I'm expecting my first child in winter. I live in Denmark. My boyfriend is a Dane and we live fairly close to the in-laws.
Danes still put their babies out to sleep in cots, in all weather. They put them out in a pram in the garden/on the balcony, and they leave them outside shops and cafes.
I am not keen on the practice for a lot of reasons but mostly because the baby is alone. Before I got pregnant we came up with some ground rules:
If the baby is supervised, it can sleep outside.
The in-laws were talking to us about our choice of pram and the MIL made a comment about "well, as long as you can put the baby outside to sleep, it's fine" and I waited for my boyfriend to let her know what we are going to do. He just looked awkward. The MIL could see the awkwardness and came up with a few advantages:-
- The baby becomes more robust
- The baby sleeps better
- It's our culture
But the boyfriend said nothing. We had a chat about it and I told him about the guidance that babies don't sleep alone until 6 months. I'm not keen about leaving the baby outside AFTER 6 months but at least it'll be summer.
I think the first two advantages are red herrings and, sure, it's their culture but so is drinking schnapps at breakfast on special occasions but I don't partake in that, either.
Clearly, I need to kick the boyfriend up the butt so he can make it clear to his mum how in a lot of ways the baby is going to be brought up Danish but in some other important ways, it's going to have a British upbringing. But he's so conflict-shy, it's unreal.
Any words of wisdom?