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Hi!! I think I fit in here...but I am not sure where to post my question. So I will post it here and if there is a better location for it please let me know!
Our daughter is 3.5 years old, she BF until she was 2. We had her in a bassinet for the first 6 months and then I slowly started bringing her to bed to nurse in the middle of the night and just let her stay there. I found that I got a LOT more sleep because of it, and well we just really enjoyed waking up to her little face next to us each day.
Fast forward to today... I am 4.5 weeks pregnant and DD still sleeps with us. We go back and forth on moving her to her bed. We still LOVE having her next to us for night time cuddles. She obviously loves it and is now a little scared to go to her own bed. But since we are expecting another one...I need some advice from other co-sleeping families?!
I don't want her to feel that she is being booted from our bed AT ALL because of this baby. But I also don't want her to have sleep issues from a newborn being in the same room waking her up every 2 hours.
What did you do? Tips, advice, any help is much appreciated!!!!
Welcome to the AP board! We love having new mommies come visit us, hope you enjoy it here :-)
Congratulations on your pregnancy. Does your daughter start the night in her own bed still? I would work on the transition now, get her all set up in her own room at the start of the night and just keep at it. What about getting her own bed for your bedroom?
Another mom (mgm78) just went through this transition as well, but for different reasons. Hopefully she pops in to help!
ds1 was a few months shy of 3 years old when ds2 was born, and ds1 was still in our bed. I just let him stay in bed and he slept either on the inside or between DH and I, ds2 always slept on the outside by me. ds1 had no problems since ds2 didn't cry at night (he'd root for me when he was hungry and so I'd just start to nurse before he got to the crying stage).
ds1 weaned himself from the bed at 3 years of age, but is still in our room, in his own bed. Because I have always bed-shared with my kids from the start of life I noticed there was no crying at night since I could tell they were hungry before it happened.
We happily cosleep with both kiddos. Dd used to sleep between us until ds was born. After he was born we side carred the crib and she sleeps in that now. Ds sleeps between us. Night wakimgs never seemed to bother Lilly. I think since I was right there to roll over and offer the breast it was never much of an issue.
I was pretty worried about how it would be cosleeping with both but it wasn't really much of a transition at all.
Although we don't exclusively cosleep with our older son (he is primarily in a bed in his room), we do have a twin mattress on the floor next to our bed for him. We have it on its box spring, so it is only about 6 inches lower than our bed. So that could be an option for her sleeping place when the baby comes along. I don't know about the crying, it would depend on each kids personality. Liam doesn't wake up when his brother cries unless it is early in the morning (like 5am, when the baby is particularly wakeful and Liam is heading to the lighter sleep that happens in the early morning hours). So if Liam is in our room that morning and Kieran is being noisy, I just take kieran out to his room to get him back to sleep before coming back into the room. Plus, even if your daughter does wake up at first, she will likely get used to the sounds of the baby and sleep through them after a couple weeks. She is also at the age where you could just say "the baby is being loud, Ill take him/her out to get back to sleep and be right back." and she can understand that.
Thank you ladies for sharing your personal experiences. We have her crib transitioned to the toddler bed in her room and she does NOT want to go in there. So we got a small toddler bed a few months ago and put it in our room at the foot of our bed (only place it would fit). She was very excited about it, she helped put the bedding on it. Got in it and fell asleep the first night just fine. Woke up around 4am and was confused and heard a noise (just normal house sounds) and started crying and climbed in bed with us. She has refused to sleep in it again. I even offered to sleep next to her at the foot of the bed. She still said no way. The other night I moved her from our bed to the toddler bed in our room after she fell asleep. She lasted about 5 hours in there and woke up and cried and climbed into our bed.
Should I just keep trying to move her after she falls asleep or is that more scary for a little one to wake up and not be in the bed she fell asleep in? I am so confused. I want this to be a happy experience for her.
Hi and welcome! Do you have room for a small mattress in your room, so she can have the experience of sleeping in a different bed but still close to you?
My friend co-sleeps with her newborn and 2 y/o and she also said that the newborn rarely wakes up the toddler because she didn't get to the point of crying most of the time when she wakes up.
Im sorry that I dont have any advice as I only have one child But the ladies here always have some great advice and I hope you find something that works for you.
