Falling asleep with newborn

[youcantsitwithusxo]

Posting in here for traffic..
My DD is 4 weeks old. Every night me or DP unintentionally fall asleep with her on our chest. She's quite needy and will tend to fall asleep being held (she likes to be on our chest) and then once she's asleep we transfer her into her crib. However it has become a daily accurance that during this process we will fall asleep with her on our chest. This is terrifying me because of all the things I've heard about SIDS but I can't stress enough that we try so hard to not fall asleep like this but somehow it keeps happening. Most nights I will wake up on the sofa with her on my chest and DP fast asleep on the chair or vice versa with me waking up to find DP asleep with her on his chest. I then go into a panic checking that she's breathing! I've talked to family and friends about this who just say put her in her crib when you're tired but the thing is, I could be feeling fine watching tele holding her and then next thing I'm waking up hours later holding her. It's hard to just put her in her crib when she's not tired because she screams so that's where the holding her and falling asleep ends up happening. I feel like such a bad parent because I know how dangerous this is! It's really scaring me and I dunno what to do.. any advice if you've gone through this? What worked for you? Am I a bad mum for falling asleep with my newborn on me most nights?

Sort yourselves out. You very much sound as though you're making excuses for your poor choices instead of looking for solutions. SIDS would ruin your life.

Extremely dangerous. Get a proper co-sleeping cot.

Everyone's said lots of what I would say, but one or two more practical things:

Do you have a sling/carrier? Walk around and let her fall asleep in that. Our newborn falls asleep really quickly in one.

Grosnugs or other zip-up swaddling bags are great and make babies feel secure.

Is baby warm enough to stay asleep? When our newborn was about two weeks old she kept waking up for a cuddle and falling asleep immediately on my chest. I realised she wasn't warm enough in her cot. Grobag has a good guide to room temperature and clothes on their website

Are you breastfeeding? It can be really effective to feed the baby in bed (side lying), let her get drowsy, and then move her into the next to me. After that you can lie down but keep a hand on her so she knows you're there.

Can you call in reinforcements, even for a night or two? We were shattered in the first week and actually needed three pairs of hands - and three night shifts - to manage until things got settled. My mum was great at this

Our baby is 7 weeks and a combination of these things worked for us.

Oh, and you can try warming the cot with a hot water bottle before you put her down. Take it out before you put the baby in though!

You say you don't want to co-sleep - but that's literally what you are currently doing - co-sleeping in the most dangerous way possible. If you co-sleep in bed you'll simply be making it safer.

Can you get aside sleeper like a snuzpod? This is what I had as I wasn’t keen on co-sleeping but wanted to be close. You do need to change something as your current set-up is risky.

With my first, I’d often fall asleep with the baby in my chest and wake with the blind panic. With my second, I tried really hard with putting her down drowsy but awake and it does work if you get the timings right. With tinies they can get really overstimulated which makes them harder to settle. If I got it right, baby no.2 would just sleep like magic. Leave her too long and I’d be rocking and shushing for ages while she screamed blue murder. They can probably only manage 45m to an hour awake time at that age.

I used to kick my oh out of the bed, put a v shape pillow and ordinary behind me (Not sticking out of sides)for support, and kick all the duvets down to my feet. Then have baby on my chest in the middle of the bed. If I fell asleep I was a) fairly reclined and b) if he fell, he would fall not very far on to a flat surface. It was not ideal (and not falling the safe cosleeping advice) but better than what you’re doing.

But honestly, co-sleep properly on the bed. You will feel better (for more sleep, and for not putting your baby at risk).

I did something v different.
Bought a chair that was like a swing. Warmed it, popped her in it, set it on the gentlest setting. She would be fast asleep in 10 minutes.then transferred her to her cot.

Fgs do not follow constanzas advice!

The two most recent SIDS I know about locally have been caused by the exact scenario you do every night. Please dont risk your babys life

Swaddling and into her own crib or cot is way way safer than falling asleep with her on your chest on the sofa.

If you have to hold her until she falls asleep then walk around the house, sit on a hard chair... whatever stops you from falling asleep.
Or, put the mattress on the floor and you both co- sleep safely (in the c shape, no pillows, duvet, etc as recommended by lullavy trust). I would say that if you dh is a heavy sleeper and tired he could sleep on the sofa for a bit as to reduce the risks of him rolling on to dd.
Whatever you do, i think you should stop sleeping on the sofa with your newborn. It's really dangerous.

@ConstanzaAndSalieri

That's not better, that's worse! If the baby rolled off you, you would be comfortable enough to be sleeping deeply and not wake up, whereas the baby would be likely to land with her face onto a soft surface, unable to lift her head up or turn her face away from it and suffocating.

What are you playing at? This isnt an occasional accident by one stressed out burnt out parent. There are two of you and it's happening nightly. If I knew you in real life I'd be calling social services to be honest. You're putting a babys life in danger and you're doing it consistently and knowingly.

I realise people come on here looking for advice and people dont always get things right, so I read on as the thread developed and MNers made some recommendations. But then I got to page 2 where you talk about "making more of an effort" and describe watching your partner fall asleep with the baby on him.

Sort it out OP. Not "try harder", just stop doing it.

Buy yourself a proper co sleeping crib. These are as little as £30 used on eBay plus the cost of a new mattress.

The sofa and the dad are the danger here.
Honestly accepting you may Co sleep and make it safe seems the only option here no?
Get a co sleeper cot, get rid of pillows and big duvets etc. Then snuggle down together.
I may be biased as I co slept with all mine, they had a side car cot thing and it made life 100x easier .
Don’t carry on doing what you are doing.

