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!

@SparklyTwinkleGlitter nope not extremely anxious, but thank you for the side swipe.

a baby up to 6months (which is the guide line) is not an impressionable child.

no need to hover, just have them
in the same room.

your post is patronising and rude.

@SparklyTwinkleGlitter

they're not MY notions about SIDS risks!

given you think I'm a twat perhaphs you should have a chat to the NHS about their 'notions'

NHS

For the first 6 months your baby should be in the same room as you when they're asleep, both day and night. This can reduce the risk of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome)

@Birminghambabe see above.

Of course you can leave baby.

You leave the door open so you can hear baby cry or you use a baby monitor.

You need to pee, shower, make a cup of tea.

Aslong as you are checking I don't see the issue.

@AnnWithoutAnnie copy and paste all you like, that recommendation isn't based on any good quality evidence and it certainly doesn't take into consideration maternal well being.

https://www.lullabytrust.org.uk/safer-sleep-advice/room-sharing/ - here you are, OP. The Lullaby Trust says:"The safest place for a baby to sleep is in their own clear, flat, separate sleep space, such as a cot or Moses basket in the same room as you.Babies should always be in the same room as you for the first six months for sleep, day and night. This doesn’t mean you can’t leave the room to make a cup of tea or go to the toilet, but for most of the time when they are sleeping they are safest if you are close by.There are no devices on the market that will substitute a parent or carer being in the same room as baby for safer sleep."There's more detail on the basis for this recommendation in the LT's evidence base document, which you can download from their website. It's at paragraph 2.1.Of course this wasn't the recommendation until recently, and plenty of people left sleeping young babies alone in their rooms in earlier years and their babies were just fine. But if you look on a population level, it's safest to be in the same room as your baby most of the time when they're asleep, until they are six months old.

Paragraphs fell out of my post 🙄

A baby monitor wouldn't help if you laid your baby down for 30 minutes in their cot.
What about bedtimes do you go to bed with your baby or do you put them down first and then you go to bed an hour after?
I was like you when I first had my children and honestly I do think to myself now did I really need to put that much pressure on myself? Nothing happened they were fine.

@89redballoons those recommendations are not evidence based, the only thing that actively reduces SIDS in a meaningful way is back to sleep clear cot. The data on all the other things is limited, patchy and no clear conclusions can be drawn from it.

Never leaving your baby's side will of course reduce the incidence of SIDS.
Never driving anywhere will reduce the risk of being in a car accident.
Never carrying your baby in your arms will reduce your risk of dropping it.
Never drinking a cup of tea will reduce your risk of burning yourself.
Never having a shower will reduce your risk of slipping.

Maybe if you are royalty with staff and endless money and nothing to do you can lower your risk of harm (to you and your baby) to nearly nil, but for everyone else we take informed risks every single day.

Sorry but which countries don't include room sharing in their safe sleep guidance? Every country I've looked at (UK, US, Canada, