cosleeping parents: how do you cope with baby's nighttime stirrings?

[tenar]

DD is 4 months old today (yay). She sleeps in a "co sleeping cot", the one sold by the ABA. It attaches to the bed by my side, so she's right by me and an easy reach, but not under our covers or able to be rolled on by DH (who is a really heavy sleeper).

Anyway, I am a really light sleeper. And I spend a lot of time awake in the night because DD tosses and turns in her sleep. I think she's mostly asleep when she does this, though not always. Now, it's great being close to her and not having to get up to giver her her dummy back and so on, but I'm slowly going crazy for lack of sleep because of waking every time she rolls over. I thought I'd get used to it eventually, but I haven't yet.

I'm starting to understand why people put the babies in a separate room. No intention to do this, but I can see that if I got much more desperate for a decent sleep it might end up working better for us all. I also do all of the nighttime wakeups because there is no way DH wakes, not even when DD is crying (convenient for him, hey). But there aren't many of those really - only one or two feeds a night now. It's the waking to DD stirring lightly that's killing me.

How do other light-sleeping cosleeping parents cope with this?

[Lady-bug]

I'm the same as you, I wake to almost every little noise DS makes! But I think my body has just become use to it. I don't wake anywhere near as much as I use to. And my DH is exactly the same as yours..DS could be screaming right next to him and he wouldn't wake.
So that doesn't really answer your question sorry!! Hopefully someone else will come and give an answer.

[tenar]

Well at least I guess I can live in hope that I will eventually wake less. I thought that would have happened by now, though. Maybe in a few more months...

[Smoke Jaguar]

At about 3 months I started to sleep with DS on my chest and got great sleep from there. Can't say it would work for you, necessarily. I found that the closer DS was to my skin the better he slept, so I took him out of his individual wrapping on top of the doona, to very light layers under the doona with me in the crook of my arm. Doing this regulated his body temp and mine and kept him more secure that I was there, so less stirring. My breath also regulated his breathing and meant we slept more in sync with one another.
You can read about this in Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering by Sarah Buckley (she's a lot more scientific than I will ever be!), or I'm pretty sure Pinky McKay's website covers this somewhere (or else her books, which should be available in your local library network).
Buckley talks about the benefit to sleeping lighter, especially for babies (reduces SIDS risk because SIDS babies die in deep sleep, not light sleep).
It may just be that you need to make slight adjustments to your arrangements to make it work better. HTH

[2CheekyMonkeys]

i have bub close to my skin too and just throw the boob in each time. kind of a bad habit in that she is probably half asleep most times and i am teacher her to rely on boob to get back to sleep but its worth it cause on the off chance that she is gonna wake up fully i have re-settled her without havig to get up out of bed and rock etc. i am pretty much tired after i wake up too but i guess itsjust what happens.

[Arcadia]

I would suggest either putting bub in bed with you, or maybe moving the co-sleeper a bit further away. I have one too, and you can put up that fourth side and have it like a mini cot. Its hard to move them further away, but it could be a good compromise for you.