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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

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

409 replies

HollyGoLoudly1 · 07/11/2018 19:23

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?

OP posts:
AllTakenSoRubbishUsername · 07/11/2018 21:25

Oh I see you were wondering whether to put the baby up there to bed in your room before you go up. We didn't do this - kept them in a moses basket in a quiet other room downstairs (not the main room) so that it was really peaceful, but we could watch them a lot. Then a feed and bed in our room at 11 when we went up - it worked really well for us.

crazycatlady5 · 07/11/2018 21:26

All babies are different op but I tried so many ways to try to get my daughter into a routine it made me stop enjoying her and by 12 weeks I decided to go with the flow and we were all much happier. By 7 months she had a rough routine and bedtime but it was never the same. She is 21 months now and is desperate to get into bed at 6.30pm and says ‘nunight everyone see you soon’ 😂 take it as it comes.

Haffiana · 07/11/2018 21:26

It will be fine. The advice has changed every few years for at least a century, and will carry on changing.

Your daughters will be on MN in 20 odd years time shrieking with horror that babies were encouraged to sleep in sitting rooms...

Blondielongie · 07/11/2018 21:28

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

SummerGems · 07/11/2018 21:31

There was a mn’er years ago on here who lost a two year old to SIDS. It can happen at any time, to anyone. The talk of wondering what if is not helpful. What should this MN’er have done to prevent her dd from dying then? Given she had passed this magic six month mark

Any baby can die of SIDS at any time. But it’s not a case of if your baby doesn’t die it’s because you did everything “right” it’s a case of that people whose babies die are unlucky. And apart from absolutely logical situations such as smoke and alcohol use etc, while there are things which apparently ease the breathing etc, any baby can die of sids at any time. What guilt do people pile on when the baby dies in the same room? Because it does happen.

Original poster
HollyGoLoudly1 · 07/11/2018 21:33

@Blondielongie don't apologise - you were trying to help. I'm very sorry that happened to your family Flowers

OP posts:
Storm4star · 07/11/2018 21:35

Forget all thoughts of bedtime for baby until they're 1

Really? Mine were sleeping through the night in their own rooms from 4 months onwards. Tbh I haven’t rtft, saw that on page 1! I’m not going to advise on 7 weeks as my kids are both nearly 30 now and I know advice changes. A year for sleeping through just seemed extreme though!

littledinaco · 07/11/2018 21:38

Peak SIDS risk is age 2-4 Months so statistically he’s coming into the highest risk for SIDS of his whole life.
I would do whatever it takes to minimise that risk. Putting him upstairs on his own while you sit downstairs is completely avoidable.

Is he ok by himself for an hour using a monitor
A monitor won’t help protect from SIDS. He will statistically more than likely be ok as SIDS is thankfully rare but it does happen and the consequences are obviously devastating. In this situation, why take the chance.

Just have him down with you. Enjoy this time when they are so little and can have them asleep on you watching telly, etc. You’ll never get this time back. Plenty of time for routines, etc later.

Those suggesting breathing monitors, they are shown to do nothing to reduce SIDS and some actually feel they increase risk as parents can get complacent and think baby is safe as they have the monitor so leave them sleeping on their own when they otherwise wouldn’t.

crazycatlady5 · 07/11/2018 21:42

Just have him down with you. Enjoy this time when they are so little and can have them asleep on you watching telly, etc. You’ll never get this time back. Plenty of time for routines, etc later.

Couldn’t agree more with this. I used to eat dinner one handed but I look back so fondly at that time when babies will literally sleep ANYWHERE.

Dobbythesockelf · 07/11/2018 21:49

I have to say I agree about enjoying the time when they are little babies. With my dd I was always waiting for the next milestone etc. But this time I'm just enjoying my ds as he is. About a year ago I realised that my dd who was 2 at the time hadn't fallen asleep resting on me for months, she used to still occasionally cuddle up to me and have a nap on me, but she hadn't done that for months. Enjoy the time with a sleepy cuddly baby cause it really doesn't last long.

kate20091985 · 07/11/2018 22:02

My health visitor actually suggested we start a bedtime routine when my first was 8 weeks. We'd do bath, bottle and then put him in his Moses basket in our bedroom while we were downstairs with a baby monitor. We sometimes had to go up, and he'd have a feed before we went to sleep, but he slept fantastic. Went into the cot in his room at 12 weeks as he'd outgrown the Moses basket, and slept through from 14 weeks. If only my second had been that easy! Confused

Absofrigginlootly · 07/11/2018 22:17

But co sleeping is far more dangerous than putting a baby to sleep in a quiet place with a baby monitor, except that babies who die co sleeping are not recorded as SIDS deaths.

Not true.

