Leaving newborn alone for 5 mins at a time?

[Birminghambabe]

This might sound ridiculous but I’m a FTM and unsure if I am BU.

If my 4 week old is asleep in our bedroom but I need to do some washing up, have a quick shower etc I leave him for 5 mins at a time (always checking on him every 5 mins). Sometimes if I move him into his Moses downstairs he wakes up so I try and keep him asleep in his crib upstairs.

My friend who is also a mum to a newborn said she could never do that and would just move him even if it disturbs him into the same room as her.

Now as a FTM I’m now paranoid that I shouldn’t be leaving him - someone please tell me if I’m doing this wrong!

I left them to have a shower / go to the toilet. I think that’s very different to putting them in their own room at 1 month old etc.

Well done. So did I.

Don't you just love the whole 'I love my baby more than yours' judgement?Because you can only be a good mother (not parent, mother, men aren't judged like this) if your baby is stuck to you 24/7.

No. If someone wants to drag their baby around the house, that's fine but I shower alone because I'm human and my needs don't stop just because I've had a baby.

I feel much the same. I’ve been back at work for almost 10 months so maternity leave feels like a while ago, but when I was on leave and my little girl was much smaller than she is now, I used to relish my showers. They were a glorious bit of me time. As for carry around in a sling, that’s not possible for me, I have a congenital ankle problem which makes them very unstable and causes a lot of random falls. It would be a mistake to carry my baby around in a sling as it would make me more unstable and more likely to fall. My bathroom also really is too small to put a bouncer in it anywhere, I attempted it once when she was going through a particularly fussy phase and it seemed like it might be easier. It wasn’t easier!

For me, all of this comes down to personal choice. The vast majority of parents interpret guidelines individually and make reasonable, rational choices based on their own assessment of risk.

My sister is more relaxed about it than me and her children were both in their own room rooms overnight from a couple of weeks. Between us we have three thriving children who never went near a sling, a sensor mat, a video monitor, got carried around in their baskets all day or had to join their mums in the shower. It’s not how we do things and it’s fine. It’s also fine if you want to, but those that do should leave everyone else alone and stop trying to insist their way is the only way!

No. If someone wants to drag their baby around the house, that's fine but I shower alone because I'm human and my needs don't stop just because I've had a baby.

dont see how anyone could argue with that!

@PinkPlantCase but it's not just about the fact that the 'current advice says popping out for 5 minutes is fine' is it?

It's about the fact that particular element of current advice isn't actually routed in any solid evidence & it makes (yet another) rod for mothers' (not parents', as others have mentioned) backs...

Like the advice on eating peanuts, the current NHS 'Eat Well' advice on replacing sugary foods with foods containing artificial sweetners, giving kids semi-skimmed milk, that salt & fat content being the only 'important' part of ultra-processed foods etc....in 10 years time the advice will have completely shifted again.

So beating up the current generation of new parents if they leave baby in a different room for an hour for a nap is bonkers. Shove a movement monitor in with them so you know immediately if they stop breathing & get on with your lives, seriously!

So breathing on the other side of the room helps regulate theirs?

Oh don't worry, you're going to come across a lot of martyr mummies who are shocked when some other parents are comfortable not having their babies glued to them.

If your baby can sleep without lying in you then you can leave them with a monitor and/or check in on them. I found my baby found it easier to link sleep cycles when I was in the room with him during the day though.

I love the confidence with which 'your breathing regulates theirs' is always trotted out on here despite there being no actual evidence that's the case, merely a theory in a sea of theories. And if it were proven, then there would be other conditions attached because simply being in the same room wouldn't be enough for that.

Wouldn't that be an argument in favour of bed sharing?

Mine will be 6 months in just over a week so he's very nearly at the recommended age now.

I agree that it's about personal choice and risk assessment. I'm fairly relaxed like your sister in that we moved him to his own room at 12 weeks but I do use a video monitor. No slings/baby carriers, I found them uncomfortable and awkward and my usually settled baby always got grumpy and shouty in it.

He also started nursery at 12 weeks when I went back to work and they definitely don't stay with him when he sleeps there either.

I thought about having a video monitor at one stage and didn’t get one, but I can see how they can be handy.

