Co-Sleeping

[greenbeanbanshee]

Either I'm just slow (which is probable) or you've put up new links on the homepage (also very probable). The link to the Notre Dame sleep studies are great! Woo hoo on that one. :clap Very, very validating for those of us who have always chosen to just follow our gut and do it despite what all the consumer reports claim. Thank you for putting those out there for us.

Anyone have any great experiences with co-sleeping that you'd like to share? Or maybe questions? I'm interested in this topic a lot. For personal reasons, but also simply in principle. I'd like to get the group's opinion on it.

[Lianne]

Not new, but glad you found them :D

We co-sleep and love it. It has been a wonderful for our son to have lots of connection with my husband since he's at work all day.

I'm not 100% sure how it's going to work when our new baby is born this summer. I figure I will have the baby against the wall, then myself, then my son and then my husband on the other end. We have a king bed, and we also have a twin at the end of our bed but he hasn't slept in that very often. My only real concern is that he is a real snuggler (which we love :love) and tends to move toward me or even onto me during the night. I can get squished sometimes :lol

Anyone have experience with a newborn when you already have a toddler in the bed?

[greenbeanbanshee]

I actually have tons of experience on this. My kids were born 21 months apart and I tandem nursed them and co-slept with them. Still do actually. So it was a bit of a struggle in the beginning when I realized I'd have a newborn and a 1 year-old with me at the same time each night. :eek:

But you know what, it's like anything else in life. You just figure it out.

I bought two of those toddler bedrails to put on either side of our king bed and that way it didn't matter where they were. I could be fairly comatose and knew they weren't going to plummet downward to our hardwood floors. I didn't have to be hyper-vigilant that way, just sleepy. Which I was, so that worked for me.

As far as the sleeping itself went, I really didn't get much of that in the beginning. I think I was seriously sleep-deprived for about a year. I mean, in the end it evened out and I wouldn't have changed a thing whatsoever. But I was nursing them both. So I would nurse one on one breast, fall asleep, and an hour later nurse the other on the other breast. I never really got a full REM cycle. This went on each night, being woken up about every hour to nurse one of the babies. It was probably the hardest part of my parenting journey so far, because at the same time I was struggling with this sleep issue, my 7 year-old son was in the height of his violence and other extreme behaviors. Sigh.

But look. We survived it. And you just have to put it in perspective. I mean, if you can see your whole life in a pie chart, that one little tiny year of my life would be so miniscule that it would practically be indecipherable on that chart. Yet, at the same time, it would be the most cherished moments of my existence too. Those precious moments of nursing them both at the delivery of my younger one. The nights they woke me gently and needed only me. The days they starred into eachother's eyes as they gulped the milk my body made. The way they love each other to this very day. All they know is each other and me. They have a bond. That is precious and I would have it no other way.

Lianne, you are about the enter the most amazing time of your life. Imagine your son and the love you feel for him. That indescribable thing that doesn't even have words in the English language, and double it. No, it's more than that. It's exponential. I can't explain it. I could cry just typing that. :heart

You'll be fine. :hug

~Bethany

http://consciouslyparenting.com/forums/../images/Bethanyandkids.jpg

[Lianne]

aww that brought tears to my eyes :love what precious memories you have, and how nice to look back on what I'm sure was a very trying time with such a good feeling. :)

My three year old is still nursing so I expect to be a tandem mama also. He doesn't nurse during the night though, so I think unless he is awoken by the baby that he will sleep on and it'll just be one for me. I can't imagine nursing two all night! Wow!

[greenbeanbanshee]

Well, I'm not going to sugar-coat it. It was rough. The whole year that scene from that movie Men In Black kept running through my mind (because I love alien movies, they remind me of home) where the one guy is explaining how they are on a 37 hour day (or whatever it was). Then he says, "Yes, you either learn to adjust or you have a psychotic episode." :laugh

I think I did both at several points.

[Lianne]

:lol That is a good line to keep in mind!

Thanks for sharing the picture :love

[thomlynn]

Thanks for sharing that. Our dd will be exactly 22months on the new baby's edd (but she could really come any time now). I know dd is going to be so happy to have my milk come back but I'm a little nervous too about how it's all going to work itself out. Right now she's only waking up once or twice a night so we'll see what happens.

As far as cosleeping goes we love it, especially DH. His love language is touch and dd is a snuggler, so many nights I will wake up and they'll be snuggled up together and both look so happy.:love The only small problem we have is that she won't sleep by herself at all. So if I want her to take a nap longer than 30min, I have to nap with her (not a big issue since I'm pregnant and need the sleep but I'm curious to see how this works out with a new baby). And it's hard to be alone with dh. Right now we're really limited to weekend naptime and when you're trying to encourage labor to start that's just not enough. :lol But overall, I wouldn't change a thing!!!!

[Lianne]

Exciting Lori! I highly recommend Hilary Flower's book Adventure's in Tandem Nursing (http://astore.amazon.com/theconsparepr-20/103-7556139-0895016?%5Fencoding=UTF8&node=3) if you haven't already read it. Even being so close to birth, you could flip through to the things most on your mind for ideas. It's been really helpful for me to just visualize how things can work and think of things I can say or do to help DS adjust.

[Karen Adams]

Anyone have any great experiences with co-sleeping that you'd like to share? Or maybe questions? I'm interested in this topic a lot. For personal reasons, but also simply in principle. I'd like to get the group's opinion on it.

Hi all,

My bio kids are now (gulp) 28 (this June), 25 (this August) and 19 (next month). Yikes! That's enough to make me feel "well preserved for my age" LOL

Loved, loved, loved nursing and co-sleeping. Boys (2 oldest) slept with me til about 18 months all the time, then off and on til age 4 or so. Peg slept with me til 3, then we had bunkbeds (me on bottom in a full and her on top in a twin) til she was 13!

I also re-lactated and co-slept with a foster baby back in the 80's (drug addicted preemie)--it was very healing for her, and I loved it.

More recently, foster daughters have shared my room (cant let them share bed, as would 1) be so in trouble with system, as totally illegal, and 2) for kids with sex abuse histories, can be unsettling). But the kids loved being on matresses in my room for months at a time (even a 13 yr old) because they felt safe.

Dont know why our "modern" western culture is so weird about a sleeping practice most of the world uses just fine, thank you <smile>.