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Bed-sharing with infant - need advice

MereBride2007MereBride2007
in Attachment Parenting

I currently bed share with my 12-week old baby.  For the first two weeks he was in the RNP next to our bed, but I decided that it was easier to bed share and breastfeed.  For a while things were good - he would get a good 4 hour stretch the first part of the night and then nurse every 2 hours after that.  But the past two weeks he has gone to waking up anywhere from every 1-2 hours at night.  I don't think he is hungry every time he wakes up, but he does expect to nurse and then he's usually back to sleep in 5-10 minutes.

While I was okay with the 2-3 wakings a night, I feel like he is waking up more and expecting to nurse because the boob is right there next to his face.  He also flails around a good bit in his sleep and I am not getting the great sleep I was initially.  I feel like it might be time to transfer him into something else so that he is not right next to me with the milk in his face.  Has anyone had experience with this? 

I did read the No Cry Sleeping Solution and I have tried to soothe him other ways than feeding him when he wakes but he always ends up crying and waking himself up more, so I nurse him.  I've thought about getting a co-sleeper and putting him in that.  Any advice would be great.  Thanks!

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Re: Bed-sharing with infant - need advice

  • ncbellencbelle member

    If you have a crib, you could side car your crib to the bed or even just have it beside the bed if you don't want to buy a co-sleeper.

    Could also be that he's hitting the 4 month wakeful a bit early ;-) 



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  • DeniseRNDeniseRN member
    Just roll with it. Babies love to change things up as soon as we get used to it. Did you go back to work recently? Some babies will wake more at night when mom goes back to work to make up for lost snuggle time
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  • pixieprincsspixieprincss member

    It sounds like the tiring-but-normal ways that babies are. Baby sleep patterns are not linear. At this age, it could be a growth spurt or just wanting the closeness with you or being increasingly aware/social or nearing the 4-month wakeful where babies go from starting in deep sleep to starting in light sleep like adults do. in our house, we just roll with it. There are some good baby sleep articles on Kellymom.Learning to do side-laying nursing so I could latch and go right back to sleep was our strategy.

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  • MereBride2007MereBride2007
    Thanks for the advice.  I think I've been reading too many of these boards where I see people with babies the age of mine talking about how theirs is sleeping through the night.  I try to remind myself that a lot of what I've read says that bed-sharing babies will wake twice as much as non bed-sharing babies to nurse, so if normal right now for a non bed-sharing baby is 2-3 times a night then I guess 5-6 is not unreasonable.  Last night I tried not to look at the clock and just get him on quick and back to sleep and it went pretty well. 
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