days with no breaks because I couldn’t get her to sleep with me anymore and couldn’t get her to let me leave the room either. It got pretty crazy. So, we love cosleeping, maybe me a little more than my poor share-his-wife husband, but there is a definite downside there. We’re all happy to be past that phase and sleeping like nearly normal people again.
How about you? I know everyone’s experience with baby sleeping arrangements is different. Were there things you wish you had known when you first started out? Things you would do differently or just wish someone had told you? I’d love to hear about it in comments. And like I said, I know this is a huge controversy out there, but this is not meant to be a judgment on anyone’s choices. I just want to put it out there that even for people who have found safe, happy ways to cosleep, there can be downsides. I just want to take the “should” out of the equation, and dispel the myth that there’s one right way to do this, even for one family.
We have a co-sleeper that isn’t attached to the bed, a crib in a separate room, and up until recently, we’ve used both AND done co-sleeping as well. Usually our daughter would start off the night in her own crib or cosleeper, then for her first feeding, I’d move her into the bed and let her nurse while I slept. It worked well for the first few months, because I could sleep while she ate, and when she was waking up 3+ times/night, that’s the only way I got nearly enough sleep. In the last month or so, though (she’s 5 months now), I’ve noticed that when I pull her into our bed, she doesn’t sleep as well. She wakes up more frequently and will wake up ALL THE WAY instead of going back to sleep after eating. Plus, now that she’s mobile, she’s all over the place in the bed, and I worry more about her rolling somewhere dangerous or one of us rolling on her when she’s moved. So we’re working on getting her full-time in her crib now. She sleeps much better there, and while it’s hard to get up and sit up once a night for 30 minutes to nurse, it’s better than being wide awake for 2 hours in the middle of the night trying to convince her to go back to sleep or enduring a wiggly, screeching baby sandwiched between my husband and me.
Moving her into her own bed has actually been pretty easy. I think it helps that we waited until she was ready. I’m just glad she was ready now. I’m so glad to have our bed back to ourselves. We’re all getting better sleep, which has made EVERYTHING better.
We co-slept from day one with both babies and it worked out very well for us. Our first slept in our bed for about half a year and then we placed a sidecar crib right next to our bed (making sure there is no way for her to fall through in any way of course)(oh, and we did try a cradle/bassinet which she hated). It worked really well until she was 2 and then we ditched all our beds (because my husband and I had so many bruises from tripping on it!). From then on we just slept on a mattress on the floor and her crib mattress was right next to our, that was even better than beds! When baby #2 arrived she still slept next to us on her own mattress and the newborn was in bed with me. Then half a year later we finished her room and she chose to sleep there on her own and has been since then (though she runs into our bed in the morning). So now we have the bed to ourselves and baby #2 is on a crib mattress next to us, I love that I don’t have to go anywhere or get up to nurse him back to sleep
I also remind myself that they are little for such a short time, I will miss having them so close eventually!
My son will be 2 in about 6 weeks. When he came home from the hospital at 3 weeks old, we tried using an Arm’s Reach cosleeper. He was really fussy all night and wouldn’t settle down, and rather than taking him into bed with us, we put him in his crib in the next room. We decided not to cosleep when he was an infant because he was so tiny. (We did, however, cosleep with his older brother, who was a much bigger newborn) Thanks to a soothing white noise toy and a Cloud Nine star projector, he still goes right to sleep for us. When it comes to nap times, I do tend to take him into bed with me. He cuddles up and we have a nap. Otherwise, I can’t get him to sleep during the day.
Thanks everyone for your replies. Lauren, you are the only other person besides me I have ever heard of who can’t get their baby to sleep without them there. Nice to know I’m not the ONLY one.
My three kids have all co-slept with me, and it’s been part delight and part frustration. I just finished reading Bringing Up Bebe, about an American raising her kids in Paris. It has been some real food for thought, especially the part about sleeping.
It’s totally normal for babies not to sleep without you there – Think about it; there was a time when humans sleeping alone left them vulnerable and unsafe. We are supposed to be social sleepers. I’m glad that crying it out didn’t work for you, as it has been proven unsafe for babies!
There are definitely downsides to co-sleeping in our house – My husband can feel neglected and we miss sleeping together and sleeping in alone. Sometimes I just want to go into bed and crash and I wake my son by accident and he ends up wanting to nurse for 20 minutes. But overall it’s worth it. I can’t imagine having him in another room, especially when he was younger! We did the co-sleeper for awhile and loved that as well, but a standard crib is not for our family.
I started out putting my already or almost asleep baby in her crib at night, but when she woke up for a feeding I’d take her into the spare bed with me so we could sleep and breasfeed without fully waking up, or disturbing DH. At 2.5 months though, she found her thumb and when she woke up at night she’d just slip her thumb in her mouth and go back to sleep. She’s sleeping up to 11 hours at a time now. I think our co-sleeping got her used to not needing to fully wake up at night and just sucking was enough to calm her, so when she could do it on her own that’s all she needed. I kind of miss cuddling with her at night, and I was freaked out that she might be too young to go so long without a feed, but she’s a big baby and doing fine. This has been going on for over 3 weeks now, I’ve been told this might not last but I’m trying to put her in drowsy but not fully asleep so she can go to sleep alone and it works unless she’s overtired or cranky. Sometimes putting her in her crib seems to excite her when she was sleepy and she’ll squeal with joy till she gets cranky.
She sounds delightful, Bonnie!