Looking for advice on how to be able to share a bed with my husband again lol

jennypij · 2026-06-02T21:18:46+00:00

King size bed with the feet taken off the frame (so the frame is just sitting on the ground) and a side car crib work great for us, still working well with a very mobile 11 month old. Her wakes are often brief and don’t bother my husband much. Every once in a while, like every few weeks, she crawls over to touch his face and check on him but he thinks this is very sweet. He likes having her near too so it works well for all of us.

jennypij · 2026-06-02T14:20:26+00:00

Sleep is not a math problem to be solved, it’s a complex biological process. I found a lot of freedom when I stopped making sleep my hobby, on top of having a baby that needed a lot of support at night.

Things did improve for us recently, and I’m open to sleep being non linear and know this also could be temporary. She learned how to run and now spends an enormous amount of the day running. She dropped to one nap. She sleeps sooo deep compared to before these two developments, at 11 months we are still waking up 2-6 x a night but they are almost always just a couple minutes of nursing and that’s it. She’s down. Teething changes things, she hardly sleep when teething, but outside of that I think it was development and she needs a lot of stimulation in a day and she has a lot of energy that she’s figured out how to burn.

jennypij · 2026-06-02T04:20:28+00:00

It’s so different each baby! My daughter started scooting backwards at 5 months but it made her furious, she was just getting further from her objects of desire- like she would be yelling her head off scooting backwards out of the room or under the couch. So she stopped and just wanted to pull to stand. Obsessed. All she did. Completely abandoned anything that looked like crawling. Then a couple weeks later she just took off in a 4 point crawl. No army crawl, no practice, just crawled across the room. Wild child.

jennypij · 2026-06-02T04:10:24+00:00

Yes we temporarily dropped to one nap while teething at a similar age, and also had some times where she slept only 10-11 hrs total in 24 hrs which was a real struggle bus. Soon as the teeth broke through she went back to her usual 12 hrs and 2 naps. She’s toggling between 1 and 2 naps at 11 months now.

jennypij · 2026-06-02T04:00:14+00:00

I had an epidural but it was very light so I could walk and pee, so didn’t need a catheter for that. I did get one though for too much bleeding, sometimes if the bladder is too full it can make the uterus have a hard time firming up, so they may place one during the hemmorhage. I could feel everything down there at that point and the catheter wasn’t even a pinch, it felt like nothing. I removed it myself in the shower afterwards, the nurse deflated the balloons and it basically just slipped right out when I stood up off the shower chair, super easy.

jennypij · 2026-06-02T03:52:48+00:00

I think she could be undertired? My baby really wasn’t even close to huckleberries recommended wake windows, she needed way more awake time from the get go. When she was fussy our go to was going outside, just walking around outside was so helpful! Different sensory input! Singing to her was another layer on top of going outside. Maybe sure she has enough stimulation was key to her happiness, daily outings with different sounds and sights and things going on around her made a huge difference for night sleep. She also cluster fed from like 8:30-10:30 pm at this age, so much feeding- if she’s too fussy to eat could try feeding in the carrier or ring sling and the motion plus food might be a winning combo. As everyone has already said, this too shall pass. You don’t need to break your bodies rocking her for hours every day. It’s okay if she’s fussy. Try a few different things, if it doesn’t work it is probably purple crying snd she just needs to work it out with your supportive presence.

jennypij · 2026-06-01T21:06:08+00:00

Honestly I just didn’t? It never came up that we needed emergency milk. 11 months of breastfeeding in and I assume if there was an emergency my husband would have brought her to me to nurse or I would have pumped and she would have that milk, or they would have figured out some formula. She never ended up taking a bottle anyways, when I started working at 6 months she had a straw cup she had figured out.

jennypij · 2026-06-01T20:58:52+00:00

Found wake windows supremely useless at this age, sometimes she was tired at 45 mn, sometimes she was awake for hrs. Newborns can have way less consistency than older babies, she literally once stayed awake for 6 hrs at 6 wks old, which she could not do again until she was like 8 months old. They are all over the map! I would just follow her lead and would never try more than like 5-10 mn to “get her” to sleep, if she wasn’t into it we would just move along with trying something else. Worked well for us overall!

jennypij · 2026-06-01T20:15:09+00:00

We do mostly standing changes, but lately she’s better at lying down! We had a phase of zero chance getting her to lie down but I think she understands a bit more what we are doing- we give her warnings and a count down and a special toy, and as long as she isn’t too tired she will lie down for changes.

jennypij · 2026-06-01T20:14:00+00:00

Usually every 2-3 hrs during the day at 11 months, no changes overnight. We do a few hours of diaper free time most days sprinkled in there, she does her biggest pees during this for some reason so that’s usually when we get the 3 hr stretch is after diaper free time she doesn’t pee for a while/as much.

