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?

Me too LisaSimpsonsbff. This thread has me bewildered!

I wasn’t aware there are guidelines suggesting never leaving your baby alone for a minute in a room without you?! I have two very small children and no one ever mentioned anything of the sort. Ridiculous.

Seems a lot of neurosis on here.

OP do you mean that you'll keep him in your bedroom but when he goes to bed at 8pm you won't always be in the room (ie pop downstairs to watch TV) and then go to bed with him next to you in basket/cot later?

If so YANBU.

Also, nothing wrong with a bedtime routine at 7 weeks, as long as you feed on demand still

SIDs is very rare (happens to 0.032% of live births) and the majority of children who do die of SIDs have a convergence of several risk factors- existing medical problems, parents who smoke, put to sleep on their front, etc. I suffer from anxiety and i understand how terrifying the thought of SIDs can be, but sometimes people make it sound like you put a healthy low-risk baby down in a cot in another room and it suddenly dies because you weren’t watching it for half an hour. That’s not how it works.

Keep your baby close: why would you not? They are only tiny for such a short time 😭

@OlennasWimple antenatal courses teach you very little about the variation between weeks. Added to that different HV and midwives give out different advice partly due to the fact babies are individual but mostly due to the fact they have different experiences.

Oh and virtually all babies I know/knew - well some are now adults - can sleep in noisy environments even though the same baby may have difficulty feeding in one. So I don't understand the need to put a baby in bed in a separate room when they are small and easy to carry.

I put both dc to bed at 7 from about 5 weeks. I had a breathing monitor clipped to their nappies and a sound monitor too. Obviously they weren't going to sleep right through, but they'd go to 9, and then ten, and eventually it extended to about 7am. They slept in my room though, and I'd go up about 10 (after creeping up to check on them a million and one times.) I think it's good to start some sort of routine early.

We have had a routine for both kids (7 and 2) for bedtime almost from birth. A rough routine. And now it is less vague obviously. BUT we never left them to sleep alone. Recognising that it was such a short period of their life, one of us would always be upstairs. In fact DH would finish his chores downstairs and then come up and lie next to DS1/2, give them an expressed feed if needed while I had some much needed headspace. We did this for roughly 6 months (possibly a little more) for both kids. When we went out and a family member babysat (usually BIL) he sat upstairs too. All day time naps were downstairs where there was enough noise/presence of people. Both of mine knew day from night by 6 weeks-ish, both slept through reliably (barring one night feed) from fairly early on and were both breastfed. So we did the opposite of what most MNers do. We took the boring option and someone (with an iPad and headphones) stayed upstairs with the baby.

I definitely started a bedtime routine early on with both DDs- not that I expected them to adhere to it, but just to have some kind of structure to the days, and they were both (generally) good sleepers, and they seemed to like the routine. I certainly wasn't in the same room as them while they were asleep at all times! They were also too big for their Moses baskets at 12 and 10 weeks respectively so then went into the cot in the next room.

Seems a lot of neurosis on here

Indeed!

The NHS guidelines on SIDS have gotten people who can't understand data and statistics completely paranoid.

The biggest cut in SIDS was from the "back to sleep" campaign which said babies should be placed on their back in a clear cot with no toys or blankets. Other things known to reduce SIDS are breastfeeding, using a dummy, and mum/dad not smoking.

Room sharing is recommended for 6-12 months but the "hearing someone breathe" thing is a theory - they do not actually know 100% why sharing a room with a baby reduces SIDS risk.

So - if you are breastfeeding on demand, don't smoke, put baby on back in a clear cot and share the room with your baby overnight, the risk of SIDS is infinitesimal. Leaving the baby alone for an hour or popping in to check ever 20 minutes in the time between baby's bedtime and yours is not going to all of a sudden lead to your child's death.

Everyone should follow the guidelines to the best of their ability, but in reality I honestly don't know anyone who always had the baby in their sight for 6 months and I believe people who claim they did are lying. If your baby is asleep in the cot in the living room and you have to take a shit, are you telling me you wake the baby up and take it in with you?

@brookshelley why do you presume babies automatically wake up when you carry them to different rooms? And oddly my daughter detects when no one is in the room with her as she suddenly wakes up and starts crying but least I can have a shit knowing she isn't dead.

Our babies have both slept in the cot beside our bed, they have slept there for all naps and all proper sleeps right from day one.

My 18 month old is still in the cot beside our bed.

Personally if you have more than one child I can't see how you could possibly always be in the same room as your sleeping baby without waking it up.

Theses first few months are so worrying.... then you get a bit more relaxed and they start rolling on to their tummies to sleep and then you get to freak out some more all over again lol. By the way when bubs does start rolling over to sleep this is the advice my Health Nurse gave me when I told her I was struggling to sleep through the stress of it 'Unless you are going to sit there all night flipping them back over you may as well not stress about it as there is nothing else you can do to stop it' She was right of course :-) I know that advice doesn't help you right now but in case you get a tummy sleeper in the future it's something to keep in mind.

In direct answer to your question, no I do not think you are being unfair to put your baby in a separate room to sleep however you must make a decision that you feel comfortable with.

@BlueBug45 guess what, all babies are different. My oldest child wanted to be held all day long and rarely napped, if put down usually cried hysterically. In the odd chance she fell asleep I did not dare to pick her up or move her from one location to another for fear of waking her and causing another cycle of screaming and melting down. She hated bouncers and car seats, the only thing she would sleep in was a pack and play, which did not fit inside of my bathroom for shit-taking purposes.

