How young was your baby when it started sleeping in nursery

[benne81]

I'm 37 weeks pregnant with my first baby and this is a long story (see the pregnancy forum - cats and babies thread) but I'm thinking of moving the baby into the nursery at quite an early stage to make sure that there is no risk of my cat jumping in the moses basket with the baby.

I know that the official guidance is that the baby should stay in the same room as you for 6 months - but how many people actually do this? when did yours go in the nursery? My mum was shocked the baby is expected to sleep in the same room as the adults and apparently I was straight into the nursery from day one (although if you listen to my mum we also didn't have central heating/ food/ running water etc in my day!!).

I would be really interested to hear peoples experiences of how old their babies were sleeping in the nursery and the practicalities.

[Flisspaps]

DD went into her own room at 6mo.

The guidance has been updated since you were a baby for a reason :)

Can you not keep the cat out of your room for six months (haven't read the cats and babies thread) - if you can keep it out of the nursery, why not your room?

[reallytired]

DD is still in the same room as me at 2 years and 4 months! I have to admit that I am weird in that I quite like having dd in the same room as me. She is very happy with the arrangement. DH snores like a foghorn so he sleeps in the spare room.

If you are planing to breastfeed then it makes it much easier to have the baby in the same room. He was in a moses basket by my bed. I could pick him up without having to get out of bed.I had DS in the same room as me until he was 6 months old.

Plenty of people have their babies in their own room from day 1. Official guidance is not manatory. If you have a baby monitor then its perfectly safe to have the baby in its own room.

Just beware that many cats like to jump in cots.

[debka]

I have never had either of ours in the room with us. We also don't have a monitor but the nursery is right next door to our room and the wall is very thin. There is a lovely big comfy armchair in there which is waaaay comfier than feeding in bed IME.

[MayCanary]

DD was 6 weeks, DS 7 weeks (last night!). No monitor for either but we live in a small house where sound travels very easily.

[Paschaelina]

About 4 months I think, he was being disturbed when we came up to bed, feeding was easier in the chair in his room (bad back made it difficult to feed in bed), we all slept better for it.

[debka]

Ah lady I need a break from mine!

[ilovedjasondonovan]

DD1 - 7 days
DD2 - 6 days

Doors left open so I could always hear them.
Both have always gone down fine in the night and once sleeping through (4 months for DD1 and 6 months for DD2) I have no problems with them.

[ilovedjasondonovan]

Oh and I didn't care what the guidance was, or the reasons. All I knew is that I neither me or DH could sleep with them in the room, so out they went and we got a bit better sleep so more able to cope with them in the day.

[OvO]

4 years for my eldest. still got my youngest in with me and he's almost 4.

I really really wouldn't put a newborn in their own room.

[RitaMorgan]

I was concerned about the cot death risk with moving him into his own room too soon, and I was breastfeeding so was better for both of us to be near each other. Went into his own room at 5 months once he was only feeding once in the night - it took another month before he dropped that 3am feed and it almost killed me having to go into his room to feed every night! Next baby will stay with me for longer I think.

[Zipitydooda]

All 3 have been between 6 and 10 weeks. I BF all of them and was perfectly comfy feeding in feeding chair in nursery or bringing baby into my bed to feed lying down. DS3 is 14 weeks and can only remember the full details with him but at 10weeks he was only waking for a feed once in the middle of the night, fed quickly, straight back to bed.

We had no room for cot in our bedroom, we were all disturbed by him sleeping next to me, we like to watch TV, chat Etc in bed as well as have noisy sex and were more relaxed that way.

[fififrog]

11 weeks. We couldn't fit cotbed in our room and she'd outgrown the basket. Best decision we made even though we've had plenty of sleep issues since. Her room is next to ours and I am so finely attuned that I wake with every squeak. At least I don't still have to listen to her breathing!

[PaigeTurner]

7 months. Cat was banned from the bedroom when DS arrived. He was alright about it.

[SlinkyB]

Had ds in Jan this year and he went into his own room at 4 weeks. Small house, can still hear every shuffle, and followed all other SIDS guidelines. Just do what works for you.

[Clueless79]

It concerns me that people can be so relaxed about guidelines to help us prevent SIDS.

IMHO tough luck if dh and I don't get an amazing night's sleep for 6months - we're not the priority for now and we're big enough and daft enough to deal with that! It's not for ever and how can anything compare to ensuring the safety and security (including emotional) of a tiny baby?

Monitors aren't that much help either, surely? It's not us hearing them that's protective - it's them hearing our breathing and movements that regulates their breathing and prevents them from falling into too deep a sleep. If the baby is crying out you'd hear that fairly easily which is the least of our worries!

For the same reason it disturbs me to hear so much talk of getting very young babies to sleep through the night, as in all night - they're not designed to do that really.

OP - I'd be planning for where the cat's going rather than the baby. Good luck and enjoy! It's such a fantastic time.

[Clueless79]

ilovedjasondonovan - the reasons = saving babies' lives!!

Is a good night's sleep really more important than that??

[Flisspaps]

Clueless79 Glad it's not just me that's surprised. Good night's sleep? Noisy sex?

CRAP reasons for risking your child's life - which is what you're doing.

Yes, it's only guidance and not law, but it can be the difference between life and death. It is about the baby hearing you, not the other way round. And for someone who said earlier about that meaning baby would have to nap in the room with you until 6mo, yes, DD did nap in the room with me until she was about 10mo.

