Bedsharing arrangement advice - 10 week old
I am looking for advice on our sleeping arrangement. Right now, I sleep on an adult bed with my 10 week old daughter in the nursery. The bed has a cosleeper attachment, where she takes some naps and begins the night alone, and I take her into the big bed with me after her first night nurse.
This really works for us, except my husband and I miss sleeping together. He is an extraordinarily light sleeper so spends the night alone in our bed. We tried a family bed but he is up all night with her random (swaddled) resettlings, especially after 4am when she's a bit more restless. It just wasn't worth it.
My hope would be that eventually she is okay sleeping alone in her room for most of the night. I think it'd be okay by everyone to have early morning cuddles in either room. I'm realizing as I type that none of you have a crystal ball that'll tell me when or if she will be inclined to begin sleeping without me holding her until 4 am or so. I guess I'm looking for encouraging stories, advice about timing or execution of this transition, and any glaring WARNING WARNINGs if I have unrealistic expectations on this potential future arrangement.
Also is toddler sleep as noisy as baby sleep, or is the poor bed mate issue more relegated to kicks in the stomach? Also considering rigging a larger cosleeper to our adult bed or arranging mattresses on the floor. If this seems realistic we might just not rock the boat til she's a bit older.
Parent Replies
The best advice the doctor ever game me when my daughter (now 17) was an infant is to always put her to bed awake so that she could learn to fall asleep on her own. At 7 weeks she was sleeping through the night. This did not work as well the second time around. My second was much more restless and took much longer. I was depressed and exhausted and would find my husband standing over me with her as I was even too exhausted to hear her. While I do understand the desire to bedshare with your infant, I was still determined to not have her in my bed. Obviously it is a personal choice but I believe that just like nursing, it is a matter of supply and demand. If you supply your body next to her, she will always demand it. If you ween her while she is young, you will set the expectation. That being said you will have to gauge your tolerance level to be able to handle the crying, etc. and first few nights of weening or if you are willing to let her cry it out. It is not for everyone. Just my opinion. By the way, the restlessness never stopped. She is a kicker. Best of luck.
We have a 12 week old and she sleeps in her own room on her own most nights now. We had a nanny the first month that slept in the room with her. Then when we were on our own, we got in a routine of bath, last feeding, quiet time with Mommy with bed time music and then she is in bed around 7:30 to 8. She wakes up around 2 am to feed at which time I change her diaper, feed her and put her back in the crib. She is usually good until 6 am. We keep a dim light on in the room and I keep as quiet ad possible and don't interact during the 2 am change and feeding and she will usually go right back to sleep. Admittedly, there are nights I end up sleeping in her room if she is overly fussy (or I am overly anxious, first time mom!) Especially in the beginning when she would toss around and I would take that as a cue she needed to be picked up, but I have come to realize if her eyes are closed, she can settle herself down back to sleep and I don't need to pick her up every single time she moves. There have also been 2 or 3 nights she has sleep right through until morning (with me anxiously waiting at 2 am for her to wake up, ha ha). Sometimes it is trial and error but I think it is totally doable to have them sleep in their own room, good luck!
Your post brings back so many memories for me! We started in a similar vein with our daughter; had intended to use a cosleeper sidecar but my husband was completely unable to share a room with her because of her baby noises. We had not planned for another semi-permanent adult sleeping place in the house, so either he or I was on the couch for the better part of the first three months. One of my clearest emotional memories of that time is the fear that I would NEVER be back in bed with my husband! But once we decided we were done with that arrangement, we weaned her off same-room sleeping within just a couple days. She slept in her bassinet next to me on the couch for a while, then I moved the bassinet into her room and stayed on the couch (closer to her room than our bedroom was), and then booted up the baby monitor, crossed my fingers and crawled into my bed. And she was fine! Has now been sleeping on her own almost exclusively for about 10 months.
We did do a bit of mama-and-baby bed-sharing when she was tiny (2-month vaccines hit her hard so that was the best way for us to get any sleep that week), but my experience was that once baby started getting control over her limbs I couldn't sleep well next to her either. We tried it again during 4-month sleep regression out of desperation and it was miserable, she just wanted to climb on me all night!
You mention that baby is not super-inclined to sleep not-in-your-arms -- is it possible she has reflux? That was our daughter's problem. We actually had her in a Rock-and-Play quite a bit for the first few months (I know, I know...) and when in the bassinet we put a towel under the mattress on one end to prop it up, and another rolled up and stuck under the sheet to make a little "nest" around her so she'd feel cozy like she did in the Rock-and-Play and arms (our pediatrician's recommendation on both counts).
Hope this helps!
My experience has been different from yours in many ways, but maybe reading it can inspire some changes in your own situation. When my husband and I first brought our baby home from the hospital she slept in a dockatot between us in our bed. My husband and I missed sleeping next to each other, so when she was about a month and a half we moved the dockatot to his side of the bed with my husband on the middle and me on the other side. Since my husband was the one getting up at night to bring her to me for feedings and burp her, this worked for us. Maybe you could have your baby on your side with you on the middle and your husband on your other side and he could wesr earplugs? While it was great to sleep next to my husband again, we would still wake frequently when the baby made any sort of noise and she probably woke with our movements. The day after she turned 3 months, we moved her dockatot to her crib in her own room, and we all slept so much better! Instead of her waking 4x/night to feed, she only woke 2x. We wonder if we should have moved her sooner, but we did it when we were ready and you will know when you're ready. A couple of days before we moved her to her crib at night, we started with naps in the the crib. I think why it worked well for my daughter was because while she wasn't in the same room, she was still in the same apparatus (dockatot), so sleeping felt the same. We also have been using a sound machine since birth, and when she left our room it went with her to her room. Now my daughter is almost 4 months and is going through another growth spurt, so she's feeding every 2 hours again, but we still keep her in her room for consistency. According to Good Night Sleep Tight by Kim West, once you have moved a baby to their own room successfully, keep them there. The back and forth is confusing to them and doesn't help them set good sleep habits. I hope some of this helps you!
At ten weeks, she really needs to have you close. I know you are exhausted, but time flies by and soon she will be old enough to drive. (Really...) I imagine you will get some good suggestions from others on the sleeping arrangements, but here is something that really worked for our family -- a white noise machine. It really helps for light sleepers not to hear the small baby gurgles and surprisingly noisy sounds that babies make. They cost about $20 -- put on loudest setting, and it will even soothe your baby in her sleep. We still use our even tho' our babies are grown -- our old dogs snore like elephants!