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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To let our baby sleep in a guesthouse in the garden

644 replies

Zipfer · 12/07/2021 21:52

We are in between moves and staying with family. Our family has a guesthouse (a kind of extended shed with a bedroom kitchenette and bathroom) in the garden about twenty metres at the end of the garden. The guesthouse is visible from the house.

In the evenings we have taken to putting our baby (6 months) to sleep in the guesthouse while we stay in the mainhouse. We have a baby monitor and the house is door is locked. We know the area. We are also sleeping on the guesthouse.

DW and I both agree that this is safe as the risk is low. However, thinking about other famous cases (not drawing a parallel), we think it might be odd to let our baby sleep in a different building for part of the evening. Would you consider this sufficiently safe to allow your baby sleep in this situation?

OP posts:
Saoirse82 · 13/07/2021 06:26

My maternal instinct wouldn't allow this. Even thinking about it would break me out in a cold sweat, I wouldn't do this with older DC and absolutely no way with a 6 month old baby. If you feel the need to lock the door then surely that's acknowledging some form of risk?

Sceptre86 · 13/07/2021 06:33

If it is an acceptable risk for you as parents then that is fine. Personally I don't understand why you can't put the baby in a room upstairs with the curtains drawn and monitor on. If it is the child's grandparents house surely they wouldn't mind? You then take the baby with you when you are ready to sleep.

speakout · 13/07/2021 06:36

No.

HeavenHotel · 13/07/2021 06:41

Omg mumsnet at its best! If baby isn't physically strapped to you for the next 22 years you're a BAD PARENT and need social services called on you. Hilarious!

robbiJ60 · 13/07/2021 06:44

Never in a million years!!

strawberrydonuts · 13/07/2021 06:48

I wouldn't do it. Even though I can see that it is rationally/ logically safe, it adds an extra barrier of two doors and an outside space between you and the baby.

It is less safe than having baby in the same house as you, even if only marginally so. For example, what if the monitor breaks and you don't realise? Unlikely, but in that scenario you have no chance of hearing the baby cry at all. If they were in the same house in another room, you might still hear them.

Even though you are in a safe neighbourhood, there is also a higher chance of baby being abducted if they are put to sleep in an outbuilding on their own each night. What is somebody is watching and knows when you put the baby to bed each night - they could quickly learn your routine and break in.

These aren't nice things to think about but they are just extra things that you become more at risk of by doing this. Low risks, yes, but it's not necessary so why would you take them?

If I were you I would just put the baby to sleep in the main house and then take them with me whenever I go to bed.

happinessischocolate · 13/07/2021 06:49

@Zipfer

Genuinely interested to hear this is so unanimous. We both (and our family) feel very comfortable with this. The guesthouse has a fire alarm by the way.
A fire alarm is pretty useless in a shed which would go up in seconds.
FreeBritnee · 13/07/2021 06:51

The OP has already stated it’s not a shed. It’s a brick built annex type affair.

thecognoscenti · 13/07/2021 06:51

I think most people screaming about what a bad parent you are have missed the very important point that it's only for two hours, not all night 🙄 they're too busy working themselves up into a froth about neglect (even if it was all night, it wouldn't be neglect in any meaningful way). No wonder mothers have MH issues with this idea that unless they're velcroed to their child 24/7 they're dangerous failures.

thecognoscenti · 13/07/2021 06:52

@Albgo

6 months is still tiny and it seems sad to me that you're putting your own needs ahead of what is safest for your child for the sake of a couple of hours a night. It wouldn't occur to me to do this in a million years. Aside from any of the weirdness / risks of you leaving your child alone in what is essentially a separate house, the lullaby trust recommend that babies sleep in the same room with you until 12 months. Just crazy, unnecessary risks all round.
It's for two hours. Are you suggesting the parents sit in the room with a sleeping child every evening just looking at it?
strawberrydonuts · 13/07/2021 06:58

@thecognoscenti Two hours is long enough for something to happen. A few minutes is long enough.

