to not have newborn in our room?

[rpickett]

I see on here a lot that people assume that babies are going / should go into their parents room for so long when home from the hospital but is it really nessacery? (sp?)

I planned on putting DC3 straight into a cot in her own room, now before I get flamed her room is next to ours in the sense you have to walk through ours to get into hers and lot of people would say it would probably make a better walk in wardrobe then a bedroom, so she wouldn't be more then 2 meters from my bedside techinically, I just wondered if maybe IBU and should put her in a moses basket right next to the bed instead?

We have a sensor mat alarm for the cot and thought that it would be reasurring enough am I wrong?

My 2 older DC's stayed in our room for the first 6months but that was due to lack of space more then anything else, before we moved last year.

I was at my hospital yesterday and there were signs everywhere about 'rooming in' and the reasons why it is such a good idea, the reduction in SIDS etc. The advice was very strongly that this is safest place for your baby to sleep at night. However, if you choose to look at the evidence and decide you want to take that risk then that is up to you.

The idea that babies need to hear you rather than you hear them is really interesting.

If your baby is snuffly and noisy why don't you wear cotton wool in your ears or earplugs so they can still be near you?

Tittybangbang - I completely agree with your last post. I just this morning read a link to an article written by a Kenyan-born mum who returned home to have her baby because she agreed with the way babies are cared for there. It was about the reasons why babies rarely cry in certain cultures - because everything is focussed on creating a womb-like environment for the first 6 weeks at least. She said you rarely even see a newborn because they are wrapped and carried close to their mums with blankets shielding them from the outside world.
I think one of the difficulties is that our society has been conditioned to believe that normal newborn behaviour is a Bad Thing and that we almost feel duty-bound to try to correct this behaviour or manage it in some way, rather than just accepting that this is the way that caring for a newborn is, and just ride it out.
Part of this is obviously that most of us simply don't have the set-up to devote ourselves entirely to creating the perfect environment for a newborn and put our own needs on hold. For example, if you are returning to work fairly early, as I did, it is difficult to accept sleeplessness as a given - you are thinking "this has got to stop" all the time. If you have older children who need to be taken to school then breastfeeding on demand becomes difficult.
Having said that, I think that when we commit to parenthood we are effectively undertaking to provide the best possible environment for a newborn, and I would like to see a bit more support and encouragement to parents to get back to basics as regards newborn care - we may not be able to create the ideal environment but we can get as close as we can. To me this means not putting a newborn baby any further away from me than arm's reach.

I should also add that we had the world's noisiest newborn sleeper! We tried everything and eventually accepted that it was just something we were going to have to learn to live with.

Did you, actually though, annec555? Read my post above. Was s/he noisier than that? Because the thing that irritates me about these sort of threads is that people assume every baby is like their own, or better.

Lucy - perhaps I could have worn earplugs. But that seemed worse to me than having her on the monitor with the noise turned to a level I could just sleep through. I did learn to tune out the grunting once the level was reduced - although I was wide awake at the quietest whimper.

Yes, I wish I'd been able to keep her in with me. But I reiterate. I wasn't getting broken sleep. I was getting literally none. It was very, very loud.

The thing is, and I speak as one who did have my kids in with us, it's pointless looking to other cultures or even other families to see what they do.

Because they might not work for you and your family.

Some women are able to couch down for a few weeks with their babies so lack of sleep at night can be made up for elsewhere.
Others may need to work, or look after other children without any support form partner or extended families.

DS1 went straight in his own room when we got back from the hospital. We had a regular baby monitor but no fancy sensor mats or anything like that.

DS2 moved out of our room this week at 9 weeks old. He came in with us as we didn't have a separate room for him to go in and I didn't want him disturbing DS1 if they were in the same room. I'm a ridiculously light sleeper and every sniffle or sigh he made would wake me up.

socialsciencetastic chuff!my god some of you read sinister motives in a baby sleeping in a nursery.isnt indicative of a deep social malaise or societal dysfunction.is perhaps that a nursery is available,specifically for that baby to sleep in

"society has been conditioned" has it?nothing like an ott hyperbolic statement to add mirth.what a preposterous statement.how was this hypothesis arrived at?large sample?ethnographic research?or talkin out arse.making it up as you go along

we bought cot bed,nursing chair,nursery furniture.didn't buy into any sinister conditioning or dislike of newborns

Josie - I will retract my lighthearted comment about the world's noisiest newborn sleeper. I did not know that it would be subject to scrutiny about relative noisiness and I accept that I have no recorded evidence to use for comparative purposes. It is entirely possible that a percentage of babies across the world were noisier than my newborn.
Please insert the following text in place of that comment:
"we had a newborn who was, in a survey of newborns in our social circle, more noisy than most. No newborns were harmed in the making of this assumption."

scottishmummy - please re-read my post and you will see that I said "I think that one of the problems is that...."
I think. My opinion. Put politely and courteously. Unlike yours. We are all making it up as we go along - that is what normal parenting is about. However, there is research out there that can help us through,, carried out by some pretty knowledgable people. You can either accept it or not - that is up to you. I find it a bit odd when people start shouting about someone else's opinion just because it doesn't accord with their view of the world. It smacks of defensiveness.

"Part of this is obviously that most of us simply don't have the set-up to devote ourselves entirely to creating the perfect environment for a newborn and put our own needs on hold."

The majority of mothers in the UK have far fewer children, better health and easier domestic arrangements than the vast majority of women in developing countries. How hard does it have to be to change the way you live for a few weeks to accomodate a newborn's needs?

"For example, if you are returning to work fairly early, as I did, it is difficult to accept sleeplessness as a given - you are thinking "this has got to stop" all the time".

Most women in the UK have maternity leave. Most women in developing countries do back-breaking physical labour throughout the day and have no paid leave. I went back to work when my first was 5 and a half weeks old, so I know how hard it is to be sleepless when you have a demanding job, but even so...... You muddle through don't you? Somehow?

"If you have older children who need to be taken to school then breastfeeding on demand becomes difficult".

Yes - difficult in a non-breastfeeding culture where you're made to feel you can't breastfeed a baby anywhere else except at home or in a baby changing room. I personally didn't find it THAT much of a challenge doing the school and nursery run with a hungry and exclusively breastfed baby, but I suppose it depends on expectations. In the UK we seem to find these things very very hard. In other countries where breastfeeding is normal women don't seem to struggle in the same way.

"isnt indicative of a deep social malaise or societal dysfunction.is perhaps that a nursery is available,specifically for that baby to sleep in"

Well - so you say. But there are strong arguments that domestic arrangements and childcare practices tend to reflect dominant cultural mores. Otherwise why do they vary so much from country to country, between social classes and between historical eras?

Although the one area in which there has generally been some consistency throughout the history of human kind (at least until recently) is that MOST mothers have breastfed their babies and MOST babies have been kept close to their mothers during early infancy day and night. That's because the physiology of successful breastfeeding, and the physiology of newborn babies (who are not great at regulating their own body temperature) requires close contact between mother and baby. That's why babies instinctively want to be close to their mothers - it's an evolutionary survival mechanism.

Another thousand years or so of bottlefeeding and early separation of mothers from their newborns and babies may begin to lose this early attachment to their mothers' breasts and body. They may evolve away from it. But for the time being babies have a powerful instinct to stay close to their mothers, and thwarting this instinct may carry some subtle consequences which are poorly recognised or understood.

Ok, will stand down now. off to Ikea to satisfy my powerful instinct for buying cheap tat.

I'm with tittybangbang and annec555 on this.

One of the things that gets me about birth and parenting in the UK is the importance everyone places on skin on skin immediately post-birth. Pretty much all the received wisdom says you need to get baby on your chest as soon as she's out, as it strengthens the bond so much.

Why then do so many mums seem to do this, then take baby home and put her in the next room?

Personally I have been co-sleeping with ds (now 9 months) since day 1, partly because it felt instinctive, partly because I was too lazy to get out of bed in December to feed him. Yes he was noisy for the first few weeks, but now he's very peaceful. I believe that it's no coincidence that he's never had colic, he hardly ever cries (and if he does, it's through hunger, tiredness or pain) and I am complimented several times a day on how content and "good" he is ("good"? Or just not annoying you by crying? But that's a whole other discussion).

But that's only my opinion and only based on anecdotal evidence... :)

Tittybangbang - I was agreeing with you! The comments you have picked out were musings on why we seem prone to trying to correct newborn behaviour, not justifications for doing so.

Good posts, tbb and annec555. 'Happy mum, happy baby' is a line too easily trotted out as an excuse for not following both guidelines and the needs of newborn babies to be near their mothers.

only read to page one but am pmsl at Chil1234's ignorant outrage!!

scottishmummy - love is for wimps, right?

I find it sad that mothers want to minimise the disturbance they get with a newborn. Put the baby in a separate room so the baby won't annoy me with its grunting and wriggling. FGS you had a baby, this isn't about you any more ...... HOw inconvenient to have a baby that keeps me awake at night.

Kittywise - I wonder if their DHs are similarly booted out to another room for being too noisy?

