AIBU to not enjoy baby in the room with us?!

[poppymatilda]

Arrggghhhh, is it just us or are newborns generally so noisy? Ours will be 6 weeks old on Thursday and she is a nightmare to share a room with, squeaks, grunts, snorts etc. Even though she's settled into a decent feeding pattern every 3 hours and sleeps between (usually but not always 100% reliably) i don't really sleep because she constantly wakes me up with her noise. When I peer into her crib she's asleep through it all!
Does it settle down at any point? Currently counting down until she's 6 months and I can ship her next door to the nursery!

(With apologies to the OP, who I realise did not ask for advice about how long to room share - the discussion is interesting)

So the thing is that the guidelines are simply based on research, someone has to interpret them and turn it into advice which is easier to understand for parents than a load of figures and unknowns, which is fair.

That means interpretations differ. You see this if you compare advice between countries. What I found interesting is that the research doesn't specify 6 months as a cut off. It's not as though they know the level of risk in and out of the parent's room by age - it's simply a generalised recommendation, and so the age varies by country. Canada and the US's recommendations sometimes go to a year. It's my belief that the UK ones are six months because if they advised a year here, nobody would do it. But at the same time they don't make it lower because they do want to maximise the time babies spend sleeping with parents. Culture and what people do without advice play a huge part in how advice is worded. Just compare the UK and US guidance on car seat times for babies considering UK and US driving culture.

In addition no other country specifies that all naps and early-evening sleep should be in a room where the parent(s) are, it's either left ambiguous, or clearly stated that it's for night time sleep only. My guess is the reseach doesn't differentiate and other advising bodies have gone - well if we can get people to do it for the longest stretch, that ought to reduce a big chunk, and the UK ones have gone - well SIDS can happen at any time of day and if it reduces the risk here it probably reduces the risk there.

Personally if I was going to move a child out early I'd look at danger periods for SIDS which are broadly thought to be 2-4 months and wait until that had passed. Interestingly some research came out last year which said exactly this - that 4 months is an optimal time to move babies as it tends to result in increased sleep yet no significant increase in SIDS risk. www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/06/08/room-sharing-infants-sleep-sids_n_16994320.html

@BertieBotts Really interesting post, thank you. I looked at the stats when deciding when to move my daughter and the significant drop off in risk at 4 months is what convinced me that was the right time. And she certainly sleeps well at night now at 10 months and always has done.

I think the other thing people are missing as that this isn't some soft snuffles we're talking about - my daughter would grunt, yell, groan etc etc - all in her sleep. There's videos on YouTube of grunting baby syndrome - it's impossible to sleep through, with or without earplugs.

I lasted 10 weeks with my first and 10 days with my second. I am aware of the guidelines and weighed up the risks but me driving around the next day with 2 small children and no sleep at all was really not acceptable either. We did have a breathing monitor though. Ear plugs are fine too as they drown out a little bit of the farmyard noises but don't remove any of the benefits of baby being in your room.

From what you've said OP move baby into their own room.

OP my first was a fourth go at IVF and I was the very definition of a PFB mother.

Despite that it never even occurred to me that having them sleep with you meant all the time for the first six months and she was in her Moses basket in our room, without us from the age of 5 weeks for three hours until we went to bed. She was also in a room that was not 16-20 degrees as it was June in the South East of England and there was a heatwave three weeks after she was born.

She was also a noisy sleeper, who slept through the night from 13 weeks (don't worry, her younger sister didn't pay us the same courtesy, I more than got my comeuppance) so went into her own room at 18 weeks so that everyone would get a better night's sleep.

I also know someone whose child instantly slept through when she put them into their own room at 4 months.

The guidelines are there for a reason, and they are good and important but also, the sleeping in the same room thing is part of a much wider group of guidelines, all of which it sounds like you're observing.

Don't stress yourself out - and don't write off the NCT or the mums' groups because of some overly-judgey people on the internet. I don't live where I'm from, and the NCT was a lifesaver for me.

I think some people are clueless about child safety. I'm at soft play atm and there's a baby asleep in a car seat, under a table while granny is off playing with a toddler. It's in a massive snowsuit (which I assume it travelled in) which also covers it's mouth. It's really warm in here. There's so much wrong with the situation but I'd be shouted at for interfering if I said anything no doubt.

I moved mine out at 4 months after reading the research, I didn’t keep them with me for all naps and at the beginning of the night. Sids is much more likely to occur in the middle of the night. They all slept through once in their own room or before.

I'd rather have my newborn sleeping in the room next to me and not kill my other kids in a car crash because I'm too tired to drive, so... [shrug].

I think BB's post above about how research findings get translated into public health advice is so interesting. As she says, it will depend on the culture. Advice needs to be realistic and straightforward otherwise people will not follow it. Forcing people to stick dogmatically to advice can end up increasing other risks.

I think people are exaggerating a bit about how they're all so tired they're gonna crash their cars (and my newborn didn't sleep for more than 40 minutes at a stretch pretty much for the first 10 weeks).

