We co-sleep in our house. We have a king-sized bed in our bedroom with a crib-turned-co-sleeper (by taking one side off the crib) bumpered up against it. Tess sleeps in the co-sleeper, and by early morning she will travel into our bed to nurse. Jack sleeps downstairs in a bedroom he shares with Kain, but by morning he has also traveled into our bed and snuggles up between me and John. Now that we have another baby coming, we have to start thinking about how to manage our sleeping situation. Frankly, my preference would be to get my hippy on and throw down a bunch of mattresses on the floor. Groovy. But I don't think my husband will go for that.
I'm thinking of putting a toddler bed in our bedroom and trying to get Jack to sleep in that when he comes upstairs. Then Tess can sleep between John and I and the baby can be in the co-sleeper. But honestly, most of the time we don't even wake up when he comes into our bed. And he's not really capable of understanding what we want him to do if we discuss it in advance. If we do wake up during the night and send him to the toddler bed, he is likely to start crying and wake up Tess. He will fight it hard, because he fights all change hard and gets very upset when things aren't like they are "supposed" to be.
Another option is to wait until closer to time and train Tess to sleep in the toddler bed. This may actually be easier. Even though Tess is younger, she is more flexible and a better sleeper in general.
Or we can do both...make up some kind of bed for Jack on the floor and try to get him to eventually reach the point of going there when he comes upstairs, and then also put the toddler bed upstairs for Tess and work on training her to sleep there.
Or we could go ahead and move Tess into the bedroom with Maria. The difficulty there is that they have very different bedtimes and I'm not sure how Tess would sleep through Maria settling down for the night.
Anyway...if you've made it this far, thanks for reading my rambling, barely coherent thoughts on the subject!
9 comments:
What about this: leave room for Jack on the outside of you and your husband, put Tess in the middle, if she wants, and the baby in the cosleeper. Or, same as above, but leave Tess in the crib, but make it a regular crib. Then put up a bed rail on your side of the bed and put the baby in the bed between you and the bedrail. That is how we slept with both of our infants until they were about five months old, when we moved them into the crib/cosleeper. That way Tess would be nearly a year older by the time she transitions into a big kid bed AND she can sleep in the crib she is used to WHILE getting used to not sleeping NEXT to you!
Right now we have only one co-sleeping infant, but I hope to have these sorts of situations to work out sometime in the future, God willing...So I find it very interesting to hear other's creative solutions. Keep us posted on your progress!
I thin you should "get your hippy on" with the mattresses on the floor, lol - I love how you phrased that!!
We put our toddler bed at the foot of our bed. It works great for Philip. Now he sleeps farther away under the window. I guess we'll have to move both boys out of our room sometime.
Why didn't anyone tell me that the top bunk is pretty much useless? Nobody wants to sleep up there.
What about a sibling bed for Maria and Tess? I know you are not supposed to do this until the baby is 18 months, but Tess has to be pretty close to that age. There are 9 years between my sister and I, and we shared a bed for years. I would get ready for bed early (meaning pj's or leave them in the bathroom), then just quietly go in when I was ready for bed. I was allowed to stay up in the family room until my bed time. It worked for us. My sleep was not disturbed, that I remember. And my sister would sleep through my alarm going off for school (which you don't have that issue).
I would work on training Tess to go in the toddler bed, since you already have a good idea of how that would go over with Jack. Then, if it doesn't work, is there any way of putting co-sleepers on both sides of the bed? Tess could sleep on John's side, baby on yours and Jack in the middle.
Oooh, some interesting ideas!
I'm going to sit down with John and talk to him about them all. Watch for a follow-up post! And then, probably another follow-up post when our first two attempts don't work, lol.
I'm so glad we aren't the only ones puzzling on this. I'm not expecting (what is this, I forget to check your blog for a few months and you get pregnant! Congratulations), but by morning we have the 10 month old, the 3 yr old and my husband and I in our queen size. We have yet to get the 3 year old into her own room, though she's getting better ate sleeping in her own toddler bed beside ours.
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