Co-sleeping in summer

[Sorsha]

Wondering if people have any tips for co-sleeping during the summer without mom or baby overheating? The temperature's starting to creep up here so I foresee it being a problem before too long...

We don't have central air (old house, very impractical to install) and the windows in the master bedroom won't fit a window unit (even portable). Before LO, we made do with fans except on the few extremely hot nights when we'd put on the air conditioner in the room next door and direct some of the cooler air into the bedroom with the fans (not very efficient, but when you're desperate... ). But from what I understand it's bad to have a fan pointing at the baby? Is that true even if only a little of the air would actually reach the baby, or only intermittently? (E.g., if the fan's on a rotation)

If he was sleeping in his crib well all night we'd just stick the crib in the room that has the air conditioner, but at the moment he's waking so often during the night I'm co-sleeping after I go to bed as a way to make sure I get at least a little sleep. Can't count on that being better before it's hotter. I guess if we can't find an easier solution we're buying another mattress so I can sleep in that room with him.

Thoughts?

 

[Rachel_C]

I'd just do whatever you normally do to keep the room cool and make sure LO isn't in a direct blast of cold air. IIRC the cold breeze can make LO's body think it's cold, which means they try to warm up... not what you want when it's actually hot! A quick Google shows lots of results saying that a fan in the room can lower the risk of SIDS so as long as you have it blowing away from LO I wouldn't worry about it. We used a fan that turned around. I don't know the proper name but the fan was like a column that turned rather than the traditional circular fan. We had that on the floor and it wasn't really high enough for much air to get onto the bed (and hit us), it just made the air circulate better.