To leave 7 week old alone in bedroomwith a baby monitor?

[HollyGoLoudly1]

Wise mumsnetters, please advise - SIDS advice says if baby is sleeping that they should be in the same room as you until 6 months. I want to start a bedtime routine with baby going down in the bedroom at 8pm. Is this ok if I am listening in using a monitor? Or do they literally have to be in the same room (i.e. living room) until I go to bed?

The breathing thing is not that the baby keeps up with each adult breath. It's the adult sleep cycles/disturbance cycles and random disturbances that are important to keep the baby from falling into too deep a sleep (NREM). Adult sleep cycles alternate between REM and NREM1, 2, and 3 sleep through the night, with each cycle lasting 1-2 hours.

www.parentingscience.com/baby-sleep-patterns.html
Very interesting article on infant sleep.

The breathing thing isn’t rubbish. Apneas are real and it is believed that if there is the presence of another person or sound/light then these can be self correcting.
Why not have a bedtime ‘routine’ at 7 weeks btw? What’s wrong with a bath/oil massage/story/cuddle and feed at roughly the same time each day? Does it cause distress to the baby? Is it harmful?! What it does is offers some cues to a very immature brain that a period of darkness and rest is approaching. I don’t see what the problem with that is.
What do people mean by ‘routine’?

In fact I found the bedtime routine to be my favourite part of the day with both kids. Just a calm end to often frenetic days. With two kids I was often breastfeeding on the go, that post bath feed with the baby all clean smelling and snuggled up was extremely precious. I have no idea what was unnatural about it?!

And surely anyone with more than one kid has a ‘routine’? With DS2 he was woken up when DS1 woke up, had a feed when DS1 has breakfast, quick change of nappy and clothes, napped on the school run, come home and feed, maybe head out somewhere etc etc etc? This is a ‘routine’ but a natural one and a product of being a younger sibling. Doesn’t involve any neglect or lack of maternal instinct.

If the baby isn't your 1st, then you (well, I) end up putting them down to sleep, then sorting out the toddler(s). So it's ages before you're in the same room again.

Exactly. I wonder if the people who say they never let their sleeping baby out of their sight only have one child, or have large age gaps.

To the people claiming that a woman must have a lack of maternal instincts to allow a baby to sleep for a couple of hours in a separate room after a regular bedtime routine and then to be joined by his/her mother when she goes to bed - would you also say that about women who choose not to breast feed? Because that’s also a SIDS risk.

LadyLaSnack ooh don't go there!

Funny that so many on MN claim pressure to breastfeed can lead to PND and "happy mum happy baby" given as a reason to switch to formula. Yet putting baby down alone for an hour or two in the evening so mum can have a bit of time to be a normal human being is "lacking maternal instincts."

There is something particularly dark and possibly misogynistic about claiming that a woman doesn’t have maternal instincts for making a perfectly reasonable parenting choice. Every choice we make in life every day involves some element of risk - getting into the car to drive a baby a short journey for a hospital appointment involves taking a risk. It doesn’t mean that a mother who takes this option has a lack of maternal instinct.

I have a sensor pad for mine, brilliant device! I'm currently battling my 13 month old into a bed time routine after keeping him with me until he falls asleep. It is a nightmare. Do what you need to do, I believe you can start a routine this early, slowly but surely! Just do it as safely as possible, look into the angelcare mat if you're worried x

Oh I would lit baby with you. My 2nd baby I put in its own room with monitor, and baby was allergic to milk,I had tried to bottle and breastfeed. I woke up to a strange noise on the monitor and went in and baby had filled moses basket with quite a lot of vomit. I got a real shock. It doesn’t take much to put them at risk.

I’ve got 12 week old twins. They sleep in the room with us, but are usually in bed asleep by 9pm. DH and I will then often sit up downstairs for an hour or two (periodically checking them) We don’t have a baby monitor, but our house is small so we can hear every noise anyway. Until this thread it had never occurred to me to bring them downstairs with us. They are used to going to bed now.

I don’t bring them in with my to shower etc either. Again it’s never occurred to me if they are safe in their bouncers/baskets.

Oh and my mothering instincts are just fine thanks. Wanting to give my babies some peace and quiet to sleep on a night rather than keeping them up with telly noise and bright lights does not make me a bad mother. Some very odd and judgemental opinions on this thread.

Interesting mathanxiety, my midwife said virtually the same thing when I asked her about SIDs when my DS was tiny. She said there were very few reports in our health board, and they'd all involved alcohol, drugs, or accidental suffocation.

Just do it as safely as possible, look into the angelcare mat if you're worried

As safely as possible is staying in the same room as the baby.

