Co-sleeping and The Crib
Ten months after Wesley was born, we finally took the plunge and bought him a crib.
(This is the manufacturer’s photo – our bedroom is less photogenic.)
Prior to this, he sometimes slept in his Arm’s Reach Cosleeper Crib, but mostly slept between us in our bed, specially since we have a pretty comfortable bed, we found it thanks to the Saatva Classic Mattress Reviews. It was getting to the point where his sleep was often disrupted by us coming to bed or rolling over, and my sleep was disrupted by tiny feet kicking me in the tummy and tiny hands grabbing at my shirt during the night and as much as I love co-sleeping, it was just starting to not work for us.
I am still a firm believer in co-sleeping for breastfed infants, especially early-on in the breastfeeding relationship when they are eating every couple of hours all night and getting up each time would mean psychosis-inducing sleep deprivation for all parties involved. I wanted to wait until Wesley was eating less often during the night to transition him out of our bed, but beyond that, I didn’t have a plan.
Now, it’s looking like part of the reason he eats so often at night (a good night is only 3x, it is often more like 5 or 6. The worst nights, it’s 8 – up every hour and a half all night) is because we are constantly disrupting each other’s sleep and the only way he’ll fall back asleep is nursing. I am hoping having him in his own sleeping quarters will help alleviate this mutual-waking-up.
I am curious how parents of crib-sleeping babies handle nighttime wakeups though – it seems so labor intensive to get up, fetch the crying baby from his crib, put him in our bed to nurse side-lying because I am lazy, nurse to sleep, get back up, and then deposit sleeping baby in his crib. (Case in point: last night, he came in for a feeding and I apparently fell asleep and never put him back in his crib. Dumb.)
Do most of you have chairs to nurse in, either in your bedroom or the nursery? I mean, most babies sleep in cribs, and not all babies sleep through the night, so somebody has to have experienced this before me and can tell me what they do. I am just afraid I will be so lazy about re-depositing him into his crib that we won’t get any use out of it. What’s your nighttime wakeup procedure?
5 Comments
I had the same problem where I would make jon go get him and then we would fall asleep nursing. In fact, that STILL happens. I don’t know how people do it any other way. There’s a chair in his room by his bed but somehow I can never manage to drag myself out there and sit in the chair while I nurse, it’s all… cold… and I’m lazy. When we made the crib transition we had a hard time at first because I would keep forgetting to put him back into it.
So… at least you’re not alone?
I have nothing of use to add because as you’re probably aware I still cosleep. And yes, I’m up X times a night but it seems less effort than dealing with the whole actually getting out of bed part. So I also have nothing useful to add, but wanted to say that at least you bought a nice looking crib
We co slept in the beginning. now, when the guy wakes up (he’s still in our room because i feel like if he’s in another room he might get too worked up and unable to sleep after nursing), my hubs gets up to get him and i nurse in the bed(no way am i sitting up in the middle of the night) and then when he’s done(or when i wake up again), i nudge hubby and he deposits him back. I feel like since i’m still in bed and hubby plucks him from the nest, there’s less disruption. plus it’s team work. AND baby associates me with milk, so when hubby picks him up there’s less chance he’ll remember he wants more.
you and your siblings moved out of the bed……it happens even if you dont want it to.
You may want to try what we’re doing: We skipped the crib and put the mattress on the floor between our bed at the wall. It’s small, and I’m not, but I can still manage to lie down next to Harlow and nurse him. It’s a bit uncomfortable, but it’s better than getting up/sitting up in the middle of the night. Being only one inch past official midgetdom, you may have better luck with that than me. ; )
Harlow’s very distracted by the toddler bed, so while I CAN get him to fall asleep on it, it takes at least twice the amount of time (about an hour). And lying on that thing in the same position for an hour is ridiculously uncomfortable. So, I’ve been putting him to sleep in our bed, and then transferring him when we/I go to bed. If he’s tossing around (usually searching for me), I can easily reach down and comfort him back to restful slumber without having to pull out the ol’ boob.
The only problem is, it’s only a few hours before he’s back in our bed. Mostly due to my laziness. It’s just easier to pull him back into bed with me than it is to get back down there. But hey, it’s a nice couple hours of deep sleep for me, and a slow and easy transition for him. He won’t be sleeping in our bed forever. I’m not too worried about it. : )
Good luck!