In the morning my husband is always like “Our bed is too small for all of us!” And me and my daughter just giggle.

We also had a schedule for him too. It became more developed as he got older. Bedtime was, eat before 5pm and then wait until he was really ornery and hungry around 7,8 or 9 and then give him a long bath to draw out the time, but keep him comfortable. Then finally get him into bed and feed him. Usually he would pass out for long periods. This got better as time went on. Soon it was one feeding in the middle of the night only.

We never got the crib mastered and he and I got into some real power struggles that I now regret having. I am dead against crying it out… not from reading anything but having tried it. There’s no way that’s good for your baby. It was by chance that when we moved recently we just put a futon mattress on the ground in his new room and locked up the drawers and sockets and we just throw him in there. He is infinitely happier being able to roam around until he gets tired enough to sleep. Usually we have to lay him down with an ounce or two in a bottle so we can escape the room without it being the focus of his attention. We get a lot of weird looks when people look at his room, but it’s worked well for us.

Good luck – I don’t think having a baby is rocket surgery, you’re hardwired to be a parent, just listen to your gut and your baby!

I have two little ones, now 5 and 3, and wow are they both so different but the one thing I did the same with both of them was nursed them exclusively until they weened themselves. But from experience I would say that the most important thing to remember is to get some sleep regardless of what method works for you and your family.

With my first, I was a firm believer in co-sleeping. It was convenient for both me and my son. He would just graze all night long on my breast while I slept peacefully. However I had no clue of what I was getting myself into once I became pregnant with my second and I still had a 18 month old in the bed with me, not to mention I had gone bad to work once my son turned a year old. As I was getting further into my pregnancy I was running out of room in the family bed, I was losing sleep and really not enjoying my second pregnancy. It was then that I decided co-sleeping with my little on was just not going to work any longer. This is where the nasty problem revealed itself, convincing my almost 2 year old that he was a big boy and could sleep in his own room in a big boy bed. Unfortunately he was not buying into this and fought my husband and I with everything a little two year old could muster up. After two extremely long and sleepless months of helping my son to learn how to self-sooth, he finally mastered sleeping in his own room. Needless to say my last trimester of my second pregnancy was absolutely miserable.

So once my second was born, a little girl, it was almost like she had learned in utero that mommy and daddy really are please with good sleepers, LOL. She was an angel when it came to sleeping, she loved to sleep alone in her bassinet and was sleeping through the night by 4mths of age. She transferred beautifully into her crib in her own room around 5 months. And has been an angelic sleeper ever since. So I truly think it is a combination of both the child and parent and what works for all parties involved when it comes to sleep.

But the one big thing I learned is that every child needs to learn to self-sooth and the sooner the better!

Three years later we are all healthy and sleeping great. One would never know that my son was exclusively breast feed and practiced co-sleeping with his parents for two years. He fought us tooth and nail for two long months because he never taught himself to self-sooth and we never gave him a chance until he was already stuck into a routine which he obviously had gotten attached to.

My now 4 year old had lots of difficulties falling asleep. Untill she was 2 she woke up at night many times. I wasn’t a single mom, but had a not helping husband. She only fell asleep breastfeeding, untill she was one and a half, and when she finally slept, she woke up immediatly when I tried to release my breast (putting her to bed could take two or more hours). And during the night she could easily wake up for 6-7 times. Cosleeping was a clearly made pre-birth choise, and in these curcumstances the only possible one. I was able to feed lying down (as being a “gifted woman” ) and fall asleep again while nursing. I won’t say I didn’t notice her waking up, I do was tired (!), but it made things easier to carry.

Crying out was not an option for me. As it is babies only way to express a feeling, why ignore this expression and give the idea that being sad, being angry, being afraid is a “wrong emotion”? A crying out baby really stops crying after a while, but not because he isn’t sad anymore, but probably discouraged and apathic.
At the most frustrating moments I kept that in mind. I learnd about “one-minute-meditations”, and created my own way of meditating during these everlasting nursing moments. It took away the frustrations and gave me a moment for reflecting my day, finding rest, making plans,… Being that calm myself, I noticed that my daughter fell asleep easier, and faster.