Guidance and advice says to dress your baby up warmly in the depths of winter , but you wouldn't take them out in just a vest for a long walk on a January morning just because it works for you. Gah. Hiding this thread now.

[Clueless79]

I don't know what it is about sleep safety and weaning that make people so confident that they know better than any number of experts - usually based on what was done 30 or more years ago when doctors were telling us that cigarettes were good for us!

Ooh I've woken up in a ratty mood this morning, haven't I?! Should probably invest in a gobstopper.

[SlinkyB]

As I said, I live in a small house; we could barely get a moses basket in our room (our bed was up against a wall too) so sometimes it's a case of not being able to have the baby in the room with you.

And, very sadly, babies have still died of SIDS whilst being in a room with the parents.

[reallytired]

I really think that some posters are getting their kickers in a twist about other people's decisions. Life is not always clear cut and assessment of risk is not simple.

DD is still in my room at 2 years and 4 months because we like it that way.

There are all sorts of guidelines and to say you are risking your baby's life is frankly over the top. For example I chose not to use a dummy with my children. I chose to do baby led weaning at 24 weeks rather than waiting until 26 weeks and doing traditional purees as the health visitors advised.

Cot death happens and no one knows what causes it. The builder who worked on our old house lost a baby to SIDS. He and his wife were fanastic parents and they did nothing wrong. Tragically our builder also died mysteriously in his sleep at 59 of sudden adult death. Prehaps both the father and son died of the same condition. I feel very sorry for his widow and her remaining children.

[benne81]

Hi folks - I originally started this thread off in the pregnancy section before moving it here and over there things got quite heated and indiginant! Anyway I did some research looking at the research and the stats and I have copied the info below for your information.

Whoa - I seem to have kicked off a massive debate and as my maternity leave started today and I am a medic I thought I would have a look at some of the research into the FSIDs guidelines. It appears that 4 main papers are quoted, all of which seem to mainly look at co sleeping rather than room sharing.

1. One of the papers I'm having difficulty accessing.
   
2. Blair et al 1999 report, 'Cosleeping in terms of room sharing increases the sensory exchanges possible between parent and infants,22 but further research is required to investigate whether room sharing is protective in itself or merely a marker for hidden confounders not measured in this study'
   
3. Tappin et al 2005 'Separate room not sharing (Table I) was not associated
   

with a risk of SIDS on univariate analysis (OR 1.32 95% CI
0.67, 2.60) but became a risk on multivariate analysis (OR
3.26 95% CI 1.03, 10.35). Variables were removed singly to
ascertain which were important in converting a nonsignificant
univariate model to a significantmultivariate model. The main
factor was parental smoking. Further stratified analysis
showed that separate room was associated with a significant risk of SIDS only if a parent smoked (OR 12.2 95% CI 2.25,
66.4) and not if parents were nonsmokers (OR 1.25 95% CI
0.16, 10.06).

1. Carpenter 2004 This is the paper that I think the guidelines are probably most based on but it does combine the risk of bed sharing and room sharing. It uses Population attributable fractions (PAF; often called
   

population attributable risk) reported as percentages.These fractions estimate the expected percentage reduction
of cases if a particular exposure were eliminated.The largest
PAF was for sleeping place. This PAF was 35·9%
because, on average, 53% of cases were last left in another
room (range 18?88% across the 15 centres for which this
information was available) and 68% of the risk was
attributable. Additionally, the PAF for bed-sharing was
15·9%, so the data suggested that 52% of cases might
have been prevented had the baby slept in the parents?
room but not in their bed. They report in the discussion, 'An unexpected finding was that the factor with the largest PAF was that associated
with either the baby sleeping in another room or bedsharing.
On average, cases slept in another room 26
(11·3?41·5) days earlier than controls, but the OR did not
change with age. Why the baby sleeping in the parent?s
room reduced the risk is unclear.'

So there you go the hard statistical facts which may be a bit dry to digest but it essentially shows that there may be a small risk attributable to separate room but that this data is by no way conclusive or understood and is based much more on data regarding co sleeping. There are much clearer risks related to other issues - sleeping prone, temp, smoking.

Guidelines are just that and it is up to the individual to weigh up risks, there is no easy answer to the topic but I don't think that people should be too pious regarding this issue as the researchers themselves are not clear on causes/ confounders. Also the risk of SIDS is reduced greatly after 3 months so maybe it is worth taking that into account.

And finally everyone of course my bloody cat doesn't take precedent over the baby but living in a small london flat it is not possible to lock the cat out of the bedroom as we don't have a downstairs etc, she will just sit outside the bedroom door or the door to outside crying until we let her in - believe me if there was a way we could keep her out the room we would do it!

Anyway the cat net has arrived and we are just going to see how it goes, hopefully my cat won't be interested and if she is it may mean I need to decamp to the nursery for the first couple of months with baby.

[reallytired]

Enjoy your last weeks of pregancy as far as possible. I am sure your baby will be fine whatever sleeping arrangements you decide on.

I think its a mistake to read too many books or too much research. The best way to parent is from the heart. Most people find it easier to go with the flow.

I wanted to wish you best of luck with your baby.

[benne81]

Thank you - I think your right, just go with the flow otherwise you'll send yourself insane! Now what to do today . . .