Tell me about co-sleeping and STTN

[JustSimplicity]

I am interested in hearing stories about how/when your co-sleeping LO slept though the night. We started off co-sleeping and then had to move DS to his own bed because he makes really loud noises every few minutes starting at 4-5am. I'm going to talk to the ped about that because it seems like he has to poop but can't and the noises go on for hours.

DS is 8 weeks old and will not go down for naps. He will only sleep in the moby wrap. I'm delusionally exhausted from having to get out of bed 5-6 times a night to feed/change him and then I'm not getting a break in the day when he naps, so we're back to to co-sleeping. Being able to nurse in bed helps a bit but he's still keeping me up starting at 4am with the noises.

I'm just wondering if there's any chance he will start sleeping longer than 2 hour stretches any time soon or will co-sleeping keep him awake more often because he has easier access to food? I would love to hear other people's experiences. I just need to get some sleep some way.

[Louisep]

Hugs, even if your LO doesn't start sleeping longer stretches, you will be amazed at how your body adapts to less sleep and also how you will learn to get rest from cosleeping and night nursing. I have a horrible sleeper and I'm a light sleeper and cosleeping still affords me the most rest and sleep.

To your questions...it's completely normal for an 8 week old to feed every 2 hours and in fact you're quite lucky it's not more frequent. DS started sleeping longer stretches and making less noise around 3.5 months. We then had a glorious 6 weeks until he hit a sleep regression which we're only just coming out of.

Some cosleeping babies sttn and some don't. Likewise, some crib sleeping babies sttn and some don't. IRL I know of two AP cosleeping moms with babies who sttn and 2 whose babies don't and wake frequently. I know of one non-ap but bfing mom whose baby sleeps in a crib who nursed every 2-3 hours until he night weaned at one year.

So it's really a mixed bag and IMO, cosleeping and bfing has little to do with it. For me bfing and cosleeping were tools to get the most rest.

I will say it gets easier when you no longer have to get up to change diapers. I think that happened around 4 months? Also, can you get your partner or dh to give you lie ins? This has really helped me. At 8 weeks I was still going to bed at the same time as ds which also helped.

Naps may stabilize with time. My ds needed wearing until 9.5 months.

You really get used to it, I promise and then it gets easier.

[HappyMonkey]

We cosleep too. I don't know if this will help, but what I did was put down a waterproof mat on the bed (it has an organic cotton cover) and just lay cloth diapers down flat with the baby on top. When she wets I just lift her bum, toss the wet one in a plastic bin, and slide a new one underneath. It's so simple and I hardly even need to move to do it. I don't know why more people don't do that!

My baby is 3.5 months old and really she wakes about 4-5 am too. She has this one hour period with lots of thrashing if I leave her in bed, and pees about 6 times. Then she's down for her first nap. So the effort you're hearing might just be the pee on the way.

At night there's a hormone that makes babies not pee as much... so in the morning they REALLY need to pee. I see the same pattern every single morning.

I also found that she needed to sleep earlier than I thought. I used to put her to sleep at 10 am or later when I went to bed. She's strongly indicating that something like 5 pm is more her style (and she still wakes at 4 - 5 am). At least I get a few hours with both hands available at night.

Hope this helps!

[Monkey Toes]

I think it was around 6-8 weeks that I started feeling more rested, and that was because I figured out nursing while laying down. I don't remember when I stopped doing nighttime diaper changes...maybe around 3 months? That helped too. She's now 14 months old and doesn't STTN. I don't know how often she wakes up because part of regaining sanity at 6-8 weeks involved not looking at the clock so I wouldn't be frustrated. Anyway, since a young age when she wakes at night she just wants a breast and goes back to sleep. The noises at 4 am...sorry, can't help on that. I imagine it's hard to go back to sleep after that so it's rough.

Will he lay down with you for naps? That was one way I'd get rest, and just being in bed for 10 hours at least at night so I'd get some rest somewhere in there. Mine would only nap in a wrap until about her first birthday, which was insanely frustrating sometimes. Just know you're normal. For me the biggest challenge hasn't been her sleep so much as the challenge of accepting that I just simply can't get as much done because she has higher needs in this area. Luckily she's my first so I can just let other things go and give her what she needs. Good luck!

[basje]

Yay for cosleeping

Before my daughter was sleeping through the night on a regular basis co-sleeping totally allowed me to get more rest. We still co-sleep even though she sleeps through the night on a regular basis, as when I leave her alone in bed she wakes up after only about an hour.

