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?

caprisun I’m assuming the sids guidelines are based on some research?

Baby being in the same room as you for sleeps HALVES the risk of sids.

Yes HALVES it.

Bedtime routine? yes, why not if your baby is amenable (at 7 weeks my babies were in the hours of colicky screaming in the evenings phase)

Separate room? No.

Dc2 slept in our room for 5 months but was put upstairs on his own pretty much immediately as he was put into the same routine as his 14 month old sister who went to bed at 630. Both of my children have been in routine from a teeny tiny age and it is definitely is possible (both mine are FF).

I started a bedtime routine at that age, putting her to bed at about 7 after a bath and a feed and had her on a monitor but still in moses basket in my room then she had to go into her own room at 4 and a half months because she was too big for the Moses basket and I couldn't physically fit a cot in my room.

I think it's never too early to start some sort of routine. Clearly it's never going to be super strict at first but getting baby used to going to bed at roughly the same sort of time every night is no bad thing.
How is your house set up? Our babies slept in our bedroom which was right next door to the living room so there was plenty of noise. We would be coming and going into the hall to the toilet or whatever too. I might think differently if they were in an upstairs bedroom at the other end of a big house.

The NHS has a whole section about sleeping too on their website: www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/getting-baby-to-sleep/

Small risk, high stakes isn't it? Plenty people do, personally I wouldn't. Being in the same room stops them falling into too deep a sleep

Definitely NU. I live in Switzerland where all care is paediatrician-led from birth. Our paediatrician told us that it is absolutely fine for young babies to be in their own room. We had an angelcare respiratory monitor and left the doors open. Both slept through from 8 weeks (I mean 8+ hours min) - this may or may not have been aided by sleeping in their own room.

I have brought up 6 children - they all survived. I would always have them in with me at night. During the day, they slept in their crib in another room but with the door open. I live in a ground floor flat though.

Yes Harriet but the research doesn’t say that being in the room with your baby prevents SIDS by you sitting there breathing. It says the baby is less likely to go into a deep sleep if there are normal sleeping movements, noises, breathing, tossing and turning etc. And SIDS generally occurs in deep sleep.

How is your house set up? Our babies slept in our bedroom which was right next door to the living room so there was plenty of noise. We would be coming and going into the hall to the toilet or whatever too. This is the same as me.

Can I just mention that the 'I did this and it was fine' thing isn't really overly helpful or indeed safe. There's plenty of stuff that people did years ago (putting babies to sleep on their fronts, for example) that was fine then but research has moved on and we're in a fortunate position to know more about a lot of things now and be able to adjust advice accordingly.

Of course there are plenty of babies who go to sleep in different rooms from the start and don't die from SIDs, but the information from the NHS and baby sleep charities is that sleeping in the same room as your baby greatly reduces the risk of SIDs in the first six months of their life. It's at least worth acknowledging that, even if it's a choice you yourself didn't make (either because you weighed up the risks and didn't find it compelling enough or because that advice simply wasn't around when you had your baby).

Baby shouldn't be in own room re sids advice till 6 months.

'Bed time routine' is simply an order of events that happens at bedtime; flexible not time linked. So if baby seems tired you could start it earlier.

We went ott with poor ds1 and did bath book boob bed; bath usually finished him off tbh so I haven't bothered this time. This one gets tired v quickly in the eve too so our 'routine' is upstarts, into sleep back, twinkle star song and white noise on in the dark while I bf him to sleep. I didn't plan It though, it happened and he always sleeps around 4 hours afterwards so he definitely knows it's bedtime. Going to introduce a book before bed soon if he's perky enough.

I usually went to bed around then too as it was usually 9 so he wasn't alone, now he's almost 6 mo and going earlier I'm occasionally leaving him for an hour or so before bed.

The 4 month sleep regression was brutal here, and teething is also currently brutal; he was lucky if he made it into his bedside cot during that time; we had to safely cosleep so I could go back to sleep more easily. That's the down side of own rooms. Having to wake up when they do.

My children are too old for me to give you advice but wanted to point out that SIDS is about them forgetting to breathe. A normal monitor is to hear them crying not to hear them breathing. You would need a specialist monitor for that.

Mine are now 20 and 15 and although they slept in the same room as me at night time I certainly wasn’t with them at all times while they slept.

I often showered while they slept, I washed up while they slept, I hung out washing while they slept (took monitor to garden with me). They slept in the Moses basket in my room and later the cot in my room whenever they did sleep and I was only there with them if I was going to sleep myself.

I certainly was never told that I had to be in the same room at all times.... how does anything get done?

I had a sort of routine from day one....night time was after bath, dark and quiet (not in Moses basket in same room as TV!), daytime naps not so quiet and curtains not fully closed. Naps with second child was an opportunity to spend time with older child so certainly not sitting in the same room.

We had our babies separate from us in the slot between their bedtime and ours after the first few weeks. My reading of lots of research suggested that if you are doing really well on all the other risk factors (not smoking, back to sleep etc etc etc) then this for that portion of the night is a reasonable risk because SIDS is already very very unlikely. (Nothing is without risk entirely). Others will have a different view and I totally understand why.

We did get good sleepers out of it, for what that’s worth. Obviously if one thinks the risk is substantial then that wouldn’t be a trade off one would want to make.

Also, worth adding, baby doesn't have to go into own room at 6 months. Many aren't ready. Also separation anxiety can sometimes start then. I'm deliberately cosleeping this time as a) he's my last and I'm enjoying the cuddles and b) I'm getting loads of sleep as a result and loving it.

I'm not ready to subject myself to night time back and forthing either

I left mine alone to sleep from birth. I really didn’t realise this was a thing. Obviously not overnight but we’d be in the living room and she’d be in our bedroom asleep. I didn’t know about this at all.

I think the experts are the lullaby trust.
We will all have done different things but that doesn't mean that it's safe. And comments like 'I had both mine in their own rooms at that age. Both still alive.' are irresponsible / show no understanding of what risk means for a population. Not everyone who fought on the front in WW1 died either.
If you are doubting the guidelines OP, maybe try and find out more about the reasoning behind them so you can make an informed decision.

I’m more just in disbelief I missed this rule as if I’d known about it I’d have done it

I had a similar question at around 12 weeks when DD would finally sleep off around 7 and do a nice 4 hour stretch before waking every 2 hours for the rest of the night. The SIDs advice is what it is. I still put her in another room but I got a breathing monitor that senses when they are not breathing for 10 seconds and gives them a buzz. Fits onto their nappy. Gave me peace of mind.

Oh I also put on white noise which is supposed to similarly help regulate breathing!

Did you not know before you had a child that their sleep is shite?? For gods sake let them be a baby parents need to put up with their needs.

Both of mine were in their own rooms from about a week old. Obviously woke up in the night etc but were in a routine from a few weeks old. Doesn't always work but I personally preferred having some structure rather than a free for all.

She'll have a growth spurt and stop sleeping through very soon, sorry to tell you

Everyone's situation is different. I'd put a baby up in the bedroom on their own rather than have them in a living room with me and three smokers, for example. But generally, the expert advice is clear that small babies (and she really is still very tiny!) should sleep in the same room as an adult, ideally a parent, all the time until they are at least 6 months