How do you make a sidecar work??

[Phoenix's Mum]

Hello! I've posted a thread before about Phoenix co-sleeping with nipple in mouth all night (LOL and now it doesn't bother me anymore, and I can't sleep unless he hops on as I'm drifting off!! :D )...

But I think he is feeding all night- it blurs after a while, as some of you other co-sleepers might agree- so I was thinking of a sidecar arrangement, but can anyone give me any tips on how to make it work? Also,

What about breastfeeding- would I just wiggle over?
How do you make it sit snugly next to the bed- I was worried he might get stuck!?
Has anyone gone from babe in actual bed and evolved to a sidecar successfully?

I don't even know if I want to do it (or if I can be bothered getting all that stuff out of the cot, it's been a great storage space so far!!!) but I thought I'd ask.

Thanks for your help!!

[the_queen]

Hi !

I had a side-car setup until very recently.
I had one side completely off the cot (ie I unscrewed the drop side and it became just a 3 sided cot). The cot I pushed into the very corner of the room, and the bed was pushed right up against it. Originally I had some foam cot mattresses underneath the proper cot mattress, to boost it up to the level of my mattress - but I got a new bed recently and it's at the same level without any foam bits.

Sometimes the cot mattress can leave a gap, and it was kinda funny the morning that Curtis woke me up and he was upright, having fallen into the gap, his legs were hanging down between bed and cot, and his upper body was above bed level :laughing:

*ahem* but anyway, what I did was to pull the cot mattress as close to my mattress as possible, then in the gap on the other side (ie between the cot mattress and the cot bars) I stuffed a couple of towels, rolled lengthways. It kept the mattress from slipping around.

Breastfeeding, well I mostly just would slide him over towards me. Then we'd snuggle and he'd sleep next to me usually, but if I was still awake when he finished feeding and he was zonked asleep :D I'd put him back into "his" side.


I have actually taken the cot out now, because he is a crawler and I was finding that he'd stand up in the cot, and then try to climb around to get down, and that's when he might fall. I find that now having the bed just pushed right into the corner, there's less edge for him to fall off. And I've taught him now to back down off the bed, to roll onto his tummy and put his legs down first. He's done that a couple of times now.

I found that having a side car actually meant that he was the one who would basically say "ok ok, enough already, give me my own space" so instead of being clingy and sooky (as people told me he would be :rolleyes:) it has given him a sense of independance without venturing too far from me. If that makes any sense :laughing: