more than perhaps any other question i’ve gotten is this one: how did you transition your babies from co-sleeping to their own room?? i’m sure many of you who’ve asked the question have long since figured it out on your own (never mind that–said child may be off to first grade by this point!) but for those who are approaching that transition, this post is for you (or it’s not! as you’ll soon discover!). i think i’ve mostly avoided it because it’s so loosey-goosey in this household that i don’t feel like i have any hard and fast rules to follow to get you to the other side. i’ll take a crack at it anyway.
if memory serves me correctly, parker was in our bed exclusively until he could begin rolling. at that point, he’d take naps in his crib (in his own room) a lot of the time, or, if i was staying with him for the nap, then he’d be in bed with me. from about 18 months on, he’d begin his night’s sleep in the crib, and then pretty routinely wake at some point (2 am? 4 am?) at which point we’d go get him and bring him into our bed for the rest of the night. as you can see, it was never a cold turkey sort of cut off. (if we were traveling, it was a shared bed situation again a lot of the times as we often traveled without a pack and play.)
when we moved (two years ago–so when he was almost 3), things changed again. oh! worth mentioning: i’ve always nursed my babies to sleep and i haven’t done any sleep-training. neither are the most convenient, no, but it worked for us. parker was always pretty transferrable (from rocker to crib–and if he wasn’t, there were many times i’d get in the crib with him), and he’s now a champion sleeper. so back to things changing again when we moved. he was 2, and we had him in a crib in our room with us. we wanted to ease him into the transition and not put him in his own room right away. he started there, only for a bit, before we gave him a big boy bed a couple months before anders’ arrival. at that point, he was pretty exclusively in his own room by himself. this always had a lot of leeway for steve and i though. if there was a night when he fell asleep with us in our bed, was scared, whatever, he could come and sleep in our bed. nevertheless, this didn’t happen very often.
then when anders was born, everything changed again! in the interest of everyone getting the most sleep possible, steve moved into another bed in parker’s room for awhile while anders and i shared the big bed. husbands (bless them) are pretty worthless to a nursing mother in the middle of the night. anders was super low-maintenance. nurse, back to sleep, nurse, back to sleep. i remember remarking a few months in that i never had to actually sit or stand up in the middle of the night with him. he didn’t need to burp, to be rocked back to sleep, he’d just nurse and go back to sleep (this wasn’t the case with parker; he wasn’t super difficult but there were definitely bouts of crying in the middle of the night that required more of us to soothe him back to sleep.). even so, it would wake steve, or his snoring would wake me or keep me awake after nursing anders back to sleep, so we both felt like the best way to get the most sleep (the main goal with a new baby!) was for us to split up. plus, parker and he actually enjoyed sleeping in the same room and i enjoyed knowing they were together so, to parker, it didn’t feel like new baby, mom, and dad were always snuggling in bed without him. it quickly became a habit for parker to wake up and climb into bed with steve. i loved finding them snuggled up together the next morning. with that said, parker was 3 years old, and he could understand things. “parker, you need to stay in your bed (or room, or whatever).”
to this day, anders still isn’t sleeping through the night, and there’s been yet another room switch (they’re in the room that steve and i were initially in). so, parker is in the top bunk and anders and i are in the bottom bunk, and steve is in the queen bed in another room. parker was excited to have a bunk bed, and a shared room, so telling him he needed to stay in his own bed the whole night wasn’t a problem.
are you even following this anymore? are you surprised we haven’t thrown our hands up in the air and declared a family bed our new strategy? (i’ve thought about it.)
next, when anders is sleeping through the night more regularly, i’ll move into bed with steve, and anders and parker will be in their own room. there’s a chance if i did it now, anders would be just fine and sleep through the night without me there, but honestly i’m not quite ready for that. co-sleeping with my babies has been some of my most cherished hours so here we are. luckily, steve believes in all of this too (right, steve?! right?). and yes, you can still make time for each other whether or not you’re sharing a bed to sleep (i feel like someone will ask that question so there it is!).
and that’s the long and short of it. as you can see i’m really not the best to give advice. what i will say, however, is that the personality of the child plays a huge role. there were people that would say with co-sleeping and without sleep-training, you’re setting yourself up to have a horrible sleeper. lies. parker is the best sleeper. he’s super low maintenance, will sleep in if he was up late, and can go to bed on his own if need be. and i don’t think it has anything to do with what we did or did not do as much as it does just who he is. i will also say that it’s important to be flexible. lean into it, and i think your child will respond so much better than an abrupt change. i know that’s the way i’d like it, so why wouldn’t our kids like it that way too? and finally, trust yourself. you know your kid better than anyone else. you also know your own needs better than anyone else. find what works for your family and do it. good luck!
family beds forever! (jk… sort of.)
I feel like we are pretty similar on this, except I cannot for the life of me get my daughter out of my bed. She’s 5! And she has never once gone to bed in her own bed. I go to sleep with her in my king-sized bed every night. My son, who’s 2, is sometimes able to start the night out in a different bed if my husband lies down with him, but he always comes into my bed in the middle of the night. Usually, though, it’s me and the kids in the family bed aaaalll night. And my husband sleeps in the guest bed because he snores and with the kids there too it’s the only way I can sleep.
