baby in own room at 1 month old

[foreverastudent]

I am willing to concede that I am probably being a bit unreasonable to be at a friend's parenting choice.

I dont think mums should criticise each other for their choice of parenting techniques so I wont say anything to this friend.

But I do feel a bit sorry for this baby to be turfed out of his parents' room at such a young age so they can have "couple time".

I assume she is not BF and have my suspicions that the pressure for both these choices is coming from her chauvinistic neanderthal DP.

formerdiva, 6 months is a really long time if none of you are able to get a decent night's sleep

Foxy - they do tune in, that's exactly what they do

But I, too, put my DD into her own room at about 5 weeks. She had an immature digestive system and grunted and strained like a constipated 40-something on the bog. She also had reflux (also linked with the immature digestive system) so screamed a lot when she was awake and went "HHNNNNNNGGGGHHHHHH!" every minute when she was asleep.

Once it started I put up with it for three days, sleeping not a single wink. On night four I cracked and put her in her cot. I could turn the noise down on the monitor, and so could screen it out and get some light sleep. If she made any other noise (like a whimper) I was in there in a flash.

Did I feel guilty? Hell yes. But was I actually a bad parent? No. Not unless you're going to argue I could have dispensed with sleep entirely

Couple time with a one month old my DH would have been so lucky.

Our DS went into his own room at 3 months when he got too long for the moses basket. There was no choice as cot-bed wouldn't have fit into our room anyway. He was fine, we were fine. The guidelines are just that - a guide to be interupted as each individual sees fit.

Personally, I wouldn't have wanted to put my 1mth old in his own room. I would have missed him and at 1mth you're still getting to know your baby.

foreverastudent that does seem a bit off, what's wrong with the sofa for a while? < makes mental note to get proper obscuring curtains in sitting room >

yabu! im sure they are not just chucking the child in another room and abandoning them, you can still hear them especially if you have a monitor and sometimes also if not. i put mine in their own rooms at ds1 2 months and ds2 slightly earlier , both were fine with it and slept better. many people do it. it is not wrong, the child will still be looked after.
and what is so wrong about putting them seperately that you dont have sex with them in the room, because personally i would never do anything at all like that with a child in the room, dont care whether they are a young baby i don't feel comfy with it. seems a lot more wrong to have sex in front of your child than to give them a seperate bedroom!
really if that's the worst thing you have to complain about i think you need to get a sense of perspective, it is not even cruel @ all

I think you just have to let her be, we all parent so differently.

My friend and I have similar aged babies (not our firsts), I cosleep and will do to at least a year, DS doesn't even have to cry he snuffles and gets a boob and I know full well that a lot of the time it won't be for hunger but for comfort and I am happy with that for now. My friends baby was in his cot from day 1 in his own room, she BFs as well, if her LO is fed and clean and just grizzling she puts him downstairs in his pram out of ear shot and lets him cry to sleep. I could never do that and she could never cosleep, I think we just respect each others parenting decisions and do what suits our families the best.

PS you can have "couple time" fine even if you are cosleeping.

I'm pretty sure the NHS guideline is sketchy on the basis that they are torn between 2 bits of evidence based research - one that says that co-sleeping if done wrong increases the risk of SIDS, and the other that shows that if babies are close to their mothers they are at a decreased risk of it. Because they dont trust us to get it right (and safe co-sleeping does to be fair have a fair few do's and don'ts) they make the statement that the safest place for a baby is in its own cot/basket but in the same room as its parents. (Or that's what the leaflet said when I was given it - it may have since been revised).

If I can be faffed I'll try and find links to back up those 2 bits of research that they are torn between - I've seen it before somewhere, I've got a couple of other bits to do first though so bear with me.

From what I recall of the Deborah Jackson book, the baby has to sort of be skin to skin and on your chest almost to get the full benefit of the endocrine response and the stimulation of breathing etc. Proper natural co-sleeping.

Oh no - I never knew that about the breathing thing. Lucky for me my sons lived through my ignorance! I might have made a different decision had I known that.

DS1 was in his own room at 2 weeks. I wasn't getting a wink with him in our room. I still managed to BF for 13 months. I can still walk upstairs to the kids rooms in the pitch black to this day, which is what I did to go and BF. I went back to sleep quicker afterwards if it stayed dark.

DS2 would have been in is own room at about the same age but I was afraid me getting up in the night to go and feed would wake up DS1 and it was very hot in the baby's room at the time in high summer - so he stayed with us til 3 months.

Both fab sleepers. Could never cope with co sleeping which we only did when they were sick. I just never get a moments sleep.

Would your cave-woman ancestors put their babies in a separate cave?

That's how weird it would feel to me, not to have my little baby next to me. But I wouldn't criticise anyone else for doing it. But it does seem a bit sad. And Firawla, yes, I would rather have sex with the baby in the room (asleep) than put it in another room. And did!

Not wanting to get into an English Language debate but the most normal distinction is that you're "demonising" someone if you "single them out for criticism".

Not the traditional use of the term perhaps, but in common use nonetheless.

