Questions -- Co-sleeping with toddler

[Bobbie]

We've been co-sleeping with K since she was 10 months old. At that time, we finally accepted her huge need for closeness and stopped listening to everyone who had other ideas. :) Now she's 19 months old, and I have a few questions about how to keep this arrangement harmonious.

Our situation: we share a queen-size bed. When K was around 15 months old and things were getting crowded, we sidecarred her crib to our bed with the toddler bed rail installed so that she can move freely from her space to ours. We cuddle her to sleep, then place her in the crib area so that everyone begins the night with ample room, but she is welcome in our bed and usually crawls over to snuggle with us.

My questions:

1. Have you made any provisions to help facilitate potty-training and deal with accidents?

2. Have you tried or been able to do anything about bed-hogging and other behaviors that interfere with your sleep? (K has a habit of rubbing our arms, pinching the skin and pulling the hairs. We've tried introducing other things for her to rub, but this hasn't worked.)

3. This question pertains to children who are cuddled or rocked to sleep. Have you made any effort to help your child fall asleep on his/her own?

Thanks. :)

[Brooke]

I don't co-sleep but I have experience with 2 of your questions.

Whenever Rebekah sleeps with us, in hotels or when she's sick, she twists my hair all night long. It's really annoying because I cannot sleep at all when she does it so I end up not sleeping. I don't have any suggestions but I wanted to comment since I thought Rebekah was the only one who did that.

On question #3 - I rocked Rebekah to sleep until she was 18 months old. She started getting too big to be comfortable in the rocking chair with me and she started fighting me rocking her. So I started putting her into her crib with a cup and she easily transitioned to putting herself to sleep. Now I need to figure out how to eliminate the cup. But at least I'm not rocking her anymore. I'm also trying to figure out how to get her to fall asleep on her own in a big girl bed. Whenever we leave her in the bed to fall asleep, she immediately gets out of it and comes looking for us.

[Jillian]

We have a similar sleeping arangement. Right now Janelle's crib is side carred to our bed and Caid is in the arms reach co sleeper on the other side...when he outgrows that we will sidecar his crib.

1. Have you made any provisions to help facilitate potty-training and deal with accidents? Hmm, kind of. Janelle had severe reflux so we put a waterproof protector sheet (kind of a sheet...it actually wraps around the whole bed and is actually for allergies) on our matress then.



2. Have you tried or been able to do anything about bed-hogging and other behaviors that interfere with your sleep? (K has a habit of rubbing our arms, pinching the skin and pulling the hairs. We've tried introducing other things for her to rub, but this hasn't worked.)

This has yet to be a problem for us...sorry.

3. This question pertains to children who are cuddled or rocked to sleep. Have you made any effort to help your child fall asleep on his/her own?

We, as in dh and I, haven't, but about 9 or 10 times in the past month Janelle has asked for us to not rock her and to just lay her in bed with elmo...5 or 6 of those times she has actually fallen asleep within 15 minutes, the other times she got up out of bed and asked for "mama" which happens to be what she is calling nursing this month.