We moved ours into his own room when we moved to a bigger house at 5 months old and we all slept better. He stopped waking at 4/5am and started sleeping through til 6. May be just his age but at least I wasn't on high alert every time he rolled over! My first was in his own room at 3 weeks old though but we lived in a flat then so it was easy to hear him etc. Do what feels right I think.

I think people are exaggerating a bit about how they're all so tired they're gonna crash their cars

People are affected to different degrees by sleep deprivation. Some people function pretty well, some fall apart. There’s a reason that it has been used as a torture technique by certain regimes.

My baby went into her own cot in her own room on night 1. We had a monitor and it was a small house so she was very near. I am a really light sleeper and wouldn't have got any if she'd been in the same room. All good.

My DC is 3yrs old & still bed sharing, love having him in with me still, it wont be forever so why not enjoy it

I coslept 3 years with ds1. Barely a few weeks with the others, but the bedroom was pretty close to the baby room. Would it help to have baby the other side of the room so youre not right next to her

My DS is 6 weeks on Friday and sounds like a velociraptor crossed with a dolphin and a dying chicken. We stick Ewan on and are out like lights. After so many nights of it we have adapted to sleep through it until he starts making hungry noises.

As for evenings we take turns cuddling on sofa til about 11pm.

www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/drowsy-driving-vs-drunk-driving-how-similar-are-they

Sleep deprived driving can be as dangerous as drink driving. If you wouldn't drive under the influence, you should also be doing whatever you can to get as much sleep as possible during the newborn phase. If you are in the position to catch up on sleep during the daytime, it's relatively easy. For other people, however ,maximizing sleep may require (safe) bedsharing, for others it may mean putting the baby in a different room, or using white noise, or formula feeding. None of those things is exactly optimal, but it's better than wrapping your car round a lamppost.

To report back, the baby is now just shy of 10 weeks old and the farmyard noises have definitely decreased! So it is true what they say, newborns are the noisest and it decreases with time.

I never resorted to ear plugs - I was too nervous about not hearing her cry or if something was wrong so just put up with the disturbed sleep for awhile. My husband and I just took turns to sleep in the spare room if one of us was broken and needed some decent sleep.

Unfortunately I now find myself hovering over the moses basket earnestly peering at a peacefully sleeping baby to check she is breathing! But I'm getting more relaxed with time.

Whilst clearly the SIDS guidelines have worked and reduced cot death rates, I do think we over worry sometimes. I feel like I've often found it hard to enjoy these early weeks because I was so overly anxious about it. My mum was mystified, she said it barely entered her head when I was a baby. Can't help but feel like her generation were more chilled out and our mothers felt less pressure than we do...

My midwife who is almost at the end of her career said only the other day that a baby won't die of SIDS if there are no other risk factors. I had asked about putting DS on his tummy on me to fall asleep, but I'm sure it applies to other guidelines too.
She said it's no point, following guidelines, if it gets everyone upset because no one is sleeping.

Reason why I've never read a parenting book. Only makes you feel paranoid and act against your instincts.

16 months on and I still go into dd to make sure she is breathing.

I try not to worry so much but for some reason at night time I do.

My midwife who is almost at the end of her career said only the other day that a baby won't die of SIDS if there are no other risk factors

Sorry but that’s bollocks, and no way should a HCP state something like that as fact.

The issue with SIDS is that we don’t know why some babies succumb and some do not.

Babies whose parents follow guidelines to the letter still die. Just as babies who around around smokers, bed share unsafeky etc survive. Because preventing SIDS isn’t a perfect science yet as we don’t truly understand it.

She is fair enough to be talking about the risk being lesser, but no one should ever categorically say a baby won’t die of SIDS until they find out the actual cause.

My HV said something similar. Basically if you follow the guidelines the risk is really really low. She was trying to reassure me - SIDS was rare anyway and even rarer since the modern guidelines came out - it's easy to forget that when you're an anxious mum!

We've all done the hovering over a sleeping baby thing, I reckon it's in the job description! I'm glad there weren't so many guidelines when I had mine, he howled like a banshee if he was put down other than on his tummy.

There’s a big difference between “if you do this the risk is very low” and “if you do there your baby won’t die”.

Complacency isn’t a good thing. It’s part of the reason people forget or don’t realise that things like chicken pox and measles can be dangerous. Same with this. Yes, accurate and realistic risk assessing, but never point blank guarantees that it won’t happen.

The problem with SIDS is that nobody knows what it is and statistics include both babies who die by themselves without clear cause and babies who suffocate because of bedding or because their mother or father rolls onto them or they slip down.
So the guidelines may, in my mind, reduce the last category of deaths but I doubt they affect the first.

She also said that lying on their tummy helps against wind. No surprise then that DS of 4 weeks does sometimes need to fall asleep on his tummy (I always turn him over though).

I'm also of the opinion that guidelines only apply up to the point where they work for everyone. If baby gets disturbed by people coming into the room late at night, then they should be put in their own room, even if they are really small, as by being disturbed, they indicate they are ready to sleep alone.