waste of time? or start now?

[ashleybrook]

my LO is 5.5 months. we currently co-sleep, and i am happy with it. what i'm wondering is this. in the far future we plan on LO having his own bed (it will be a full mattress on the floor), which we already have in another room. currently he sleeps with us in a king bed, and is very dependent on me being there...for example, if he wakes up in the night and can't find the nipple, he cries, otherwise he never even really wakes up.

so, question: do you think it's a good idea to go ahead and start doing naps in "his bed" with him, to help him understand/be comfortable later when he's bigger and we transition nights to his bed...or is this all too early and not worth it yet. at this point, i don't think it'd mean much, but i'm thinking in the long haul it might help to start now....

advice, btdt?

[gitanamama]

I don't think it would hurt to start now. If nap time is just as comfortable in his bed, it may be a good idea to start getting him used to it, as you said. In hindsight, I wish we had started earlier getting our little one (15 months) comfortable in his crib. We were traveling out of the country between 6 and 9 months, so my son never really had a chance to get used to sleeping on his own. We cosleep at night, which I'm happy with, but naps are a struggle, since our little guy is used to sleeping next us in the bed. I would say that it's never too early to start a good nap routine---definitely something I'll do earlier rather than later with #2!

[meganelayne]

I co-slept with my baby until she was 4 months and i would always say it was the best and kinda fight with people who said i shouldn't and that i should let her sleep in her own crib/bed instead. So one night i was sleeping pretty uncomfortably and i decided i was gonna try to put her in her crib the next night and see how she slept. Well it turned out that it wasn't that bad. That night I gave her a bath ,read her a book, fed her a bottle then rocked her until she fell asleep. I waited about 30 minutes before i layer her down in her crib. To my surprise she slept until 3 am, which she would usually sleep all night in our bed but i wasn't too worried about it because it was a new thing. Then after i fed her a bottle at 3 she went back to bed until 7. I was pretty much stunned because i was worried that she didn't know how to sleep by herself, when really she could. So now she's 6 months old and has been sleeping ALL NIGHT :) since she was 5 months old ! And now i recently taught her that we take a bath at 645 and bed at 730 and she sleeps until about 630 or 7 am the next day,which also makes her in a better mood during the day too. So i guess what I'm saying is that if you want your baby to sleep by themselves but you just didn't want to mess up his schedule i'd say you just try it one night and see how it goes. If you don't have a crib and only have a full size bed you want them to sleep on id say you would have to surround that bed with pillows if your baby is mobile at all. If not then i think you would be fine laying him in the middle as long as the mattress is firm. If you'd rather leave him in bed with you then id say that you should definatly start having him sleep in there for his naps.. it may take a while for him to get used to it and may not sleep as long as he usually would but after a week i bet he'll get used to it and it will be better for you :)