To let our baby sleep in a guesthouse in the garden

[Zipfer]

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?

Advice is that up to 6 months a baby should sleep in the same room as you so that’s a big leap to sleeping in a house on their own at 6 months

I reckon someone in RL has pulled you up on it

Again, no. Really.

@Zipfer Personally, I don't see a problem with it

Not a chance I would do this.

Not a chance. I think you're insane

That's also quite a distance for the baby monitor

Are you sure it's reliable 100% of the time?

Does it pick up choking for example? Particularly if you're all having a nice chat in the main house

@Sirzy

My biggest worry would be if the baby took ill. By the time you have got across, unlocked the house and got up to the baby a lot could happen.

I’m not quite sure what kind of ‘taking ill’ you are imagining, but this logic surely also applies to a baby asleep upstairs.

There has to come a time when you put baby in their own room, and the nhs says that is from 6 months.

Sounds like a perfectly sensible plan to me.

😳

Don’t you feel a pull? Logically yes there is unlikely to be a fire and you have a monitor etc but isn’t your gut just screaming no?

OP: AIBU?
Mumsnet : YABU!
OP: But…
Mumsnet: YABU!
OP: I’m not going to change and I only wanted to see what everyone else thought
Mumsnet: YABU!

I don’t need to unlock any doors to get upstairs!

But OP has clearly said that she feels fine with it - so why should she be parenting her baby by your instincts?!

I'm replying to the OP's question. I wouldn't do this, OP. Instinct is a powerful thing and mine would counsel against it. The key words here are 'mine would', ie. my instincts in that situation.

I obviously did not suggest that my instincts should guide her parenting choices.

Your baby should be able to sleep with lights and noise.

Lolz at a 6 month old baby sleeping with lights and noise . Neither of mine would have done at this age.

All those people banging on about the fire risk, so you have fire doors always closed throughout your house? There’s just as much chance of kids getting stuck upstairs in a fire in the main house.

As a few other posters have said, I don’t see how it’s that different to being outside and leaving the kids on the opposite side of a large house sleeping.

MN is an odd place. Plenty of people happy to recommend co sleeping with a newborn but sleeping in a secure room a few meters away is apparently bad

It’s a no from me too.

It’s a totally unnecessary risk - SIDS, fire, gas leak, burglary, temperature change in the room particularly in hot weather (which we are about to get later this week in the South East etc).

You can’t rely solely on a baby monitor to keep your child safe - just put baby in the hallway or a room in the main house and transfer when you go to bed.

No way. Last year some toerag set the bin shed for the apartment block next to us on fire. Only for my eldest daughter being awake at 5am (I blame the pandemic sleeping patterns for that) and hearing what she thought was rain on her windows and then realising that it was too loud to be rain I might not be here writing this!! As it was the fire brigade took 11 mins to arrive and over €10,000 worth of damage was caused to my house. I won't go into detail about how bad the fire safety in the actual apartments is but it took a good six mins for one of the apartment dwellers to set off their fire alarm☹️. Meanwhile myself and my two daughters were banging on the windows of the nearest apartment to us and frantically ringing their doorbells. All we could think of was the Grenfell Tower fire. We were so lucky that it wasn't worse and no one was injured or suffering from smoke inhalation as some of the bedroom windows were open as it was a warm night.

I think in these situations how you would feel having to explain what had happened to someone else is key. Personally I wouldn’t like to explain that whatever had happened while my baby was locked in a building on their own!

When mine were tiny they slept at the front of a 3000sq ft house. On the first floor. Sometimes I used to weed at the bottom of a 130ft garden. I'm surprised social.services weren't informed!

If you truly thought it was ok and you didn't question yourselves then I don't think you would have even considered posting on mumsnet.

Not in a million years.

6 month old? Come on.

If this is temporary, why can’t you temporarily take it in turns to stay in there with the baby? Why does a 6 month old have to be left in a separate property to the rest of the family? If I hired a babysitter and they did this, I’d be absolutely livid. Babies are babies once, you need to do everything in your power to keep them safe.

No

I think it’s fine.

Does it pick up choking for example? Particularly if you're all having a nice chat in the main house

Wtf? It’s either working or it isn’t. And it’s usually pretty obvious.

I am assuming that the baby goes to sleep in the annex during the evening but that you all sleep there together during the night?

I think that's fine.