I would love to hear the experience of other co-sleepers.

[mama asheri]

My DS is one year old. We have bed-shared from the beginning. (He sleeps between my DH and I.) I'm curious when you usually stop co-sleeping and how you handle that transition. We're still happy with the arrangement but I just wonder when we'll have to start thinking about getting him out of the bed. We are still nursing and I plan to nurse for 2-3 years or when he self-weans. I know that co-sleeping makes nursing much easier so that may make the decision for us. Advice from experienced co-sleepers is much appreciated!

[me]

i put their little bed beside my bed. Then when they are ready, they get a specially decorated room with bed and all  :giggle

eta:punctuation makes all the difference.

[KatieMae]

We only bumped the toddler out when a pregnant belly needed the room :giggle For us, I like to have a bed for the youngest around 2.5yrs, at least to be used for naps, as I've found that's the best route of transition for us. We only did the separate mattress in our room for our oldest b/c he was still quite young when he needed his own space to spread out (about 11mos - he was not breastfed.) So, if I have the option, I'd prefer to either have them in OUR bed in our room, or in THEIR bed in their room. That said, we absolutely welcome a child into our bed during the night if they need us (or we take them to the guest bed if there isn't enough room in our queen size bed ;) )

[SamRose]

DD1 moved to a toddler bed in her older brother's room @ 13.5 mons. They eventually moved to the same bed, tho :giggle
We plan to have dd2 move into bed w/ her big sis probably around that same age, depending on how things R going at that point. Every kid is different, maybe she wont want to sleep w/ her sibling.

[NovelMama]

AJ was almost 2.5 when PJ was born. She saw that PJ had her own special bed (the Arm's Reach co-sleeper) and got jealous :giggle and said she wanted her own bed too. :heart We had been planning on transitioning her to a bed when PJ started sleeping in the bed with us instead of the co-sleeper (around 4 mos), so it actually worked really well. We don't have room to put a mattress or bed next to ours, so we put it along the foot of our bed instead.

It took quite a while before AJ was willing/able to spend the entire night in the toddler bed, however. I made the mistake of letting her choose where to nap/sleep at night, and she would go back and forth, unable to make up her mind. Eventually I removed the option of the toddler bed and just had her back in with us, and then one day about 2 months after that she said she wanted to sleep in her own bed, and she's been in it ever since.

[me]

ive spent many a time with my hand stretched out to a toddler bed beside my bed, reeeeeeeaaaaaching out till they fell asleep :giggle

[Love_Is_Patient]

My DS is one year old. We have bed-shared from the beginning. (He sleeps between my DH and I.) I'm curious when you usually stop co-sleeping and how you handle that transition. We're still happy with the arrangement but I just wonder when we'll have to start thinking about getting him out of the bed. We are still nursing and I plan to nurse for 2-3 years or when he self-weans. I know that co-sleeping makes nursing much easier so that may make the decision for us. Advice from experienced co-sleepers is much appreciated!


You don't HAVE to start thinking about this until someone is not happy with the situation. My 4-yr-old still sleeps with us (between dh and I, while my 18 month old sleeps on the other side of me). Ask some Tanzanian friends how long kids sleep in the same room as their mothers if you want some cross-cultural perspective. Unless you or dh become unhappy sharing your bed full-time (or your child expresses a desire for their own bed), I wouldn't worry about it until they are at least 6-7 (I wouldn't really worry about it then either--Koreans often co-sleep until their children hit puberty--but that's when I would personally start thinking that I needed to give the child their own space, including a bed for them to transition to, if they hadn't expressed a desire/need for it before).