Co-sleeping saves me so much grief. My two month old sleep tucked under my arm, her belly to my back or on her stomach on top of me. I pull out that last one when she's fidgeting in bed to get her to go back to sleep. She sleeps better and longer stretches when in bed with me.

By co-sleeping I get to her before she cries because I wake up when she just starts moving around, and can stick a boob in her mouth. I don't have to very awake, which is nice, and sometimes I even fall back asleep while she is nursing.

Please take good care you yourself and take a few naps to catch up! No worse a feeling that sleep loss and if could can get a little rest it makes everything feel so much more manageable.

[hakeber]

My ds is a major extrovert, in the Meyers Briggs sense of the word, meaning he gets energized being around people, and this translated to bedtimes, too. If he was in our bed he would wake every hour or two. He would nurse a bit, but not much, and maybe go back to sleep or pass out for a bit and then be restless again. He'd also give you a look like you were the one disrupting his sleep, which was just priceless.

I moved him to his basinette next to our bed, but even then he was waking up every hour or so, and not always to nurse, just waking up.

So eventually I moved his basinette into the room next to ours, and that night he slept for five hours, then I nursed him back down and he slept for another five.

In a few weeks he was sleeping 7-9 hours stretches.

At five yo he still sleeps like doody if there is even someone in his room. He wakes super early if anyone else is around and he just cannot sleep. It is way too exciting for him to have other human energy nearby.

DD on the otherhand has slept with me or in her basinette for 5-6 hour stretches from birth...but *I* sleep better with her in the basinette NEXT to the bed rather than in my bed because I am a tummy sleeper, side sleeping and back sleeping gives me backaches the whole next day, and because DH is an incredibly sound sleeper and I spend most of the night in a half sleeping terror that he is going to squish her.

I usually nurse her to sleep at around 5 or 6 in her basinette in the kicthen/dining room. Then wake to nurse her again around 10 or 11, and then she'll sleep through to anywhere from 4-6am. She seems to sleep BETTER within smelling distance of me as opposed to ds who couldn't sleep for more than a few minutes if near people. When I can't be there, I leave my dirtiest T-shirt for her to help her sleep.

DD also makes weird grunting noises during her deep sleep, like she is possessed by a billy goat. I had it checked out (and you should too in case it is apnea, or allergies or something) but the ped said it's probably just gas or dreams, so I have found that blasting the white noise (my radio on Static on FULL VOLUME) drowns this out and we both sleep through it. Previously I was panicking and actually waking her up from a fairly deep sleep assuming she was awake to be making those grunts...at which point hysterics would ensue. Now I can't hear it, and we all sleep better.

When either kid got the one hour stretches of sleep (even if they got 14 one hour sleeps in the day) they were fussier and unhappier than when they slept the longer stretches...and obviously me too.

[JustSimplicity]

Thanks for all the ideas and advice. Being so sleep deprived makes me so impatient, and I've started feeling inadequate as a mother because I can't figure out how to help him sleep. He is such a sweet little boy when he's not overtired.

Originally Posted by Monkey Toes

Will he lay down with you for naps?

I've tried laying down to nurse him and then nap with him. He will nurse and drift off to sleep but wake up only a few minutes later even if I stay right next to him and don't move. It's strange to me because he will sleep in his own bed at night, even for 3-4 hours during the first stretch but during the day nothing works but the wrap. It does take an hour or more to get him down for the night.

I think for now I'm just going to have to go to bed when he does so I can get more sleep and of course if we're not out and about DH is willing to take care of him so I can get a nap or two in over the weekend.

[MovingMomma]

Two things:

1) Check out this new article by Kathleen Kendall-Tackett on co-sleeping. Breastfeeding+cosleeping=better sleep, and more of it!

2) If your baby's sleep is disturbed b/c he neesd to poop, you might consider taking him to the potty and encouraging him to get it over with! You don't even have to do full on EC, but it sounds like that particular time might be the perfect application.

[limette]

We co-sleep and both of my kids woke up every 2 hours to nurse until they stopped nursing around 22 months. The minute we stopped nursing they started sleeping through the night (12 hour stretches).

[blessedwithboys]

both my kids STTN at 24 mos. one weaned at that time the other kept nursing until age 5. both full time co-slept and i wouldnt have gotten a moment of sleep with them ina crib