Anyway as I breastfed and had them in a side sleeper cot overnight and used dummies, both of my children made it out of infancy alive. If you wish to shame me for shitting or making a cup of tea out of eyesight of my babies for 10 minutes feel free. Your tone speaks volumes about your view of the world.

I couldn't leave either of mine alone, ever. They both took most of their naps in a sling and we co-slept. They had no routine. Like PP, the only advice I took was from the Lullaby Trust, which is research and evidence-based.

My children slept in their own room from the day they were born. Was never advised otherwise by any healthcare professional.

As to a routine, probably not much point at this age. With both of mine, they sort of found their own routines over time. And then when I got used to them, they changed them.

Wait until your baby is about 12 lbs before trying to get a routine going.

Not knowing why sleeping in the same room reduces SIDS doesn't mean sleeping in the same room isn't a factor in reducing SIDS.

Napping in the day isn't quite the same as sleeping in the night but there is some risk even for naps. 83% of SIDS deaths occur during the night, leaving 17% to daytime napping. You don't have to wake the baby when you leave the room, but you should take the same precautions with the sleeping environment in the day that you do in the night, and you may be able to rely on a certain level of noise in the home to ensure that the baby doesn't experience a dangerous sleep cycle.

Nobody really knows what causes SIDS so obv there is a disconnect as there is advice given out to do X or Y or Z that can prevent it. There are many working in the field who differentiate between accidental suffocation and actual unexplained sudden infant death. SIDS is a diagnosis of exclusion - the cause of death can't be nailed down with certainty to external factors. Hence the advice about putting babies down on their backs in a cot or moses basket with nothing else in it and the suggestion that syncing with parental sleep patterns is a factor in prevention.

It boils down to whether you would prefer to be safe or sorry.

Good blog on infant sleep patterns here: grubbymummyblog.wordpress.com/tag/the-beyond-sleep-training-project/

I'm cuddling my 12 week old at the moment. He may be getting up to feed a fair bit (growth spurt) and I may be tired, but I wouldn't trade these cuddles for the world. There's plenty of time to sleep as he gets older.

I started a routine at 2 weeks! Bath, bottle and bed at 7. We did keep her downstairs in her Moses basket at that age and she woke up for 2-3 feeds during the night until she was 6 weeks old then began sleeping through the night. I think starting a routine early was more for the sake of ourselves and my other children rather than the newborn but she is the only amazing sleeper I've had so it could be linked! I'm thinking of moving her into her own room now (4.5 months) but still not 100 percent sure. I do think 7 weeks is really very young but if you are confident then follow your gut.

I personally think it's more important to prioritise yourself, to try and get any sleep you can. Post natal depression, and mental and physical health problems caused by sleep deprivation are far more common than cot death. If you sleep better with the baby in the same room, do that. Personally we all slept better once DDs were in their own rooms at 10-12 weeks.

Wow I must be a horrible parent having read all of these comments. DD is 12 weeks and we've had a bedtime routine since 4 weeks which works really well. She'll tend to want a bottle somewhere between 3:30.-4:30pm, she'll have cuddles/bath/change to sleepsuit around 5:30/5:45, pre bed bottle and then she'll be asleep by 6:30pm. Our room is upstairs so we'll take her up to bed and come back down to make dinner. We use an angel care monitor with a motion mat so if she even misses a breath for 5 secs we know. Anyone who has one will know that the alarm after 20secs of no movement is piecing so there's no chance you'll miss it. From 10 weeks DD has slept from 6:30-6:30 with a bottle between 10/11pm. It's so worth it as she's happier and better rested whilst a lot of our friends are dealing with screaming overtired babies at 8pm.

Surprised at the responses on here.

There's nothing wrong with trying a bedtime routine. We started one at 4 months and immediately wished we'd done it sooner.

I was super paranoid and cautious about SIDs but I don't see the danger in putting them in a safe sleeping environment and going to bed yourself a little later. Do people really never ever leave their newborns in another room? That must be really limiting.

It boils down to whether you would prefer to be safe or sorry.

No, it boils down to whether you want to have a very very very small risk of being sorry or an even smaller one. People are making it sound like babies left alone will die - and also that SIDS never happens with someone else in the room. That's not what reduced risk means.

People on both sides of this keep assuming all babies are the same. Some babies respond well to routine from quite early on, some don't. Some sleep well in bright, busy spaces at night and some really don't. Someone upthread said that the baby should just nap in a sling - not all babies will sleep in a sling! Mine did and then got to about 14 weeks (so bigger than OP's baby but well before 6 months) and would just scream and scream in overtiredness in the sling but not drift off unless I stood in one spot and bounced really vigorously and then stayed both silent and in constant motion. When he was eight weeks and slept soundly in the sling no matter what I was doing I might have thought it was practical for him to always sleep there, but it stopped being so really quickly!

@brookshelley I suggest you read what other people actually write and not make up what you think they wrote.

bluebug this is a genuine question - what did your five month old sleep in that could be easily moved to the bathroom? Because people keep talking about moving Moses baskets about which we did too - but DS was out of his Moses basket by 12 weeks, as were almost all the other babies I know. He now takes his daytime naps in the pram, but that won't fit in our bathroom, or up the stairs, so I do sometimes leave him in it in one room while I'm in another. What are you putting the baby in that's portable right up to six months?