Questions

[JoyFilled]

My DD is now 7 months and to my surprise we are a co-sleeping family. She is generally a good sleeper but I have a few questions as to what co-sleeping looks like in other families.

1. When does your child go to bed?
2. When your child goes to sleep who is with them?
3. What does your bedroom look like?
4. How does your child nap?

Thanks for your answers.

[Maluhia]

1. When she is tired, it changes from day to day but usually around 8 p.m.
2. Depends - after story she will sometimes choose to go into her own bed or to cuddle with us and stay in our bed (she's self-leading a transition to her own space)
3. Queen sized bed
4. In my bed with me, or on hers without me - depends on her mood

[Lennon]

Originally Posted by JoyFilled

My DD is now 7 months and to my surprise we are a co-sleeping family. She is generally a good sleeper but I have a few questions as to what co-sleeping looks like in other families.

1. When does your child go to bed?
2. When your child goes to sleep who is with them?
3. What does your bedroom look like?
4. How does your child nap?

Thanks for your answers.

At 8 months my DS would go to sleep at 8pm. Our bedtime routine was nurse, bedtime story, rock to sleep. I would then put him in his crib and at his first wake up (usually around 10-10:30 at which time I was also ready to go to bed) I would take him to bed with me. We have a king sized bed and as he was crawling at that age we had the mattress on the floor. (He learned "feet first" pretty quickly so a few months later we moved the bed back up off the floor.) The rest of the bedroom is well baby-proofed so he can play with minimal supervision. He was taking two naps at that age - both in the crib unless I or DH wanted to nap with him.

[Shanny2032]

1. varies mostly depending on naps that day - no earlier than 7pm and I try to not let it get past 9:30
2. I nurse and lay with her until she falls asleep then leave the room and have a video monitor. She wakes pretty frequently before I go to bed (and after for that matter) so I go back in and nurse or cuddle
3. queen size mattress on the floor it is just the 2 of us. because of the video monitor and the small size of my apartment I dont worry about her getting up and getting into things at this point. I am always well aware when she wakes up - she makes sure of it
4. At home I lay with her like at night and I either nap with her or get up once she is down. she goes to work with me all week and sleeps in a car seat swing that we may be transitioning out of soon and I am not sure how that is going to go.

dd is 12 months but this has been out routine (or lack thereof) for a while now. She started walking at 9 months and has always been mobile so I have never regretted for a moment getting rid of my bed to put the mattress on the floor.

[CheriK]

1. When does your child go to bed?
Highly variable, when they start acting tired. At 7 months, the twins were probably going to bed (with me and usually DH) around 9ish. DD#2 is usually tired earlier and she and I would like to be in bed around 8. . . but that's hard when everyone else is still awake!

2. When your child goes to sleep who is with them?
At 7 months, always ME!! As they got older, DH would take over bedtime duties sometimes.

3. What does your bedroom look like?
Messy! Oh, you probably mean bed arrangements
We have a king and a twin pushed together. They're on bed slats on the floor. Typical sleep arrangement is DH (next to the wall), DS, me, baby (at the edge of the bed) sleeping on the king (sideways - we're short and it's wider than long); DD#1 on the twin. We have a small house and a small master bedroom, so we have one dresser in the room with my clothes and DD#3's clothes, a changing station on the top, and a tall skinny dresser in the corner for DH. There's enough room to walk in, close the door, and reach the bathroom; but if you want the closet, you walk across the bed.

4. How does your child nap?
I've always nursed my children down for naps. With the twins, I usually stayed in bed with them and napped myself or read. Sometimes that was by choice; for a long time (certainly around 7 months) it was a necessity if I wanted them to take a decent nap and take it simultaneously. DD#2 has third child syndrome - if we're at home, she takes a great nap by herself after being nursed down in the bed. But she's often napping in the sling, in the carseat, in the bike trailer. . .

[mambera]

1 and 2) DD (6 mo) will only stay asleep if I am next to her and can offer a boob whenever she starts rooting around in her sleep. So she only goes down for the night when *I* go down, which I have arbitrarily decided will be 11 PM.

She'll go down for a nap around 8 or 9 PM, wake up an hour or so later, tool around for another half hour or so while I get ready for bed, and then come to bed with me at 11.
(If I were willing to go to bed with her at 8 PM she'd probably stay down till morning but I am not willing to do that.) She wakes up the next morning around 9-9:30, depending on when I get up (takes her about half an hour to miss me and wake up).

3) We have a queen-size bed for DH, DD, and me (somehow DD always ends up with half of it while DH and I are squeezed onto the other half by morning). We also have a crib that never gets slept in but works great as a bedrail on DD's side of the bed.

4) Depends. IME she will take 4-5 short naps (0.5 - 1 h) throughout the day, each separated by about 1.5 hours of wakefulness. However my daytime caregiver swears that she takes two long naps (1.5-3 h) on days when I am not there. My hypothesis is that she can smell me walking around and wakes up to demand boob.

[MommaSuzi]

1. When does your child go to bed?
2. When your child goes to sleep who is with them?
3. What does your bedroom look like?
4. How does your child nap?

At that age, DD went to sleep around 9. I would nurse her to sleep and snuggle with her, and then get up for a while. Once she started rolling (3-4 months) we put the mattress on the floor for safety.
DD was in daycare and napped in a crib there. On weekends, napping pretty much took place on my chest.