While I understand the arguments against having a snuffly newborn in your room, (yes, they can be very noisy and disrupt their parent's sleep), I think it is easy to forget how real the threat of cotdeath was a few years ago.

Twenty-odd years ago, my neighbour had her third child, a baby girl. All the neighbours were full of congratulations and I had the pleasure of holding her for an hour or so, perched on the sofa surrounded by her doting family. Her new big brothers were bouncing around, fetching things for her, so excited. I can still remember her little face and that lovely newborn smell, sleeping in my arms.

At nine days old, they lost her to SIDS. Although they ticked other boxes (bottle fed, Dad smoked), she also slept alone in their little boxroom, which is where they found her. The family were devastated, as you can imagine and the parents separated soon afterwards.

All of mine slept in my room, in the cot beside me, until they were six months old. The argument that nothing happened to your baby doesn't cut it with me. I wouldn't want to take the risk to be honest. You can always squeeze a moses basket in if nothing else.

I'm sorry to be blunt but these things happen to someone.

I think far too many mothers take decisions about how they are going to minimise the amount of care they are going to provide themselves, directly for their babies before the birth, and never give themselves the chance to let nature take its course and just enjoy the continuation of a growing baby on the outside as opposed to the inside of the mother's body.

Living in very close physical proximity to your newborn is one of life's most extraordinary experiences that gives the word love all its meaning.

But Bonsoir, don't you think many women do that because of the huge pressures placed upon them from other quarters?

To look nice.
To mkae sure all the children look nice.
To ensure the house looks nice.
To cook.
To have a great social life.
To earn money.

All these things take time and effort and we all kow how much babies can eat into our time and sap our energies to put in the effort.

It's difficult to tell women to spend the time and effort on their new borns, when conversly we ( and women are every bit as bad as men for this )berate women if any of the above list fall below the bar.

Litchick, I am sure you are right. This is what I meant by my earlier post about what society believes about caring for a newborn. We may have it physically much, much easier than women in many developing countries, but we have completely different expectations place upon us by those around us, leading us to constantly worry about what we "ought" to be doing and how our babies ought to be behaving in order for us to achieve these ends. A lot of it is, in my view, about the lack of community - you have the old saying about needing a village to raise a child. If you live in a society where children are placed in the heart of community and their needs are considered paramount, then it is probably a lot easier for the mother herself to go with the flow and exclude all other considerations other than the nurturing of her child. But when you live in a society where you constantly feel the need to be productive and to be seen to be productive, it becomes a lot more difficult to stay focussed solely on the needs of your newborn.
This is why I would like to see a lot more support via health professionals and NHS and government guidance about the really basic, nurturing aspects of caring for a newborn

whoops annec, sorry - didn't mean to be confrontational. I did recognise the points you made, I was just charging a bit too enthusiastically into the debate!

Re: SIDS, despite the reduction in rate of cot-death in the last decade, it's still the main cause of death for babies under 1 in the UK I think.

Personally I would boot dh into the closet and put baby in the bed if it's a matter of space. A grown man can deal with the separation far easier than a baby in what is now widely recognised not a maturity but as the fourth trimester. Saying that babies snort too much and should be banished from their parents for 12 hours a day is like saying that because a baby is kicking you in the third trimester you should force them out early to get a bit of sleep.

That's OK tittybangbang!
The whole SIDS topic frustrates me as there seems to be massive misunderstanding of the terminology and the risk factors involved. I used to post on another forum which is a little prone to sanitising all replies to the extent that any request for opinions receives a whole load of cloned "each to their own hun" responses and the occasional deleted "are you insane woman?" bit of sense. I kept seeing the co-sleeping debate come up time and time again there and people seemed to use SIDS as though it was completely interchangeable with death due to overlaying. And no matter how many times people piped up saying "suffocation is not SIDS" the discussions continued as though the two are the same thing. So people regularly say that co-sleeping raises the risk of SIDS when it apparently does the exact opposite. This is the kind of misinformation I would like to see the end of through better support and advice.
I did read some US studies which suggested that not a single case of SIDS had been reported in a co-sleeping, breastfed baby. That is pretty big information, but not many people seem to be aware of it.
I know the topic isn't about co-sleeping, but the issue of awareness of SIDS and how to protect against it is relevant.

Agree with you annec555. Reading Three in a Bed has helped me to see that the advice that co-sleeping led to SIDS came from just one study in New Zealand which has not been completely refuted and actually led to more cot deaths when implemented. And also that the risk of suffocation is not increased by co-sleeping (can't remember exact stats)