Co-sleeping...but not touching. Help/insight needed, please.

[Beauchamp]

Co-sleeping (not touching) is becoming a real pain. Does this happen to anyone else besides us?? DD seems like she needs her own space. She nurses to sleep, and then usually unlatches herself and flips onto her side, stretching her arms straight out. Or else she unlatches, sits up, and "flops" herself to sleep, with back/head rubs from me or DH. When she sleeps on her back, she is like a baby starfish, all limbs spread out as far as they can go, taking up most of our (king size!) bed.

I have never really been one for cuddling. If DH and I did ever cuddle or rub/scratch backs, we always moved apart for sleep. Plus, DH is a real furnace. So now, he's bumped onto the floor, and DD gets 2/3 of our bed, I get the remaining 1/3.

When she wakes, she cries. I keep reading posts about babies who simply root and find the boob/latch on themselves and nurse. (Are you mamas sleeping topless, I might also add/ask??) This way seems SO NICE compared to my babe, who has to cry, poor thing, and then I scoot over to her to nurse her.

Should I be working harder to sleep up against my baby??? Or do some babies just need space?

When we nurse, I am laying down but prop up on one elbow. (Owww...and I have the raw/scaly elbows to prove it. Ugh!) Last night I tried truly laying down so I could sleep, and DD cried and couldn't nurse.

We have her crib sidecarred, but she rarely is in it. Advice, please? I am feeling like a failure at nighttime parenting, with a 9 month old taking up most of a king bed and my husband on the floor wedged in between the bed and his dresser.



ETA, DD is a super light sleeper, and wakes with the slightest noise, like sometimes even the "click" of my nursing bra closing. (Yes, we have a rain/thunder white noise CD going every night.) It's so hard to move her once she's asleep, hence her possession of two-thirds of the bed.

[maribudlo]

Wow

This sounds just like my DD. She's now 22 months old, and there has been improvement. I was going crazy, I can empathize with you. My DD didn't learn to side lie nurse with me lying all the way down so I could also sleep until she was 11 months, and then it even took a while. She tossed and turned and didn't like to be touched at all. She still doesn't really like to be touched unless it's under her conditions, and she still moves around WHEN she has the room. We put a double bed on the floor of her room and I sleep in there with her when things get really rough on my significant other and my DS, who's 7 1/2 months now. AND she wakes up crying. She used to wake up with a really loud cry every time she woke up, but now, and for the last couple of months, it's been more like a whimper and probably about 75% of the time that she wakes up, with the other 25% being quiet and signing for milk. I have wondered if there are even any benefits to co-sleeping if you don't even touch, but I still believe there have to be, and I actually did try to get her to cuddle when she was really young, but I stopped because all she did was cry and it was obviously not a healthy situation.
SO, all this says is that it might settle down for you. I couldn't see a time when it might settle down, I was so tired and on edge and when she would wake crying loudly it would just get under my skin right away and I would wonder how much longer I could take it. Now things are not great, but they are definitely improving, almost by the week, so maybe, as the sites I read told me, maybe you just need to wait. Even my other AP friends who co-sleep said, while they didn't have kids like my DD, that their own issues resolved with time. Now when we're all in the bed together, she just doesn't move around as much, and when she and I are in the double bed she's all over the place (we sleep on it sideways.) Seems goldfish-like to me. I hope this helps, at least to give you hope. Good luck, mama.

[Beauchamp]

Originally Posted by maribudlo

I have wondered if there are even any benefits to co-sleeping if you don't even touch.

This! I have been thinking about this...every night, as I creep away from my DD and stealthily pull the covers over me an inch at a time. I've been wondering if I shouldn't reattach the 4th side of the crib and move it across the room. But then I'd just have to get all the way out of bed.

Thanks for the encouragement. It is not always easy to hear that time may be what is needed. But it does help to get some support, for sure.

