[ESP - ENG] ¿Adiós Colecho? 🐣💤🛌

Hello #motherhood community 🤱🏻 I was absent for several weeks because I was running around with the preparations for my baby Maximiliano's first birthday ✨ my baby Maximiliano's first birthday. But today I want to tell you my experience of how our co-sleeping has been, the decision to leave him and what strategies I'm using to get him to sleep in his crib again.

When my son was born, he slept in a small crib next to our bed. But we decided to move him to the bed to sleep with us because he was having choking episodes in the wee hours of the morning and we dreaded it. As a new mom, the last thing I would want is for something bad to happen to my son if it is in my power to prevent it.

Since the baby slept in our bed, my husband and I made pillow barricades at bedtime to avoid contact with the baby. I am well aware that this practice is not approved or recommended by pediatricians but it is what worked for our family and we are satisfied with the decision we made at that time.

The thing is that because of the heavy rains in September last year, we interrupted the co-sleeping and moved our baby to sleep in his big crib, inside our room. He had not fully adapted because he woke up every one or two hours when I put him in the crib and, well, I had to take him out to breastfeed him and put him to sleep in my arms again.

In October, our baby became sick with snot and although I washed his nose with physiological solution, I was terrified that my son would choke on it because at night his nose would become very blocked. So again I put him to sleep in bed, but only with me. My husband and I made the decision that he would sleep on the couch in our apartment and I would stay in bed co-sleeping with our son.

Everything was going well until I started to feel a lot of pain in my body, specifically: pain in the cervical and lumbar area due to the bad posture when breastfeeding my baby. Because I breastfeed sitting on the bed, supporting only my lower spine with pillows against the wall. These pains have not ceased to this day. On the contrary, they have increased and I have tried as much as possible to do exercises to improve my posture but sometimes I get tired and it is difficult to keep up the pace.

So I have decided to discontinue co-sleeping with my baby again. My baby has recently turned one year old and for health reasons, I consider it the healthiest thing to do. I have pain in my entire spine, from the cervical to the lumbar area. At first I thought it was my kidneys that were hurting, but I had a blood test that confirmed that everything was fine. I also thought I might have a hernia in my spine at the level of both arms because I also feel a lot of pain. I spoke with my primary care doctor and she sent me for several tests. She told me that everything was fine and under control, so it was definitely the ravages of my poor breastfeeding posture.

"Del dicho al hecho hay un largo trecho"

"From words to deeds is a long way."

Since it is one thing to say what you are going to do and another to make it happen, I started to put my son back in his crib at the end of May of this year, since my husband is on vacation. The first day he slept in his crib until 3 or 4am. The second day was not so effective. By 11pm he was already tucked in my bed. And so the days have gone by. Some good and some not so good. But we keep trying because the key is consistency.

I should remind you that my son is Exclusive Breastfeeding. I think he has not been on formula of any kind since he was 3 or 4 months old. I tried to resume it but he got sick with snot and it was impossible to get him to take his bottle again. So this makes it a little harder to stop co-sleeping because she still does two or three night feedings.

Now that he is one year old, he is more active and makes a lot of demands on his nap times and bedtime. I try to put him to sleep between 8pm - 9pm; but not every day is the same. There are days when he falls asleep quickly and quietly and there are other days when he takes a long time to fall asleep and grunts when he falls asleep.

The fact is that there are days when she sleeps until the wee hours of the morning in her crib very quietly. It has been difficult for me because I have not been resting well because I am constantly getting up to check that everything is going well with my baby. So in a future installment I will be telling you if it is already a success that my baby sleeps through the night in his crib.

Thank you for reading. Suggestions or recommendations are welcome from mothers and fathers who used this practice and got their babies to sleep successfully in their cribs. See you another time ♥️👍🏽