How does co-sleeping actually work?

[Devon]

Thanks so much everyone for your detailed replies - I can definitely get some good mental pictures of the different ways it can be done now. I guess I'll just have to see how we go. My brother and SIL started co-sleeping with their new baby, but my brother accidentally elbowed him in the head (not hard, but enough to scare my brother) one night, so that was the end of that.

I'm also usually a heavy sleeper, but would imagine that I would be fairly alert if my baby was in the bed with me. I guess it'll also depend on what DH is comfortable with.

Liz - good to hear some feedback on the arms reach co-sleeper. It does sound like a good compromise. I started wondering about the co-sleeping because of the idea that the baby can help regulate his breathing from his mum's breathing. But I imagine that that would require mum and baby to be closer than the arms reach allows.

I think I might get an arms reach just in case, but be open to trying out the co-sleeping in the same bed, and we'll see what works for us.

Thanks again, very helpful.

Devon
xxxx

[snowchickie79]

Hoobley, Rosehip Fairy, MummaB - Thanks for the no yelling reassurance.. I sleep with DD on my belly, laying on her belly but as MummaB said she has also done it.

All references to co-sleeping I've read relate to baby sleeping beside their mums or in a co-sleeping bed and not in actual full contact like I've been doing.

I have also slept with DD on the lounge. We have huge, very firm pillows on our lounge so I remove the one near my head so i can lie flat, DD goes on her belly on my belly, I usually wear long PJ's and my dressing gown for warmth but then wrap a quilt around the middle to lower part of my body, so it just covers DD legs and then I wedge each side of the quilt under my body so it's like a big present being wrapped up. That way bubba can't slide anywhere. I then wedge the second lounge pillow under my arm for support but then my arm is over the pillow so she can't slide down beside me and the pillow. I have found and much to my surprise that I don't move an inch when i sleep with her. I stay in the same exact position, which results in a dead arm in the morning but I don't mind. When we sleep in the bed, I either do a similar thing and wrap us together (DH doesn't really like her being in the middle - so again she sleeps on her belly on my chest) and then when DH goes to work I slide her over to the middle of the bed and I leave my arm under her neck and then wrap my legs up under her bum so I kinda surround her. Either way she sleeps really well. I only co-sleep either when she is unsettled or if she wakes really early and is cold or just wants comfort.

I didn't want to get yelled at for 1) sleeping her on her belly and sleeping her on top of me and 2) for sleeping on the lounge.. I can understand the lounge thing for some lounges which are very soft and cushiony but ours isn't so I'm not concerned and when she does move or slide I wake straight up anyway.

Devon - I hope this is giving you some ideas on what you might want to do when your bubba arrives. I was not really considering co-sleeping while I was PG as I was afraid I'd squish a baby but it happened our of shear desperation in the first week we were home where she just didn't want to be alone and would only sleep on me, so i resorted to sitting on the lounge watching movies with her. Meantime I felt asleep and that is how I found that I didn't move so I just made it an easier way by tucking quilts etc.

I've been reading a book called Your Baby Week by Week by Simone Cave and Dr Caroline Fertleman (which in itself is a great book which I've found very useful) but it also talks about co-sleeping and sleep training at each week and stage of babies life. It does talk about co-sleeping and it's the only book I've found to mention sleeping with bubba on your belly.. It does say "Don't let your baby sleep on his tummy, although sleeping on your chest is okay as babies have been shown to mimic their mothers' breathing thus reducing their cot death risk."

[Liz]

I strapped DS to me in the hugabub and slept in the rocking chair sometimes At least he couldn't fall off me that way. You just do what you have to in order to get some sleep!

[paradise lost]

Yeah i did that too snowchickie (as i say above, made feeding easier and then we'd nod off...).

I never slept on a lounge (sofa to me ) for the first 4 months because....we didn't HAVE one! We shared a 2-bed flat with another person, so we basically had a bedroom XP and i shared, a bedroom for our flatmate and a room XP had for his records and computer which also had a spare bed in it (don't ask, we got together when we were flatmates and never actually "moved in" together in the true sense, always took a flat with a theoretical bedroom each, though we only slept in one of them, i always had to share "my" room ). So in "my" room there was a bed and a couple of armchairs...

Once i moved out into my own place i had a suite and i frequently fell asleep on it on Sundays. DD would go to her dad saturday night and Sunday i'd get her back and i'd be so full up, despite pumping (could get squat with the pump by then), and i'd just lay on the couch with her either with her on my tummy on her tummy, or her cuddled in beside me on the outside, so that if she rolled she'd fall on the floor (put a cushion down JIC) rather than get squished down the sofa cushions, and feed and feed and feed and we''d always end up nodding off.... I miss those times. I can't wait to have another booby baby!

Bx

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

I did that too, Snowchickie - on a tiny campbed (another naughty place to sleep with a baby), DS on my tum/chest (head nearly on my neck, feet between my legs), patting his bum to get him to sleep.

I have dropped off to sleep on the sofa too. It's not ideal but when you're knackered it's just going to happen. So long as you evaluate the risks then I don't see there's a problem. I did consider sleeping with the carrier, which was so comfy, but given that DS and I both turn into human radiators at night it wasn't a good idea - if we had a half-hour nap together with the carrier we'd wake up soaked in sweat (such a pleasant picture for you all!) so I didn't want to do that overnight.

BTW, we didn't do that much skin-to-skin. Mostly we both wore pyjamas/sleepsuits (DS only for the latter).

[queenbee]

i just cuddled my DD, i would wake up even if she moved the slighest bit, i think it's just natural to do so. she is 9 months and still sleeping with us. she slept in a sleeping bag recommended by SIDS website so was fine, no blankets ever around her head. i love waking up next to my daughter every morning. i am trying to get her in the cot now though so will miss her good luck with everything and i hope you enjoy co-sleeping as much as we have!!

[Smoke Jaguar]

Slept with DS from the moment he was born!
Initially he was between us, in one of those gro-bag thingies, up between our heads and on top of the duvet. Pain in the @rse and we ended up stripping him down and keeping him in the middle - the body heat transfer regulated all our temps nicely. And DS was a winter baby. For teh first month or so I would sit up to feed because he had tongue tie and even after it was snipped at 4 weeks, we had to work at attachment. Once that started to resolve itself he was then starting to be unsettled and windy, so we then started to sleep with him on my belly, wearing not much on him (me with only a feeding bra - was E cup at the time and with forceful let down if unrestrained!) and this lasted for ages, till he was about 6 month old. Then I just needed to breathe, so back off to the side he went! Soon after, he was moved to my left and that's where he was until we bought his futon mattress for an heirloom slat bed two weeks ago...now he falls asleep on the boob in his bed and comes in to me between 1.30 and 5am for a feed and sleep. I miss him
I never worried about my methods and filtered out all those warnings and guidelines - not because I couldn't care about the risk, but because I trust my instincts and defer to them.
Breastfeeding and co-sleeping is the nicest thing I never planned to do for this long! The co-sleeping we decided on only weeks before DS was born, after giving over to our deepest instincts