The two things that make this situation bad for us is that my DH and I don't cuddle or sleep spooning, etc, so he gets bumped off of our bed, and also because of the "walking on eggshells" feeling we get every single night. We never know when or how DD will fall asleep, or for how long. It puts me on edge and then *I* can't fall asleep!

Of course, you know about "people" and outside pressure, which I must admit, gets to me. I am the only AP person I know IRL. My step-MIL is coming here next weekend, and with her other mainstream granddaughter (13 months) she can give her a bottle and just rock her to sleep. I am not ready for the judgement of BFing to sleep, our mattress on the floor, our side-car crib...and much more.

Everyone asks about sleep, and I generally feel like a good mama, except for this, where I feel like a failure.

[blizzard_babe]

Oh, your situation sounds all too familiar. We moved to the mattress on the floor system when DS was six months-ish. He actually had a mattress and a box spring between our bed and the wall, putting his bed just one "layer" lower than ours (our frame was pretty short). He was (still is, actually) exactly like your DD... any movement/noise would wake her, including but not limited to me snapping up my nursing bra, and me YAWNING. Yes, yawning.

It was a little more work when he was on the floor, because I had to sneak away from him (and it'd take FOREVER some nights), but the extra time ended up being well worth it. I could sleep in a comfortable position, I could yawn without fear of repercusison , and I could move if I needed to move. Some nights I'd end up down on the mattress with him because waiting it out until he was deeply enough asleep to move was just beyond my capabilities for staying awake, but I always had the option of moving back up to the big bed if I woke up uncomfortable.

[rzberrymom]

Originally Posted by Beauchamp

When she wakes, she cries. I keep reading posts about babies who simply root and find the boob/latch on themselves and nurse. (Are you mamas sleeping topless, I might also add/ask??) This way seems SO NICE compared to my babe, who has to cry, poor thing, and then I scoot over to her to nurse her.

I'm with you! I never managed to pull this off either--my babies have never latched on by themselves as far as I know. I scoot towards her rather than bring her towards me (I know what you mean about them grabbing the whole bed!), latch her on and usually drift back to sleep. For me, that's the easy thing about co-sleeping, since I don't have to stay awake to get her back into a crib, co-sleeper, etc.

But, if she's having trouble nursing on the side then I can see that it wouldn't be any easier. Maybe you could try practicing the side nursing with her during the day?

[rzberrymom]

Originally Posted by maribudlo

I have wondered if there are even any benefits to co-sleeping if you don't even touch

I've found that my DD's sense I'm there and are comforted by it, even if I'm not touching them. But, you could easily get the same effect by having your DD on a separate mattress next to your bed--lots of cultures co-sleep like that (although they generally don't have giant bed frames way off the ground like we do in the U.S.) We did that when our DD started taking up too much of the bed. It did make it trickier for me to drift back to sleep after nursing (since I had to move her down a few inches to her mattress), but it was nice to get my bed back.

And when she needed reassurance in the night, it was nice to be able to just reach out a hand to her, rather than have to get out of bed and go to her.

[Louisep]

All I can say is that DS grew out of the restless and light sleep (mostly). 9 months is the worst, I never thought I'd get through it. DS needed my help to latch but did nurse side-lying (not that I ever really slept through it like some can and all it did was give me terrible back ache).

I think a benefit of cosleeping is that you're not having to physically get out of bed to see to your LO. Have you tried getting her more used to her crib in the side-carred position? We lie down next to DS for him to fall asleep (something we achieved over a month or so). He is in the crib (side-carred) when we do this and our heads are in the crib, one of us on either side of DS. After about 2 months of going to sleep this way, he now crawls into the crib in the middle of the night to fall asleep, giving me more space. Maybe DH will re-join us someday....?!

[littlemizflava]

my ds was like this he didnt want and still at 3.5 really dont like touching he sometimes reaches out to touch me or hit me with a hand or foot but that is all. totally they can sense you there even if you are not on the bed they know you are there. the only tip i can say is if you have the crib sidecared start her way over there on that side of the bed. this way when she flops and stars she is more over then and there is more bed left.