Still cosleeping?

[DommysMommy]

Are any of you still cosleeping with your older LO(s)? My son is 20 months old and is still sleeping with me. I wasn't really nervous about it until recently...the past several nights have been horrible!
We've been sleeping separately from DH basically from the beginning of his life :cry: :cry: and I don't want to do that anymore. I moved our bed into his room (mine and DS's) and have decided to try to get him to sleep in there. He's done so for going on night 4 with me in there, and I'm thinking tonight I'll try to start the night off in my room, and go to him if he wakes. But I'm afraid of how long this will take! I don't want to stop bedsharing with him, but for his sake, I don't want new baby to wake him either, otherwise I'd try to get him and I back in bed with DH.
Do any of you have this happening? Or concerns about sharing a bed with 2+?

[Cathy_B]

Hey, you're not alone! I co-slept with DS1 right up until DS2 was born, and still do sometimes. DH was with us too.

DS1 was 2 1/2 yrs when DS2 was born. DS1 is 3 now, and sometimes he sleeps alone, sometimes not.

Pros - it is lovely to see DS1 wake up and be so happy to see DS2 first thing in the morning!!! The reverse is true too. Our baby is thrilled to see his big brother watching over him.

Cons - it is cramped quarters for the grown-ups! When I have 2 kids in bed, DH sleeps elsewhere. (Sometimes it's me and baby in one bed, dad and big-boy in the other. We change it up. :-) )

Issues: Safety with 2 kids in bed becomes a bigger concern. Practice good safety! Practice good safety! Practice good safety!

But we rarely had an issue with DS2 crying and waking up DS1. Although they have very different sleep patterns, the kids basically do sleep pretty well. Eventually they will share a room together, apart from the adults. So perhaps it is good that they learn to sleep together right from the start. (?) Maybe doing this will spare us a difficult "moving-in" period that could otherwise occur later.

I found that the co-sleeping was/is not a bad thing. We had (and still have) our ups and downs but I have no regrets. Good luck.

Cathy

[stayinhomewithmy4]

My older kids are 6, 4 1/2, and 3 1/2 and we have a king size family bed that we call "the big bed". For safety reasons, the baby will sleep in a pack n play or bassinet in our room at first and will then probably transition to a crib in his/her room for awhile and then, eventually, will come into the big bed with the rest of us. This is what we did with DD & DS2. I know it is backwards from what everyone else does, but it works for us.

We have been co-sleeping with DS1 since the day he was born. We didn't plan on it then, but I don't regret it at all. When DD was born, DS1 was only 19 mos old and we tried to transition him to his own bed, but we had absolutely no success. Since DD was happily sleeping in her crib in her own room, we decided not to worry about it and to let DS1 keep sleeping in our bed. When DD was almost 2, she started to realize that the rest of us were all together in the big bed and she decided to join us, and we were glad to have her there! Then, when DS2 was born, for safety reasons we did the same thing. DD was only 13 mos and was still actually sleeping in her own crib, but DS1 was still in our bed, and DS2 slept just fine in a bassinet and then a crib. He ended up joining us in the big bed around 18 mos.

I don't feel that it is fair to the older kids to kick them out of our bed to make room for the baby, so this is what we will be doing again. If this baby insists on co-sleeping from the beginning, we will be using 2 separate beds... DH and the older kids in the big bed, me and the baby in a different bed, but I don't expect this to happen since the other method worked out well for us in the past.

[DommysMommy]

I just feel bad thinking about waking DS1 at night, and how I'm going to get them BOTH back to sleep. And I've thought about putting the new baby in his Amby Hammock from the beginning, and trying him in his own room, but I worry about sounds from the baby monitor. And I'm super lazy! That's why we started cosleeping in the first place. It totally wasn't planned.
I'm sure it will all figure itself out. I'm just trying to make this transition as easy as possible for Dom, and I hope I do it right.

[1blessedmama]

My DD is 26 months and still cosleeps. We have her toddler bed right beside our bed (which is only a queen) and sometimes she asks to sleep in it (which only recently started) but always ends up in between us by the middle of the night. While it's hard for me because I require so much space these days to sleep on my side but only get about half of what I used to get PRE-pg, I still can't imagine her sleeping anywhere else. Early on in the pregnancy I wanted to transition her to her bed before the baby came but now I don't...we'll just sidecar her bed for the extra space.

The only thing that would make me nervous about switching them to their own beds this late in the game is that with all the new changes a new baby brings, any success prior to the babies coming may go right out the window once they're here, KWIM?

[DommysMommy]

That's one of my concerns too. That's why we haven't started PLing yet, even though I think he's ready.
I don't want him to sleep anywhere else, but anymore, it seems he wants me out too. He doesn't want my head on his "vroom vroom" pillow, if I get too close he pushes me away, but also still wraps his arms around my neck...he's silly. In the middle of the night, he can't decide if not being hot is more important than mama holding him. He's a silly boy! Maybe with the new baby, after being woken up a bunch, he'll decide he wants his own space. He's coming into his big boy phase.

[stayinhomewithmy4]

Maybe with the new baby, after being woken up a bunch, he'll decide he wants his own space. He's coming into his big boy phase.

You're right. It will all work out somehow, even though it's hard to imagine it now. We've always had the new baby sleep in our room at first and the night time waking never bothered the other kids. They usually slept right through it. Maybe your DS will too, and if not, then maybe he will end up in his own bed after all! I'm still waiting for my kids to wean themselves from our family bed, but I know that when they do, it will be a sad sad day for me. They just grow up too fast! :cry:

[aept]

Our 20-month-old sleeps with us, and has since the beginning. We have a queen mattress on the floor, and recently added a twin mattress next to it for a little more room to spread out. Right now, it's me, DS, then DH. When the baby comes, I think we will be in this order: new baby, me, DS, DH - or me, new baby, DH, DS. Either way, we will keep the kids seperated from each other, and we keep all blanket/pillows away from the baby.

We don't plan on moving DS out, but if needed we do have a full-size bed in the guest bedroom so that DH and DS can move into there if the baby is keeping either of them up. (However, right now the guest bed is topped with a bunch of clothes we need to donate, and another bunch of DS's outgrown clothes that need to go into storage bins - I should probably be working on that instead of hanging out here!)

[DommysMommy]

We have a king in our room, and DH has been able to enjoy it all to himself minus a few nights! We had a full size bed in our spare room, but that room has become a nursery, so we moved it out. We took it to the living room while I was prepping the nursery, planning on putting it back in there for our "family/nap" bed, but decided to put it in DS1's room. He has a bunk bed type thing with like a fort/play area under the twin bed, so that's where we put the full size bed. He's WAY too young to sleep on the top, so this is an alternative. Funny...I've been sleeping in Cars theme room! Feels a little goofy at times, but you do what you have to. I can't sleep with DH very easily...he falls asleep faster than anyone I know, and starts snoring from the getgo. If I can fall asleep before him, I'm usually ok, but that almost never happens. That's why DS and I left my room...when he woke up to eat, I could never get back to sleep.

[dakarimom5]

On a good night I just have my 19mo in the bed on a crazy night I can have as many as 4 children up to age 9 in bed with me!! It doesn't help that I have sleepwalkers and they walk to me.