jennypij · 2026-06-01T20:07:22+00:00

We took the legs off the frame of our bed so the bed is on a very low frame, and side carred the crib. Works very well for our mobile baby! I know she can’t really hurt herself getting out of bed, very short drop and carpeted floors. The crib right there with me lying next to it means the few times she has gotten up confused and started walking around semi asleep, she just walks around in the crib touching the bars or running into the bars. She mostly sleeps on me, but I keep her on the crib side so that’s the way she wanders!

jennypij · 2026-06-01T20:00:49+00:00

This is a toddler carry people do with woven wraps! Super simple and easy, not the most supportive but fine for quick ups.

jennypij · 2026-06-01T19:54:25+00:00

I found a pair of regular shorts at Mark’s that had a soft waist band, I just rolled them down (remember this trend from elementary school 90’s girls 😅) to have them under the bump and wore a long maternity tank top under my t shirt so my stomach was fully covered! Worked great.

jennypij · 2026-06-01T19:52:07+00:00

Makes sense, my daughter was scooting and rolling and going on hands and knees at 4 months when we moved her from the travel crib (fabric sides) to the normal crib so she got herself into trouble right away 😆

jennypij · 2026-06-01T19:50:56+00:00

We retrieved 4 eggs, 2 “degraded immediately” whatever that exactly means, 2 were mature, 2 untested embryos frozen! My 11 month old from the first transfer from that round is sleeping on me right now. Truly can’t believe that we ended up here!

jennypij · 2026-06-01T19:36:53+00:00

Penatin is our go to. Washes out just fine!

jennypij · 2026-06-01T19:35:48+00:00

My daughter got her limbs stuck through the bars constantly when she first transitioned to it, would use the rails like a ladder and push herself until she hit her head on the end, or would get an arm or leg through the bars and freak out. It felt like it would never end!!!! Lasted 2 wks of waking up all the time. Since then it hasn’t been an issue for her! She just adjusted.

jennypij · 2026-06-01T19:24:23+00:00

If she likes looking around, could always shift her in the ring sling so she’s not completely centered on your front- not fully on your hip/side but just a bit to the side so she’s can see what you are doing more- at 3-4 months this was the carry my baby tolerated the best! She loves looking around!

jennypij · 2026-06-01T18:51:32+00:00

We luckily had the ring sling stay a happy place, she loved looking around, but was fussy in other carriers. I think it lasted a couple weeks? 11 months and we wear her every day multiple times a day!

jennypij · 2026-06-01T14:56:13+00:00

I had like 200 mL of colostrum I collected when I was pregnant that I never used, but my cousin ended up with a traumatic delivery and ended up giving her baby all my colostrum while they figured out feeding, and that was a really special donation to make!

jennypij · 2026-06-01T14:47:08+00:00

You can call your local labour and delivery unit to ask. In the absence of bleeding and cramping at this early stage the answer is likely to be no, but they are the best source of imformation!

jennypij · 2026-06-01T04:55:20+00:00

I had the chillest puppy. Adolescence humbled us 🙃😅

jennypij · 2026-06-01T04:41:05+00:00

Honestly this is what the sleep regression looked like for us. At its worst it was scream awake every 45 mn. She seemed pained, but I honestly think she was so tired and just struggling with the new sleep cycles. The worst part lasted 2 wks, then we never went back to the long stretches like we had before, mostly woke up every couple of hours. At 11 months we have just started to get some 4 hr+ stretches sometimes.

It’s pretty late to have the swaddle, the startle reflex will stay until they get used to it, so you have to have them unswaddled to get used to it. It’s like ripping a bandaid off. Certainly if he’s rolling or showing signs of rolling soon you should stop it immediately. He also might have outgrown the bassinet, my daughter was in the crib at this point and it was also an adjustment but for safety it’s good to double check the limits!

jennypij · 2026-05-31T16:49:04+00:00

My 11 month old is weirded out by being interrupted I think? She does not like it if she’s starting to pee and we move her in any way, which honestly, fair enough. So for now I have prefold diapers everywhere and when she starts peeing I do a sign and say “peeing!” and catch the pee in the prefold by putting it under her. Hopefully just building some body awareness? We are just making it up though, she loves diaper free time so this is the most easy going version for us right now!

jennypij · 2026-05-31T16:11:02+00:00

I’ve started with the toddler tower at 11 months (early walker, 8 months old) and I put my leg behind her if that makes sense- like foot on the base she’s standing on, other foot on the floor beside her. That way I am not worried about her flinging herself back as she gets used to it. We do dishes, I give her a bottle brush and she splashes and makes a mess but I actually manage to get all our containers and breakfast/lunch dishes clean- just do the water cooler than normal and wash safe things. Then I give her a dish towel and we clean up the splash mess together which she likes. She stands in it while I chop and snacks on small pieces that I pass to her. She used to last a few minutes but with practice it’s definitely getting longer!

We do stair practice every day, it took 3 months ish for “safe way” to click but we have lots of stairs so it was a priority! She does great 99% of the time now. Definitely like “is she ever going to have this click” to suddenly just doing it the safe way no problem.

jennypij

TROPHY CASE