The End of Co-Sleeping

Hello friends! If you are new to my blog, I would refer you to a previous post before continuing reading this one. This first post goes over why we co-slept with our daughter in the first place.

http://gypsymommamind.blogspot.com/2011/07/family-bed.html

Although we planned to co-sleep longer than the 22 months that it has been we found that for our family a transition needed to be made sooner. Tallulah is very active in her sleep - always has been. Face punches and spinal kicks notwithstanding, co-sleeping is not something we would ever take back or not do with any future children. Now that we have potty training out of the way and she rarely wakes up in the middle of the night we decided it was a good time to move her into her own "big girl" bed in her own room.

At first we tried putting a toddler bed in our room. We would let her fall asleep in our bed and then move her into the toddler bed. Without fail she would wake up within a few hours (or less) and crawl back into bed with us. While even this was an improvement, it just wasn't enough of a break for our bruised kidneys!

I did some additional research online and found that most co-sleeping parents found it easier to move their kids from the family bed into a twin or even full sized bed of the children's own. And of course they did! Let's face it, toddler mattresses don't come anywhere close to the comfort of a real mattress. (One of those times I had to hit my forehead and say "duh!" Brittany.) The search for a twin mattress began!

We went to a few different furniture stores before we found the one that would come home with us. Of course you can't expect a toddler to do any mattress testing for themselves so the task fell to me. This worked out better anyway because we wanted to find a mattress that a) would be similar in comfort to the mattress she was already use to and b) would be just as comfortable to us if we ended up falling asleep while putting her to sleep.

We ended up getting her mattress at a discount store. As it happens, the mattress we found was above the price range we had set for ourselves but it was $200 cheaper than the same exact mattress we found in every other furniture store we had traversed. Bingo! The best part is that getting her a good mattress at this stage of the game means that it will last her a long time!

I think the most important part of transitioning Tallulah from co-sleeping was feeling that we were ALL ready for the shift, not just my fiancé and myself. I really believed that our daughter was ready. It's been nearly a week now and the transition to her own bed and room has been nearly seamless! The first couple of nights one of us laid in bed with her until she fell asleep. Now we sit beside her bed. Gradually we will move farther away from her as she goes to sleep until eventually we won't have to be in the room at all for her to put herself to bed. I shouldn't forget to mention that she has not awoken in the middle of the night once! She seems to sleep better in her own bed just as we do now. She certainly sleeps longer!

Not all family situations or personalities are the same. The important thing is to figure out what works best for you and yours. I am very happy with our choices so far.