The Best Co-Sleep-But-Don't-Have-Them-In-Your-Bed-Forever Tip That I Almost Never Hear

As an AP/crunchy mom, I'm a pretty big fan of co-sleeping. I'm sure most of the readers of this blog are too. But let's be real for a minute- I'd also guess that most of us aren't too keen on the thought of having our kids in bed with us for the next 5-10+ years, especially if there are many of them. But at the same time, most crunchy moms aren't comfortable with the idea of crying it out, and lets be honest- uncomfortable transitions aren't exactly the funnest part of parenting, especially when they involve losing sleep. So what's a crunchy momma or daddy to do?

 

I've found a solution that's worked really well for our family, so well that I can't believe that I don't hear more people talking about it! It's a super easy, transition free way to help your kids slowly start sleeping in their own beds as they get older.

 

 

When my babies were brand new, I felt most comfortable with them right in bed with me the entire time. I'm pretty paranoid about leaving newborns to sleep(or do anything, really) alone for any length of time, so I'd always keep them close to me and bring them to bed with me as soon as I was ready to go to sleep, even if they were still sleeping.

 

 

Here's the key though. At 3, 4, 6 months- whenever you start to feel more comfortable with your baby sleeping unattended for a little while- have them start out the night in their own bed. That's it! That's my whole tip! Isn't that easy? Seriously though, have them start out the night in their own bed. Then, the first time they wake up to nurse, just bring them back in bed with you, and you can co-sleep and nurse to your mutual hearts' content for the rest of the night.

 

 

This is a great idea for so many reasons. The first is that it gets the child used to their own bed. Of course, as an AP momma I never expected my babies to sleep all night in their own beds(and I still don't). But I think the idea of getting them used to another bed at an early age, in a non-scary, non-threatening way can only be a good thing. If they've only ever slept in one bed for the first several years of their life, that could be a big transition when it's time, but if they're comfortable in a couple of beds from 6 months on, it makes for an easier transition. Also, since I was bringing them back to your bed to co-sleep and nurse for the rest of the night, I found that my babies didn't get scared when they woke up in the middle of the night. I came to them, every time, and they learned that when they woke up momma was going to be right there and get them for nurses and snuggles. I was NOT wiling to try to get them back to sleep in the other room, and get in and out of my bed several times a night, but I could handle getting up once and falling right back to sleep. I enjoyed the snuggles too, of course.

 

 

Here's the real kicker though. Typically(and your baby might be different, of course), as babies turn into toddlers and then preschoolers, they start to sleep for longer stretches without waking. If they start out the night in their room, that means that as they start to sleep for longer stretches, they'll be sleeping longer in their room. When I first started doing this with Tristan, he'd sleep until maybe 11PM or midnight. As he started getting older, he'd sleep until around 1AM, then until about 2 or 3 AM. Now? Most nights, he sleeps the entire night in his own bed, in his own room, and comes into my bed to nurse around 6 or even 7 AM. It's wonderful!

 

 

There was no transition period. There were no sleepless nights of putting him back in his bed multiple times. There was no nervousness for him about a new bed or about sleeping without mommy. He simply went to sleep in his bed like he'd been doing since he was about 6 months, except now he sleeps all night! He's totally confident in the fact that if he needs me I'll be there, and that he's welcome in my bed if he needs to snuggle, and occasionally he does need those middle of the night snuggles. But most nights, he doesn't need to anymore. My 2.5 year old, attachment parented, still nursing, never-left-to-cry-it-out toddler sleeps most nights in his own room, of his own will.

 

 

Did I mention that there was NO transition period, at all???

 

 

For the life of me, I can't figure out why more moms are not talking about this! I realize every baby is different, but this was SO easy for us and worked SO well that I can't imagine it not working well for at least some other families!

 

 

Now, if you want to take this tip to the next level, here's my other suggestion. Skip the crib. Really. I moved both of my babies into a twin bed by the time they were 13 months old, but if I ever have another, I'm planning to skip the crib altogether and just have them sleep on a twin or double mattress put right on the floor. Why? Like a lot of breastfeeding moms, I like to nurse my babies to sleep. And like just about any mom can testify to, it's SOOO difficult to nurse/rock/cuddle your baby to sleep, and then do the dreaded transfer to the crib. Just typing that makes me feel anxious! Not. Fun.

 

 

Once I moved my babies up to a twin bed though, bedtime got so. much. easier. I could just lay next to them and nurse them to sleep, and then as soon as they were asleep I could just unlatch them, if necessary, and get up. No transfer required. They had no idea I was even gone. Absolute brilliance! Whenever they woke up in the middle of the night, there was no freaking out(most of the time, it happened occasionally). They were in a familiar, comfortable place, and they knew as soon as they called for me I'd be there to bring them into my bed.