Co-sleep safely in a bed fgs! You can't "accidentally" do the same thing night after night - you know falling asleep with a newborn sitting on a sofa is one of the riskiest things you can do and yet you keep doing it

You both need more sleep. Your DH should get a full night's sleep, then you need to do a last feed at 7 or 8 and go to bed while your rested DH looks after the baby awake until the next feed. Then you co-sleep and he sleeps elsewhere 11-6 and then he can get up with the baby in the morning and you get another couple of hours lie-in.

You need to research the fourth trimester to understand why she will only settle on you. This is very common and natural. However, you need to find things that will work for you so you’re all sleeping safely. Suffocation is common in just the kinds of situations you’re describing. Protect your baby and yourselves by being realistic and preparing for the likely scenario that you will fall asleep. I didn’t particularly want to co-sleep with my last baby, but I was breastfeeding and it was basically impossible to avoid. I made sure that I did it safely and tried to move her to the Next to Me when I could. At six months I put her into her own room, and she transitioned really well, so if you don’t want to do it because you’re worried that it will be long term, that’s not necessarily the case. Just know that tiredness cannot be overcome by willpower. You will fall asleep, so put yourself in a situation where it’s safe to do.

If you feel yourself getting sleepy you need to get off the sofa. The floor would be better but obviously a set up bed would be best.

@gwackywacky I agree, and I hope someone does call social services. It might well save a life.

Right so a lot of you are making assumptions that I am neglecting my child. I'm not neglecting my child because I accidentally fall asleep with her whilst cuddling her. I'm not purposely trying to harm her. I don't want to fall asleep when holding her hence why I'm asking for advice, I didn't write this to be told I'm neglecting my child!

I did exaggerate that it's every night when it's not every single night but it has been most nights the last couple of weeks. My daughter is loved and cared for and I wanted some advice on different ways to safely get her to sleep easier so there's not the risk of falling asleep with her and some of you have given some good advice.

Can I just clarify that when I said I've tried leaving her to cry it out I don't mean I literally left her all night. Which is what some of you assume happened from your replies!
When she cries I pick her up immediately but on one occasion and I really mean one occasion I waited a couple of minutes to see if she could settle herself and I literally mean like waiting 2 minutes and it was horrible so I picked her up because i couldn't leave her to cry it out.

I've already said I have a next to me crib which is a co-sleeping crib, I have the side down so I can access her easily but my baby just likes to be close to me so that is why I cuddle her/ rock her to sleep.
I have the original swaddle me blankets but I've been told by a midwife and HV not to swaddle her because "swaddling is dangerous"
We also tried the safe co-sleeping once but she wanted to be held so it was pointless and I didn't like it.
I swear some mumnetters like to make you feel like you're a bad person, like you've never made any mistakes in life.

I've mentioned to so many people in person about falling asleep with the baby by accident, so to get some advice and every person I spoke to told me "oh I always did that with mine, it's so easily done" etc.. so this made me feel like it's totally normal which didn't help and that's why I came here to get more of a reality check but my god you lot! You've really made me feel like it's only me that's ever fallen asleep with my child on me multiple times which I really don't think is the case.

Anyway that being said I really am taking the advice seriously (the useful advice) and I'm not going to let her fall asleep on my chest unless I'm standing or doing something where there is no risk of falling asleep! I did this all through the night last night and although I had the worst nights sleep of my life I felt better knowing I hadn't allowed myself to get into a situation where I could fall asleep with her on me.

I know the feeling OP, my DD is 8 weeks and this was happening with DH and me at the beginning. It is terrifying waking up and realising, but it happens, you're exhausted adjusting to life with a newborn. Have you tried using a sleepyhead? We have one that we put on the sofa next to us and we pop her in it when she is getting sleepy.

I'm not purposely trying to harm her.

You're not doing enough to prevent an extremely dangerous situation from occurring. Not once or twice but again and again. You more or less said you came here to be scared into doing the right thing. Well, hopefully you have been.

Could you reframe it? What PP are advising you to do is not necessarily a parenting decision or a lifestyle choice of "co-sleeping", it's simply risk management.

The risk is that when you're tired you will fall asleep with the baby. This is a real risk and very dangerous. It's also not something you can just consciously try harder to do - your very biology is wired to make you fall asleep with the baby.

Therefore, you need to avoid the risk. Don't sit up on the sofa in the evenings unless you're not holding the baby. If you can't put the baby down, watch TV in bed instead, with the bed clear and baby near the middle just in case. You can still when you've finished watching TV get up and move the baby to the cot for their actual sleeping arrangement, this is just a temporary risk management strategy to avoid falling asleep on a sofa holding the baby, which could be catastrophic (it's the most common occurence of SIDS/suffocation).

I swear some mumnetters like to make you feel like you're a bad person, like you've never made any mistakes in life
The concern here is that you seem to be making the same mistake over and over.
OP, the reason I am so passionate about this is that I have had to investigate the aftermath of deaths caused by this. To be honest, if you feel “bad” enough from this to take it seriously and ensure it never happens again - then I’m ok with that.

OP people are just saying that the sofa or an armchair is one of the worst (if not the worst, statistically) place to fall asleep holding a baby. People aren't saying you are bad for falling asleep, just to plan so you safely co-sleep, or agree a 'rota' with your partner so this doesn't happen again.

And I’d also agree you’ve had a pasting which is unlikely to help a knackered and emotional new mum. It does happen to a lot of people but it isn’t ideal. I think that some of the sids guidance (same room etc) contributes to behaviour which could be more dangerous. Eg it’s probably better to have a baby sleeping on their own at 9pm in a crib than it is for the baby to be with you watching tv, getting wound up and then everyone falling asleep on the sofa.