Angelcare and other breathing monitors do not reduce SIDS.

I had two children 2.5 years apart. When napping the baby used to be in the living room if at home. Of course I'd go to the toilet or to make a sandwich but the baby wasn't left for more than a couple of minutes.

This is the way I chose to parent my children. It was fine. On weekdays we were at groups lots of days anyway so the baby just slept in the pram or on me.

I'm not judging anyone who does it different, just answering the number of 'how do you stay with your baby' questions.

I had a family friend who lost a baby to SIDS in the 90s and it has made me very anxious about it so that's why I really tried to do everything 'right' when mine were little.

As I said upthread, I’m in Switzerland where babies are followed by a paediatrician from birth (as opposed to a health visitor). Ours told us that he's never seen a case of SIDS in his entire 30-year career and neither had his colleagues.

I would hazard a guess that the risk of a young baby dying from other causes is greater; road accident, infectious disease etc.

Incidentally, I hope those on this thread preaching about not taking 'risks', have had their children fully vaccinated. Otherwise, they'd be absolute hypocrites. Or thick as fuck. Or maybe both.

*I had two children 2.5 years apart. When napping the baby used to be in the living room if at home. Of course I'd go to the toilet or to make a sandwich but the baby wasn't left for more than a couple of minutes.

This is the way I chose to parent my children. It was fine. On weekdays we were at groups lots of days anyway so the baby just slept in the pram or on me.*

So when my 2.5 year old woke up having vomited all over her room in the middle of the night, and DH was out of town, what should I have done? Woken the baby, put her into a sling, and then taken her to mop the vomit and shower her older sibling?

I mean this is just one example of many times where I could not have stayed with a sleeping baby. Oh - my DC1 is prone to vomiting so this wasn't particularly rare!

@brookshelley I was just saying what I did. I didn't once say 'this is what everyone else should do'. You do what everyone else does in that situation. Your best.

@NerrSnerr but what would you have done in that situation? That's what I want to know. Would you genuinely tell a mum in that case to wake the baby?

@brookshelley no I wouldn't tell a mum to wake the baby. I wouldn't tell a mum to do anything as it's their choice. I have just said what I did.

I genuinely don't know what I would have done in that situation. My husband is away for 2 weeks of every month so it's conceivable we had it but I really can't remember.

The OP asked for advice- I said what I personally did. I didn't say 'all other mothers should do the same'.

Yabu. Being close to you helps regulate their breathing and reduces the risk of sids. Also a bedtime routine at that age is a bit unrealistic. Both of mine started developing some kind of routine (falling asleep earlier in the evening and sleeping between feed at night rather than having periods of being awake in the evening/at night) around 4 months, maybe a little later. One of mine slept through from about 12 weeks - we carried him upstairs when we went to bed. All of the people who did this and their babies were fine, great for them but there are people who have lost babies to sids, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t do everything you could to decrease the risks.

I love the people stating the regulating breathing thing as fact when it's actually just a theory. The truth is that studies show there's a correlation between room sharing and a lower rate of SIDS. Nobody really knows why, nor do we know that one directly leads to the other (lots of other factors at play - parents who room share are more likely to have read and follow the rest of the safe sleep advice etc). As with all the safe sleep guidelines, if you can do it, you should - but if there's a compelling reason in your specific circumstances not to, it doesn't make you a bad mother.

My ds has his nap in the garden in his car seat, he couldn’t lie down due to bad reflux.

Sorry that was “had”, he’s 19 now !!

I tried to point that out upthread, peachgreen, and didn't get very far... People have this weird magical thinking about SIDS, that if you 'do everything right' it won't happen, and so it must be your fault if it does. The whole thing is so much greyer than most of this thread suggests. People also seem to think something dramatic happens at six months that changes the risk - it doesn't, SIDS risk peaks at 2-3 months and then declines reasonably steadily from there; it isn't wildly dangerous to leave a 5.5 month alone and then totally safe to leave a 6.5 month old. This graph is American but they all look pretty similar: pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/116/5/1245/F1.large.jpg

YABU, and none of mine went down before 10 at that age. My childless aunt thought it was terrible that DD then 4's bedtime was before DS2's. Ummmm, because she can't go to bed at 11?

YABU, and none of mine went down before 10 at that age.

Fine. OP's baby is getting sleepy well before that. Should she explain to her baby that they can't be tired because yours weren't? Can you let me know when yours got hungry, please? I have been feeding DS on demand but obviously he can't be hungry at different times to yours so I'll just explain that to him at the same time as I get rid of his bedtime and make him scream in the lounge until 10pm.