 

Tristan when we first moved him out of the crib. We didn't have a twin bed at first, so we just put his crib mattress on the floor. It was uncomfortable, but did allow me to kindof lay next to him and nurse him to sleep. Wasn't he cute?!

 

 

Are you catching how awesome this idea is? Laying next to your baby to nurse them to sleep, no crib transfer required, and then as they get older, no transition period required to get them to sleep in their own room!!! They just sleep all night on their own whenever they're ready! SO. EASY.

 

 

Am I living under a rock? Are there moms everywhere doing this and talking about it? If you've done this or something similar, I'd love to hear about it! I understand that this idea probably won't work for everyone, but it worked so well for us that I can't believe that there aren't moms everywhere shouting this idea from the rooftops!

 

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Segmented Sleep Fail

It's not SS's fault though. This one's all on me. After that lovely update last week about how well segmented sleeping was going, I totally fell off the wagon. Oops.


On Wednesday nights, we have Bible studies at our house, and at my 9PM bedtime I still had a houseful of people. On Thursday, I decided to stay up late because I had been up late the night before, and I knew I would be up late again on Friday. On Friday, my wonderful DH took me out for my birthday! He invited another couple that we're close to and we went downtown to see a Broadway show!!! I had such a blast. I used to dance, years ago, so I very much enjoyed seeing all the dancing. Saturday night I had to stay up late to finish making snacks for children's church the next morning. And last night I was just too lazy to go to bed early. It's been a busy, exhausting week.


Half life, half loss of motivation. All bummer though. I've felt so good on the days that I have stuck with my program that I'm really determined to give it a good shot, I'm just not sure if life will let me! We're driving to our old town tonight for a visitation service, and I'm not sure if we'll be back before 9, and even if we are, there's a good chance that the kids won't transfer seamlessly from the car to their beds and I'll have to stay up late to get one or both of them back to sleep. But if we do get back in time for me to go to bed by 9 or 9:30, and if the kids are also in bed by that time, I'm going to give this another shot tonight, and then hopefully again tomorrow night. I know I'll have to stay up past 9 on Wednesday night, but hopefully I'll be able to go to bed early the rest of the nights this week. I'll keep you posted on how it's going!

Just a quick sleep update!

You can read more about my sleep experiment here.


It's 4AM and I've got to get back to sleep, but I wanted to go ahead and update really quickly since I have a busy day planned tomorrow and I'm not sure if I'll have time.

Before I get to the update, let me first explain about our normal sleeping arrangements so that the update will make more sense. Most nights in our home, The four of us start out in different rooms. I'll be in the bed in our room, DH will be on the couch, and the kids will each be in their own beds. Why does DH sleep on the couch? Do we hate each other that much? Nope. There are several reasons, actually. One is that after a couple of years of often working late nights, he's gotten in the habit of accidentally falling asleep on the couch while watching a little late night tv to unwind. My pregnancy with Tristan only encouraged that habit- I had to sleep with this huge pregnancy pillow to get comfortable, and there wasn't much room for him in the bed. The other is that since our family is big on co-sleeping/nighttime parenting, if both kids come into the big bed with me, there's just not room for him. It's a little sad, and I'm totally kicking myself for not getting the king sized bed back when we got furniture early in marriage. Co-sleeping was not on my radar back then! But don't feel too bad for my DH- our couch is actually more comfortable than our bed, and a lot of the time he actually prefers sleeping out there! So anyway, most nights we all start out in separate rooms/beds. Hayden will usually come into the big bed with me around midnight or 1AM. Tristan is the wild card- sometimes he'll come into bed with me around 1 or 2 AM, and then other nights he'll sleep most or all of the night in his bed, and not come into my room until 5 or 7AM. (See- they really do sleep on their own when they're ready!) I know this arrangement might not work for everyone, but it works well for us. I believe that nighttime parenting is just as important as daytime parenting, and that babies and young children weren't designed to sleep on their own. I think that the security that I can give my kids by being close to them if they need it during the night is well worth a couple of years of sacrificing "normal" sleeping arrangements. (More on that in another post.) Our marriage is faring wonderfully, BTW. Sleeping 8 hours in the same bed every night is nice, but certainly not a requirement or a sign of a good marriage. (Why do I feel like I'm defending my choices on my own blog? Moving on...)

