Co-sleeping with 2 children???

[JoshuasMommy]

Hello Ladies,
I am hoping you can give me some needed help and support. My ds will be 3 in July and we are planning TTC this year. My son shared our bed with us until about a year ago when he started using his crib as a side car. Which has been wonderful...My question then is how can we co-sleep with the new baby and still allow Joshua to side car if he still wants to by then? We certainly don't want to kick him out of our bedroom if he is not ready. Help! Tina

[MomInFlux]

Hi Tina,

I had the exact same worry - I was sure we couldn't be 4 in the bed and I didn't want to kick DS out. Well, all my worries were for nothing, because it just works. DS just turned 3 and DD is 6 weeks old. DS sleeps between DH and me, usually snuggled up with Daddy. DD sleeps in the crook of my arm, alternating sides as we nurse in the night. Sometimes DD and DS are right next to each other, but it works just fine. As an additional benefit, I think DS really benefits from sleeping with all of us - like he is learning to be gentle with his little sister and nurturing toward her. It's hard to explain...

I would think that with your DS in the side car arrangement, you would have plenty of room for the new baby without having to make any major adjustments :thumb

[JoshuasMommy]

You mean the baby doesn't wake your son in the night? Thank you for your post.:)

[MomInFlux]

Well, to be fair... I spent the first 5 weeks of DD's life sleeping with her on the pull-out sofa downstairs for that very reason. Once I figured out how to get and keep DD happy in the night, we were able to join DS and DH in the big bed. (Talk about new baby fuzzies - I forgot all about doing this when I was writing my earliest post :duh )

Once I read the book The Happiest Baby on the Block after reading a post about it in the Secrets of the Baby Whisperer thread, we did a lot better. It took me reading that book to figure out that my DD really needed to be swaddled to be happy at night. Now that I swaddle her, she falls asleep better and stays asleep better (she's waking up just once at night to nurse, and falling back asleep really well too).

Also, it seems that DS can sleep through an awful lot of noise. We added some white noise in the bedroom, and it does a good job of masking the noise DD makes when she is awake in the night.