a toddler, an infant and me...how to make this work?

[vagabonder]

DH and I are going to be separating soon and I am worried about sleep issues. I have a 5 mo. old ds who is fortunately a pretty good sleeper and sleeps in bed with me, but often likes to be rocked to sleep. I also have a 2 1/2 dd who coslept with both stbx and me until a few months ago, at which point she moved to her own room but cosleeps with stbx now. She often takes a half hour to hour to fall asleep and needs someone there with her to fall asleep. I will be having both of them at night once we separate and I am just trying to figure out how to make this work. If ds is teething or having a hard time going to sleep, this will prevent dd from being able to fall asleep. What if they both aren't tired at the same time? It seems they will both be keeping one another awake and no one is going to end up getting any sleep. I had really wanted to transition dd to sleeping on her own, but I don't want to do any more transitions on her right now with the upcoming separation. Any ideas at all to help this go more smoothly?

[77sugaree]

When my kids were about the same ages that yours are now, I would rock my youngest to sleep while my oldest played then lay him down in the bed. When it was time for my oldest to go to sleep, we would lay down on the other side of the bed and read books until he fell asleep. If my youngest woke up, I would just nurse him back to sleep while I was still reading.

Putting them to sleep at different times worked best for me.

Hope that helps!

[thelocknestmother]

What I do is get baby to sleep in wrap while toddler reads book either by herself or me reading to her, when baby asleep, I shift to one side, sit in a rocking chair and nurse toddler until she is sleepy, then put her in bed, then unwrap baby and baby and me get in bed, too. A little complicated...but ultimately what works for us. And

[kalamos23]

Whichever one will go to bed the easiest - put that one to bed first. It's usually the younger baby I watched DD and her cousin who was 6m younger from when they were 4 and 10mo until 11 and 17mo. What worked for me was to put the cousin in the front wrap and DD in the back wrap until one of them fell asleep, and then work on the not asleep one until they went to bed.