Night one of segmented sleep went fairly well. I went to bed at 9PM, and slept all night until about 5AM when Tristan came in to nurse. I think I might have woken up earlier if he had, but since he slept in his bed most of the night, and since I was a bit sleep deprived going into this thing, I slept hard for about 8 hours. (Hayden came into bed with me around some point, but I don't usually wake up when she comes in. She usually just sneaks in and snuggles up- Tristan closes doors loudly and then wants to nurse. ;) ) I felt pretty alert at 5AM, but even though I'd had 8 hours of sleep I was nervous about getting up that early. 5AM is eeeaaaarly, for me anyway. I didn't want to be super groggy all day. I went to the bathroom and surfed the net for about 15 minutes, and then decided to lay back in bed to see what happened. I wasn't tired at first, so I had some nice, peaceful moments just laying there in the peace and quiet. It's rare that I get to just lay down alone with my thoughts. It was sooo relaxing- so relaxing that I fell back asleep. I wasn't sure if I had fallen back to sleep until I realized I was dreaming about someone's carpeted stairs and tiny bathroom- not sure where that came from. When my alarm went off at 7AM, I was pretty groggy. It took me a little while to orient myself and drag myself out of bed. I'm guessing I had too much sleep and I should have just gotten up at 5, after 8 hours of sleep. Oh well, live and learn, I suppose. The day went great though- no sleepiness, no grumpiness!

I'm in the middle of night two right now! DH took me out for a date night, and we got home around 8. I had to finish putting the kids to bed, and checked my facebook and stuff, and then I realized it was getting close to my new bedtime. I dawdled a little bit, then decided that I needed to stick to my commitment! (Good thing I'm blogging about it to keep myself accountable!) Plus I was feeling really tired- more tired than I usually do at that point in the night. I'm trying to listen closer to my body's sleep cues, so maybe that's why. I left a couple dishes unfinished in the sink, which I never do, and I opted out of my nighttime snack, which I also never do, and went to bed around 9:30. Slept great, and then woke up right at 3AM. Felt decently awake, and even more awake after I went to the bathroom. I grabbed my iPad and headed out into the living room- where I realized DH was sleeping. Oops. He asked me what in the world I was doing(I guess it's hard to remember your wife's crazy sleep experiment when you're asleep yourself), and I told him that I was just coming out to be awake for a little while. I sat on the other couch for about a minute before I realized I was going to be too disturbing for him. Hayden was sleeping in my bed already, so that left her room open and I headed in there. I'm starving, but don't want to go into the kitchen and risk waking DH up by making something. Hayden woke up after about 10 minutes and realized I was gone. I put her back to sleep in my bed, told her I'd be back in a little bit, etc, and then came back in her room. I'm not sure how much she understood, because a couple of minutes later she went into the living room and said something to DH. I'm not sure what happened there or what they worked out, but it sounds like she's now asleep in my bed again. So, a couple of kinks thrown in my plan tonight, but time will tell if they're workable or if they make this plan unrealistic for our family. I did get an hour and a half of alone time though! It's almost 4:30, and if I go back to sleep now, I should be able to get 8 hours of sleep before the alarm goes off at 7. Sounds good to me! I'm interested to see how I feel in the morning. And I can't wait to eat the big bowl of yogurt and berries I've been craving since last night!!!

Giving segmented sleep a shot.

I haven't been getting enough sleep. This is a big problem. I'm not a good mom when I don't get enough sleep. Lets face it- I'm not a good person when I don't get enough sleep. It's been a while since I've gotten a decent amount of sleep, but this problem has been getting really bad lately and so I'm shooting it right up to the top of my priority list.

 

As I've explained before, we're right in the middle of a church plant, so my husband is out of the house a lot. Also, my children don't take naps. I don't know whose brilliant idea that was, but it certainly wasn't mine!!! Most days, the only time I get to myself is after the kids go to bed. I'm a big introvert, and I really need that alone time! But lately, I've been using that as an excuse to be totally lazy after the kids go to bed. Most of the time I'm too tired to actually do anything productive, but I don't want to waste my alone time, so I stay up and surf the net, or watch tv, or something like that. Those things are nice to just veg out sometimes, but they're not exactly refreshing, you know? Watching tv doesn't feed my soul. Surfing the net doesn't help me grow as a person or be a better mom tomorrow. (Ok, well sometimes it does. Depends on what I'm reading.) Point is, I need to be more intentional with my time. I want to spend my downtime doing something that will help me be a better person, or at least doing something that refreshes me(reading a book, taking a quiet bath, writing, etc), instead of just vegging on the tv or computer. But it's hard for me to focus on making those positive choices and changes when I'm so darn tired!

 

I don't know about you, but I don't function when I'm tired. At all. I didn't get enough sleep the night before last, and then last night I once again stayed up later than I should have. After I did finally go to bed around 1AM, I ended up laying in bed for 2 hours trying to get to sleep. That 7AM alarm was just horrific this morning. DH didn't get much sleep last night either, but I guess he woke up during a better part of his sleep cycle than I did, because thankfully he got up with the kids when they woke up. I spent the next hour in bed, trying desperately to open my eyes and get out of bed. I felt absolutely dead to the world. Around 8 I finally managed to drag myself out of bed, and I literally stumbled into the kitchen and went straight for the coffeepot. Things only went downhill from there- Hayden refused to eat her breakfast without my help, and I refuse to help her since she's almost 4 years old and perfectly capable of feeding herself. We were both frustrated, and I ended up missing my workout this morning because I didn't want to take her out of the house without any food in her stomach- that's a sure recipe for disaster. Our whole morning was chaotic and frustrating. Aside from the obvious, I couldn't figure out why I was in such a terrible mood. It hit me around noon- I didn't get enough sleep last night! I can't keep doing this!

