4yo bedshares and expecting in Feb - how is this going to work?

[Ophelia]

DS has bedshared with me since newborn (not quite birth though). Within the last year, he also will want to bedshare with DH (DH and I have had to sleep in separate rooms due to his sleep apnea). DH just got a dental appliance to help with his apnea, so I was thinking of trying a family bed for all of us soon. DH sleeps in a Queen, we would need to add a Twin to it to make it bigger for all of us.

I love bedsharing with DS and know he loves it too, even though he is a bedhog! He has to be smack dab against whoever is with him.


Issues:

-DH has a really hard time whenever DS sleeps with him, he loses sleep and gets very stiff from DS being a bedhog

-When the baby arrives, how would that work? I went to a McKenna conference and directly asked him about baby and sibling sleeping arrangement, he said to be on the safe side, always be between your older child and your baby. When DS was nursing regularly at night, I would always switch sides with him so I wouldn't get stiff myself and could face him. But how would this work with a baby? I cannot switch sides if DS is on the other side of me and I need to be able to switch. I cannot do the 'lean the boob down' thing as I tried that when DS was little and didn't work for me.

-If we do put the twin bed butted up to the queen, isn't there going to be a safety issue with the gap in between the two?

-is there a 'natural bedweaning age'? DS sleeps fine by himself at school/daycare/Grandma's

Do I have any options here? Thanks!

[Learning_Mum]

For us we have a queen and single (twin) bed pushed together. DS1 (5yo) sleeps in the twin. DS2 (2yo) sleeps in the queen with me. When DH stays (we live seperately at the moment) he sleeps between DS1 and DS2.

We haven't actually had any problems with the gap. I was worried about that myself to begin with. I do make sure I push them back together if I see a gap starting but basically DS1 stays on his 'bed' and DS2 doesn't seem to roll into it at all.

[gilamama]

just a few bullet points

*i'd be worried abt the bed hog cuddling too close on the baby.

*at 4ish my oldest felt the bed was too crouded and we put a single bed ajacent to the big bed where she slept alone (in an L shape with our bed so she was head to head with dh.


*if you move him reasure him that if he wakes he can call you or come to you if he needs


*if cosleeping doesnt work for your dh (with ds1) i'd leave that alone. i wouldnt want a tired stiff potentially grumpy dh in my postpardum months.

*of course everyone likes bedsharing its cozy but eventually kids will want their own space even at the expense of the constant cuddle. and will settle for a little cuddling b4 bed time

all the best!

[Ophelia]

Thanks! Right now I think moving the twin bed close to the queen is do-able (DS has never slept in it! It is in 'his' room but he only plays with his toys in there). But not have it butted up to the queen so he's not pushing into DH. Unfortunately we cannot do the L shape where the beds are only head-to-head. We do have a larger house with a decent size master bedroom, but it's not that big.

The only other issues right now is I'm already losing a lot of sleep at night (waking up and not being able to go back to sleep, on and off throughout my life), so me moving back into the master bedroom would take getting use to. I have to get out the white noise machine anyways due to this, but I just didn't want to use it with DS in the room because I don't want his body having to get used to white noise in order to sleep, since he sleeps fine w/o it. That and like I said, the queen bed is too firm for me and I get stiff easily, something of which I do not need during pregnancy or after. So not sure if anything can be done about that (we had a foam mattress topper once, DH needs firm bed). 'My' bed is a pillow-top full size. No, we cannot afford a sleep number bed right now.

I'll talk to DH about the different options.

[ScooterMama1]

When my twins came home my 2.5 year old still slept in our bed. I was so worried about it, but I knew that my toddler still needed cuddle time at night. I borrowed a co-sleeper and attached it to the bed. I thought that my twins would sleep in it. It ended up that my toddler slept there. He likes to cuddle right up to me, but since the co- sleeper was a little lower than our bed, he cuddled right up to the edge of the queen. He could put his hand up over the edge to find me when he woke up. It ended up working really well.

I bet you could also use a twin and lower it a little bit (put the mattresses directly on the floor?). I would not worry about a little space,between beds, for my 4 year old, but would be very careful with the newborns. For my kids once they could crawl, blankets, spaces, etc. became much less worrisome.

Good luck! I remember how hard it was for me to figure this co-sleeping stuff out. Remember to think outside of the box. You will figure it out! (or your kids will figure it out for you... )