I did not say that you implied that you said she should have her child taken away from her

But, stating that this is "blatantly wrong" could easily be seen as over the top in its own right could it not?

I think we all played musical bedrooms when mine were that little. With ds1 he was in his own room from 3 days old from when I put him in his basket for a (hopefully) big sleep at my night time. Then when he woke, which could be anything from an hour to 5 hours later, I would go through to his room and feed him, then spend the rest of the night on the bed in his room, feeding when required.

ds2 and dd I think I slept in with them in their rooms for the first couple of months, but tbh, when they were regularly sleeping a 6 hour stretch at night then I would go back to my bed for that bit because we all got a better night's sleep.

The cot death thing didn't worry me at all as we didn't have any of the other risk factors around.

I'm surprised people feel so strongly about it. Each to their own, surely.

YANBU. The risk of SIDS should be enough to put anyone off. And it bugs me when people say 'I don't see what the connection is', as I can't believe they are all qualified to judge whether the research is any good or not - that is more about rationalising their choice to put the child in another room.

My understanding is that it has been admitted that researchers don't know why there is a link, but there is definitely one. That being the case, I would rather not take the chance. Plus it was much easier to get up and attend to my DS and then get quickly back to sleep when he was in the same room. And finally, who aspires to 'couple time' with a 1 mo baby?

Poor cave women - I bet they would have done if they had had a separate cave!!

longtalljosie, I didn't know the absolute racket she makes is linked to reflux...she sounds exactly like you describe!

If people are so desperate for sleep that they are willing to do it, then that's their choice and they must weigh up their willingness to take that risk. But it is a risk, and to try to rationalise their choice by saying the research doesn't make sense to them is trying to find a way round facing up to that, it seems to me.

Well nobody ever told me there was a risk of SIDS 7 or 5 years ago if I didn't have the kids in my room. Is this recent advice?

Another reason I had for putting them in a separate room was that we were waking THEM up in our room, with creaking bed / snoring etc. The whole house was sleep deprived.

The risk of cot death is minimal. But why wouldn't I put a baby in its own room at this age? Because if the child suffered cot death I would have spent the rest of my life wondering whether my decision had been a contributory factor.

So remote risk - but weigh it up and make your own decision accordingly. Don't condemn others' choices. It's hardly in the same league as smoking when pg.

I had to add that having my (now) XP snoring out alcohol / cigarette fumes in his sleep really didn't appeal to me so I felt it was safer for the DC's in another room.

EightiesChick, thanks for that, but I am not trying to rationalise the decision (if I do decide to move her to her own room)

I am just saying that I don't understand the link between the two, and it doesn't really appear that the researchers do at this point in time either, from what I can gather.

Someone on another thread said just because there is a correlation doesn't mean there is causation, and that makes sense to me.

marge OK, take 'tribal' people today - they carry the baby with them all day, strapped to their backs, and sleep next to them at night. This is from 'The Continuum Concept' by Jean Leidloff, about mothers in the Amazon region. She said that the babies were calm, happy & didn't cry - they didn't need to. The mothers were so close to them (in both senses) that they anticipated the child's needs. The baby shared the mother's hammock at night. It would only be ousted after the birth of the next child. (Wasn't explained how 'couple time' happened )

That, to me, sounded like an approach I wanted to emulate.

I also had a very noisy sleeper who was in her cot in her own room at 3 weeks with hv's blessing.

I had a noisy one too, also reflux. He was in a cot in our room, with husband - who was oblivious to grunting, gurgling and sicking noises, but would wake for a cry. I slept elsewhere, and husband would bring him to me for feeding.

Then I decided that this was a silly system and put him in his own room at about 2 months.

(I put him to sleep on his front, too. Yes, I know - very very bad. But so much sick used to come out, and on his back it would choke him. On his front it could just flow out freely onto the sheet).

The thing about sleeping in the same room that I never quite understood - and I'm not being awkward here, tis a genuine question - if the baby goes to bed at 7pm and the parents not until midnight - they're alone in the room for 5 hours. Do you have to go to bed at 7 too, or does the baby stay up until midnight?

I don't think you're being unreasonable to feel a bit sorry for this baby, but I do think you're very wise not to say anything. People make such different parenting choices.

When I was pregnant with DS, my MIL was completely horrified when I said we were going to co-sleep. At 23 months old, her grandson is still in the 'family bed' and she has totally got used to the idea.

Our bedroom is right next to the baby's room at the end of an L shaped hall, so the baby's door and our door are next to each other at right angles if you see what I mean. Our bed and the baby's cot are both on the walls next to the door, with the result that with both door open its about 3 metres from our bed to the baby's cot in her own room. This is no closer than the cot would be against the wall in our room. I had planned to use the moses basket for the first few weeks but she is on course to be a big baby so I doubt she will fit in the moses basket for the first 6 months, which would mean bringing the big cot bed through from her room, which I planned to use for day time sleeps right from the start.
I am keen to follow all the SIDS advice and have bought dummies/grobags etc, but I genuinely can't see what the difference is between having the baby three metres away from us in our room, or three metres away via two wide open doors. Can anyone enlighten me?