 

Then I thought back to last Monday, when I woke up from my first night giving segmented sleep a try. I felt amazing and my whole day went wonderfully! Totally opposite of how today started out. So as much as I hate going to bed early, and as much as I feel like I need to drag out my alone time at night as much as possible, what I really need is to get enough rest. I'm working so hard doing the GAPS diet, and it would really be a shame to sabotage both my body and my emotions by not being disciplined enough to get enough sleep. My kids deserve a mom that is awake and attentive too- and I'm sure my husband would appreciate not being snapped at because I'm tired. I need to make this happen!

 

I'm blogging about this to keep myself accountable- and because maybe some of you out there have a similar problem? I've decided to give segmented sleep a try. Segmented sleep is the concept of sleeping for 4 hours, having 1-2 awake hours in the middle of the night, and then sleeping 4 more hours. Some people say that's how humans used to sleep before the invention of electricity. I have no idea if it's true or not, but the idea makes enough sense in my mind that I at least want to give it a shot. I know every night when I put the kids to sleep, I'm so tired that I usually fall asleep in their beds for a couple of minutes. Wouldn't it make sense for me to go to bed then, when my body's telling me that it's tired?

 

I'm not sure if segmented sleep is a great idea or a stupid one. But it's something different, and I'm hoping that the novelty of trying something different will keep me motivated to really keep going with this. I also know that I'll be a lot more likely to go to bed super early if I know that I can have a couple of hours in the middle of the night that I can use to get stuff done.

 

I'm starting tonight! I'm planning to go to bed around 9, and the idea would be that I'll be awake from approximately 1-3AM, and then sleep again from 3-7. I'm not going to be setting an alarm for 1AM though, so I'll only get up if I wake up at some point and feel alert.

 

Do you have trouble getting enough sleep? Have you ever tried segmented sleep?

 

 

 

 

 

I'm going crazy.

Well, not really. But kindof.


Our routine has been off for a couple of months now. I gave up on trying to fix it until after the move. We were driving back and forth between our old town and our new town at least once a week, usually two or three times a week. Both kids would fall asleep in the car, which meant that they'd then be up until 11 at night. Which then meant that Tristan would sleep in the next day, take a late nap and then be up late again. Hayden would still wake up early, but then be so tired that she'd take another nap, and then be up late again. It was a vicious, vicious cycle. And there was nothing I could do about it because we had to keep driving back and forth, and I couldn't possibly keep them awake in the car.


See what I mean?

(Yes, Tristan's in a pink car seat. Yes, Hayden's three and has a pacifier. Sue me.)


So, pretty much every day, Tristan sleeps in until 9/9:30, takes a nap around 1, and then doesn't go to bed until 10 or 11. Hayden gets up between 7 and 8, usually doesn't take a nap, and then goes to bed around 8. If she does have a nap, she'll stay up as late as Tristan. Since their schedules overlap like that, it means that from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed, I've got at least one kid awake at all times. I love my kids. I love playing with them, hanging out with them, and doing all that fun stuff. But I'm only human. I need a little time to myself. This blog has been suffering because it's just so hard to try to sit down and write when one of the kids is awake! I've been suffering because I rarely get a chance to truly relax! I need some me time, some down time, some keep my sanity time. Something's gotta change!


I had big plans for after the move. I've got a new routine all written up. It's so picture perfect- waking up times, meal times, playtimes, choretimes- and me time! But yeah- hasn't happened. On Monday we drove all the way back to our old town to spend Labor Day with the family. It was fun, but just reinforced our old sleep habits. I've been lazy and slept in a little myself too. Oops! Yesterday I took the kids out to the new library and the park, and we walked the whole way. I was thinking that for sure I'd be able to get both kids to bed by a decent hour after all that! But no- Tristan fell asleep in the stroller on the walk home. He was up until 10:30 last night.


Now I'm trying to figure out the best plan of attack. Tristan's sleep cycle needs to be pushed back about 2-3 hours. I'm not sure which would be better- to just go cold turkey, and just wake him up early one morning and stick with the new routine? Or would slowly moving waketime and bedtime back, say 15-30 minutes every day, work better?

Something has to change though. It's 10:30 right  now as I'm writing this, and Tristan's still asleep!!! He's never slept in this late before. I'm definitely not giving him a nap today, or he'll be up all night!


So what do you think would work better- cold turkey or gradual shift?