She stopped waking up that much by herself, and when she moved to her own room (at the age of two and a half) it went smooth and without any problems. She took her own tempo to achieve this. She still wakes up, takes a sip of water and falls asleep again. She’s a wonderful and happy child and talks very well about her feelings.

My relationship with her father stranded, which was very sad for all of us. But well-blessed with a child that could talk about her feelings, made it for her easier to deal with the divorce.

I have a second daughter now, of 8 months. When I put her to bed, I nurse her, but the moment she stops the actual drinking, I take away the breast and stay next to her. She puts her hand on my face to be sure that I ‘m still there, after a few minutes I can leave the room. When she wakes up, my husband takes her in his arms, which is not always succeful, but little by little she learns that he’s there too, and it’s good with him too. At night she wakes up 2-3 times. We have had some harder nights too, at these moments she ends up in the middle of the bed (instead of on my side) , more in his than in my arms, with me talking to her.

I guess it looks a bit like the Sears-method.

A helping thought for these diffucult moments: its difficult for us, but more difficult for the baby, they don’t understand and I ‘m convinced that they really want to sleep, but just not always not know how to find that sleep.

I set out with a plan and I’ve stuck to it all along, resulting in my son sleeping 8 hours straight at 8 weeks old, and 10.5 hours after that until I finally relinquished our late evening feeding to allow for 12 hours of sleep at 7 months old. All of this was accomplished with no crying on his part or mine, it just naturally fell into place. Several books suggested the eat, play, sleep cycle to a baby’s day. Part of the reasoning is to try not to create an association between nursing (or bottle feeding) and sleep. Also, with the new back-sleeping campaign against SIDS, babies often suffer from gas pains if they are fed and then immediately laid on their backs to sleep. On the rare occasion I did that, my son woke screaming after 30-45 minutes. So I always feed him as soon as he wakes from his naps, then I burp him well, and we play for awhile.

The second thing I’ve come across is the idea that babies are easily overtired and overstimulated. The ideal amount of waketime for a newborn is somewhere around 45-60 minutes, a 4 month old is often 1-1.5 hours, a 6 month old 1.5-2 hours, and so on. If you keep a baby up beyond that, they often cannot fall asleep, much the same as when we as adults stay up too late doing something fun and cannot calm down enough to sleep. To figure out your individual baby’s ideal waketime, it’s best to keep a log of feeding times, waketimes, and how long it took them to fall to sleep for a couple days. You will start to see a pattern emerge, pointing to a specific amount of waketime being more conducive to good naps than other amounts. A 9-16 month old needs 2 naps, then sometime between 14 and 18 months they gradually transition to 1 nap, along with 12 hours of nighttime sleep. *Note, the amount of waketime includes time spent eating.

I also subscribe to the theory that it’s okay for babies to fuss for as much as 20 minutes before falling to sleep. The AAP even says that this is an acceptable amount of time and will cause no harm to a child or the child’s relationship with the parents. I always checked on my son frequently as he fell asleep and made sure I was doing everything I could to help him sleep. I didn’t keep him up too long, I changed his diaper right before naps, I spent 5 minutes before naps holding and rocking him to settle him down, sometimes we read a book. He also has a soft blankie with him that he likes to play with as he falls to sleep it’s a familiar, comforting play item that doesn’t overstimulate him with bright colors or music like a mobile would.

As for co-sleeping, I was not raised in a co-sleeping family and neither was my husband, In our home, we decided that with our entire home being open to our new sweet baby, and all of our daytime hours spent with caring for and cuddling with this lovable baby, we needed to retain our bed as the marriage bed. We try to put each other first when possible, it’s so easy to put your kids first in everything, they come into the world so tiny and lovable and instantly have your heartstrings firmly in their grasp. A marriage, i believe, takes a conscious commitment and keeping our marriage bed a place where we can nurture each other’s needs is important to us. I honestly haven’t seen many well-rested co-sleeping parents, which is something you’re discovering, so I suppose that has been a definite benefit My son likes his crib, he feels safe and comfortable there, it’s made specifically with the safety of a baby in mind. We make it a pleasant place and he even plays there sometimes as I wash off his cloth diapers after changing him. I think those things are key when asking a child to sleep anywhere, that it be a safe, secure, and comfortable place. Almost any place can be like that if approached with the right attitude by the parent.