armsreach cosleeper

poemmom

Tue, May 13 2008, 1:20 pm

You can get them on the armsreach website.

We have the wood "sleigh" style. It works very well for its intended use, about which here are my thoughts from our personal experience:

With first daughter, we were very into "attachment" ideas and used it as a real cosleeper until she grew out of it (took a while - she's small). But -- and I'm NOT blaming cosleeping entirely for this, it is mostly her personality-- she has been a terrible sleeper and needed me all night. I nursed her til 18 mos and she continued night waking all that time, MANY times a night. Even now at 4 1/2 if she happens to get up at night for bathroom, etc., she always ends up waking me.

With our son we tried a different approach. Even as a newborn, though he slept in our room and nursed on demand, we kept the side on the sleeper, like a small crib, and did not put it right against our bed. After I was recovered from the birth,I found that when I got out of bed to nurse him in a rocker, I was more aware of hunger-cry versus going-back-to-sleep-in-a-minute sounds, and also more alert to put him back in the cosleeper as soon as he finished instead of falling asleep next to him.

I think that, along with his different personality, that has contributed to him being a much better sleeper at every stage, as well being able to be comforted as an older infant without nursing if he was not hungry.

I hope we can use this method with the baby we are now expecting, B"H as well. Bottom line is, I would NEVER "cry it out", but still recommend taking Dr Sears with a grain of salt. Its easy to be a bit too swayed by it, but remember not every parenting style works with every child.

Anyway, the cosleeper is now used for toy storage in DD's room (it IS very sturdy) so we need to clean it out and get it ready to use again B"H as a minicrib. (By the way, son did not get much use out of it even as a crib since he outgrew it pretty fast)