I appreciate the risk is very, very low. But for me, I wouldn't take even a small risk with a baby when it's simply not neccessary and there's such an easy alternative. Why take a risk so pointlessly?

Just have the baby go to sleep in the main house and take them with you when you go to bed.

BountyIsUnderrated · 13/07/2021 07:00

I think it's a bit far, I wouldn't like the idea of my baby being that far away in the event of an emergency.
Fire alarm or not fire spreads within minutes.

Sirzy · 13/07/2021 07:02

Two hours of a baby alone behjnd a locked door is still too much IMO.

As I said earlier my way of thinking for things like that has always been “would I be comfy explaining to police/ambulance/social services what had happened” - for me I wouldn’t want to tell them that he was alone behind a locked door!

AngelDelightUk · 13/07/2021 07:03

God no! If you’ve been in the main house all day why not chill in the building while your baby sleeps

TeenMinusTests · 13/07/2021 07:04

My rule of thumb in these things is, if something went wrong would I judge myself, or still think I made a reasonable choice which just happened to be unlucky.

If I would judge then I don't do it.

AnxiousPixie · 13/07/2021 07:06

We have a motor home we use to go and stop at friends houses, often park on the drive. When the kids go to bed either DH or I sit in or in the garden next to the van. Would never go into the house that far away even with a monitor. It's not that it's too much risk I don't think it's just unnecessary risk. Every one has their own risk appetite though.

Tiddleztheelephant · 13/07/2021 07:07

@Zipfer

The logic of not keeping the baby sleep in the living room is that the lights would be on, we would be talking, and the baby is able to sleep in the dark and peace and quiet in his cot
Can't you put the baby to sleep in a bedroom in the main house and then carry them across when you go?
MinnieMountain · 13/07/2021 07:08

We stayed with PILs in Spain when DS was 6mo and had a similar set up. We moved a table to outside the building DS was in and all socialised there.

PlumpCushion · 13/07/2021 07:10

@Zipfer I think this is something that would depend on the geography of the place eg access to intruders, ability to see the guesthouse doors abs windows from my vantage point in the house, distance to the main house. All of these things are only known to you. So I’d say it depends on the specific set up (although can see why some might say a blanket no because without knowing the set up it doesn’t sound great at face value).

Kokosrieksts · 13/07/2021 07:18

No, I wouldnt do this. The locked door doesn’t sit right with me.
I wouldn’t have a garden party with a baby left in the house alone either. (But I would leave the house to take out the bins for 1 minute). I would want to be able to hear the baby crying without relying on a monitor.

Hallyup6 · 13/07/2021 07:18

Couldn't you swap rooms with someone? You stay in the main house and them in the guest house. Seems the most logical solution.

No, I wouldn't leave my baby in a locked separate building, purely due to the fire risk.

pasturesgreen · 13/07/2021 07:21

Locked door. Fire. Just no.
I know the likelihood is minimal, but regrettably I have first hand experience of how things can go very very wrong in a matter of minutes. To me, it's really not worth the risk.

bluebeach · 13/07/2021 07:23

I’m not surprised by the responses here. I once read a thread about letting kids camp in the garden and pretty much everyone said ‘absolutely bloody never in a million years’.

FreekStar2 · 13/07/2021 07:23

No different to baby sleeping in a bedroom in a different part of a large house. You have a baby monitor. You will also be sleeping in their with the baby later on.

Mnetters are obsessed with the spontaneous combustion of any rooms containing babies.

Kotatsu · 13/07/2021 07:25

A guest house in the garden, which you can see from the house, with a monitor?

Yes, I'd be fine with this if the baby was a good sleeper.

But then mine would also have naps in their pram outside the back door/in the car parked on the drive/upstairs in my cousins house while we hung out in the kitchen 2 floors below. So perhaps I'm just more relaxed than most.

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