50% of sids deaths occur in cots. 50% cosleeping.... although 90% of cosleeping deaths occur in avoidable hazardous circumstances

It’s a wonder the human race has survived for millennia without the perfectly designed cot/mattress/sleeping and breathing monitor/gro bag/gro egg/ewen the sheep etc etc....Almost as if the natural sleeping arrangement of breastfeeding mother alongside infant has been dismantled and then all these rules and equipment put back in place to try and rectify the void... Hmm

Absofrigginlootly · 07/11/2018 22:21

I usually use his nap times during the day to shower, do dishes etc so I'm not in the same room as him then either. How do people manage if you literally can't leave them alone when they are sleeping?

Pop them in the bouncy chair in the bathroom when awake and grab a super quick shower. All day naps in the sling, do washing up etc then

Mishappening · 07/11/2018 22:27

When we had babies (a while ago!) we were told to lie them on their fronts! Midwife was most insistent.

Baby slept in own room at night (and in other room or garden during the day) from just a few weeks. No monitors to be had then. Everyone did it. I did not know anyone who had a problem.

Baby got used to its own environment and associated that room with time to sleep. All my children went to sleep on their own - I just accepted that they would cry for a short while, then they dropped off. They do not seem to be emotionally scarred - they are a jolly bunch!

hamburgers · 07/11/2018 22:37

Silly comment @Mishappening 🙄I think the advice has changed since you've had babies BECAUSE of incidents that have happened, maybe not to you or any of your friends, but they certainly happened - hence the change in advice.

I know your comment has come from a good place with good intentions but I can't stand the rhetoric "oh it never did me any harm" or "never did them any harm". It's like when parents smack their children; "oh it doesn't do them any harm!".

seventhgonickname · 07/11/2018 22:37

I had my baby out in the garden in a pram to sleep in the day.

Absofrigginlootly · 07/11/2018 22:41

When we had babies (a while ago!) we were told to lie them on their fronts! Midwife was most insistent. Baby slept in own room at night (and in other room or garden during the day) from just a few weeks. No monitors to be had then. Everyone did it. I did not know anyone who had a problem.

That would be the advice given during the peak of the SIDS epidemic then Hmm

The advice for over 20 years has been to put babies on their backs to sleep and same room for all sleeps and has reduced sids from 1,545 SIDS cases in the UK in 1989 to around a fairly stable 300 per year now (since the early 1990s when the guidelines were introduced).

www.lullabytrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Evidence-Base-2016.pdf

TurkeyBear · 07/11/2018 22:43

Get an angelcare monitor if you insist baby is not in the same room. Forget routines until at least 9m old at 12m old they all go out the window anyway even after then. Relax and enjoy your baby.

TurkeyBear · 07/11/2018 22:46

@Mishappening please for the love of god do not recommend that to anyone ever. It may not have happened to you or your peer group but it happened to thousands of families every year. My identical twin sister was one of those who died thanks to shitty 'good advice' given out by midwives in the 80s.

You were LUCKY.

TurkeyBear · 07/11/2018 22:50

Also OP they now believe a number of sids deaths (and are investigating) are caused by an inability of some babies to regulate their own temperature properly. Not that they can properly anyway for ages, but that some really struggle. So the closer baby is to you at all times the better. Your body temp naturally regulates to theirs.

LisaSimpsonsbff · 07/11/2018 23:22

I always find these threads on MN really surprising and wonder if there are a lot of people too scared to say they break this guideline! I have a four month old and so currently spend a lot of time hanging out with other mothers of babies and I have never encountered anyone in real life who doesn't put the baby up to bed with a monitor well before six months (though not usually as early as seven weeks, but that's because most babies go to bed later then and most parents want a really early night!). My health visitor laughed when I asked if I had to go to bed at 7pm every night and said it 'wasn't realistic' to never leave the baby alone sleeping.

Pleasegodgotosleep · 07/11/2018 23:25

Would I start a routine? I guess so, likely to be more for your benefit than baby's when they're so young but no harm in it. Separate room at 7 weeks? No chance. I can't think why you'd even want to? I def wouldn't want my wee one to wake up alone at that age or heaven forbid be in some worth of distress and an adult not be there.

Prefer · 07/11/2018 23:36

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

How patronizing and also not necessarily true! DD1 slept through from 10-12 weeks and hasn’t stopped sleeping since! I had a few hiccups with DD2 around teething but she didn’t “stop sleeping through” as such either. Just because yours did doesn’t mean they all do.

OlennasWimple · 07/11/2018 23:48

Blimey, there's a whole lot of difference between a 10-12 week old and a 7 week old!

My point is that the OP is trying to decide what to do with her baby based on how she is sleeping now. That could all be out of the window in less than a week, and then change again significantly in another few weeks. She might not, but it's good to be prepared for the possibility (I wasn't - I didn't know any small babies before I had one, and a prem baby meant that I missed most of my antenatal course)