We kept our daughter in our room for 6 months but she had naps in her own room from a couple of weeks and we put her in our room after her bath every night from a couple of weeks too and we’d sleep in the same room when we were ready to go to bed. We just found it worked well for us and our baby, she’s an excellent sleeper and as she’s such a happy little girl who’s generally always in a good mood, I can’t see that we’ve done anything wrong!

She went into her own room at around 6 months and she was happy to go in there. It wasn’t a brand new room for her and she was used to being on her own by then. As we’ve both said, it’s just about what works for you.

I was happy to have her in with us until 6 months and you were happy to put your son in his own room from 3 months. Two parents who’ve done things differently and not having a big shouty match coming out with ‘you do realise what the advice is, don’t you?’ Very refreshing!

Long ago we put our babies out in the garden to sleep. I can't imagine never being away from a baby for more than 5 minutes. Goodness knows how my great grandmother would have brought up 11 children if she had sat next to a sleeping baby all day.

Slings existed so she could have used one or pushed babies pram from room to room and used something a drawer on the floor maybe for upstairs.

Exactly!!

Right, but not everyone and by that I mean most people, don’t want to use slings. I wanted my baby to be okay in rooms on her own and now she is and I don’t regret it at all. You aren’t doing your cause any favours, you just go on and on and on and seem incapable of taking on anyone else’s point of view because you believe you’re oh so right and virtuous… when in fact you’re really unhelpful and judgemental.

Common sense. It disappears sometimes when you are recently PP and in the throes of anxiety, believe me I know, but almost every parenting decision requires an element of common sense about it. I'm pretty risk averse when it comes to the kids, but even cautious lil me felt comfortable about going for a shit while either of my DDs was asleep downstairs in their Moses basket or going to make a cup of tea or a sandwich. Poor mothers get the fear of god put into them about everything and it results in being unable to critically assess risk or use common sense. I doubt there are many dads fretting about whether they should carry a baby asleep in its Moses basket into the bathroom while they do a poo. I know it wouldn't even have occurred to my husband, and he's a perfectly attentive and cautious parent!

Or she left them for 5 minutes and all was fine.

My baby hated the sling, much prefers chilling in his cot for 5-10 minutes if I need the toilet or a shower.

@SapphireStar77
@NewNovember

no you really don’t need to bring baby into bathroom if you’re having a quick shower
if you want to fine
but you don’t HAVE to

Exactly!!! Can if we want to - so why am I getting grief for taking my baby into the bathroom with me - people saying that they feel sorry for my baby having to smell my stinky shit FGS!

I think it probably is, to be perfectly honest. If you think about all the obvious-seeming dangers of bedsharing, especially how much of a known risk it is when it's done "improperly", but then look at the actual stats when it is done with certain things in place such as the instinctive way breastfeeding mothers tend to position both themselves and their babies, it's nowhere near as risky as it "should" be, so it seems perfectly clear to me that there must be some protective factor(s) from bedsharing which cancel out the risks. We just don't know what those are because you can't possibly study it.

Don't get me started. The pressure from doctors, daycares, and other mothers, to follow infant feeding guidelines for allergen introduction in exactly the right order prescribed by the "evidence based" guidelines and those guidelines were totally wrong about nuts. The exact opposite in fact, probably resulting in many children developing life-threatening nut allergies who otherwise would have been fine (including mine, so, Thanks, "evidence based guidelines"). But none of those people got any humility from seeing that they totally overstated the evidence behind the "evidence based" guidelines. They just started being pushy about whatever was the next big thing, and using THAT as a stick to beat mothers with.

In the UK? Slings were not a thing in most of the UK 100 years ago (the exception might be if the poster’s great grandmother was in rural Wales or something like that, where there were some traditional equivalents).

In families with 10 kids, it was accepted that a lot of baby care was actually done by older children. Mothers these days don’t really have this option; older kids are in school all day.

In any case, I can guarantee that the great grandmother in question did NOT spend her time working out ways to shuttle her baby about so she was never away from this. This whole thread is ridiculous.

Exactly. I’ve read some crazy threads on Mumsnet but really? Now babies can’t be left for a few minutes? Insane…

The big risks, honestly, are things like crashing a car with the baby inside, or falling asleep at a dangerous moment like when you are nursing a baby on a chair or sofa. Parents NEED to safeguard their own sleep. Threads like these are worrying.