I have loved sleeping with my kids, but I’m also ready for them to be out. It’s much harder for me to wake up before them to have my morning alone time, and I can NEVER stay up after they go to sleep. I would *love* to have some TV watching time with my husband at night. We just got bunk beds, and they love playing on them, but it’s a big no for sleeping there as far as they’re concerned.
Anyway, long frustrated ramble here from a mom who is stuck in a family bed!
I totally understand looking forward to the day when you have the bed to yourself! (While at the same time being sad when it arrives!). Good luck to you!
What a huge fear of mine! My cousin slept with my aunt and uncle until he was THIRTEEN!!! OMG! I’d die of sleep deprivation at that point. LOL
We are all about co sleeping over here too. And I often say the same thing… My husband agrees with it too (right?!?).
happy wife, happy life–right?! 😉
I never co slept and I think in general I have been lucky with Amy as she pretty much set her own routine but when it came to sleeping in her own room we did similar. She slept in her crib in our room until she was 6 months. She normally went down about 7ish, woke at 11 to have a feed, then we would go to bed and she would sleep through till 6/7. However around the 5/6 month she dropped the 11pm feed and was then getting disturbed when we went to bed so we moved her through to her own room where there was also a double bed. I quite often slept in that bed to begin with and certainly on nights when I knew she was having issues with teething or just feeling a bit yuck. My husband actually quite like this as he quite often does 3 weeks of night shift so our sleep patterns are out of sync so him having the bed to himself meant if he was wide awake, he could happily put on the light and read. I liked it because I wasnt too far from my baby if she needs me. Amy is a champion sleeper (well she doesnt like sleeping in) who goes to her bed every night with no hassle, very rarely comes in to us in the middle of the night and quite happily enterains herself in the morning so I totally agree with you that you kind of need to let them lead, dont do everything cold turkey and just do whats right for you and your family. No one has the perfect answer and every kid and family is different!
Amen!
I love this so much- especially the shot of you and Anders. Good lord! We are very much in the same boat, haven’t started the transition to his own room yet… It’s coming though. And in kinda ready and kinda not all at the same time.
that shot made my uterus ache a little!
Family beds forevaaaaaaa!! I hope my little Eleanor never leaves me! We can have our bed back when she’s in college, and then I’ll probably go full on “Ill Love You Forever” and climb through her window at night. This is starting to sound a little psycho.
“why do you want to leave me?!!!” sorry just watched my big fat greek wedding 2 for the first time, and that quote immediately popped in my head as i read your comment. lol.
ha, love this comment. I’m with you!
I’ve co-slept off and on with my 18 month old & am still breastfeeding him… He loves it and I can’t see him wanting to give up breast milk any time soon! How did you wean Parker? Do you plan to wean Anders or just let it happen?! Sorry, probably whole different topic there!
oooh i love this! thank you for sharing!! i tend to feel like the only human mother on the planet who doesn’t sleep train and all that. i have nursed my babies to sleep, always, since that’s what they wan and that’s how we all get the most sleep! i’m sure personalities play into it, but to fight what comes naturally to us is the woooorst torture ever. so. convenient? no. wonderful?! the moooost!! i love cosleeping.
me too, me too! (i get the feeling from a lot of your comments that we share a lot of similarities, brittany!)
I’ve been cosleeping with my second baby and it is SO much easier with her in my bed and attached to my boob than it was with my first one (who slept right next to our bed in a bassinette but I still had to constantly get up to grab her in the middle of the night to nurse). I’m hoping to put off sleep training for as long as possible because I have no idea what I even did for our first one (and that was less than 2 years ago!) because I think I blocked it all out. She was a horrible night sleeper and I’m hoping this one is just miraculously better.
Oooh, that picture! His little baby legs! Love! I have GOT to get a picture of me sleeping with my baby – it never crossed my mind before but this is just so precious. We have coslept with all our babies (AND nursed to sleep) and I wouldn’t change a moment of it. They all are fine sleepers now, in their big beds, and while they are jealous that the baby gets to stay with us all night long they don’t come in. I treasure the night time snuggles… they grow so big so quickly.
I love this! It’s not scientific, but we always just did whatever felt right for us and got us the most (and better quality!) sleep. Ben would only sleep in a rock and play, then only in our bed, and now he wants his own space (22 months old) and sleeps best in his crib. We never did sleep training either. 🙂 I do miss sleeping next to him, so I totally get not being ready to stop co-sleeping!!
Glad I’m not the only one. I’m in a twin bed with my daughter, in her room, while my hubby has our bed to himself. We go to sleep together then I co-sleeo when my 21 month old wakes up. (And we have a rockin’ marriage) Did the same with my 5 year old and at 2 1/2 he started sleeping through the night and is still a champ. Super easy to put to bed. Now I have to start sneaking out of the baby’s bed after she nurses, that’s what helped us transition to babies/toddlers sleeping alone. 🙂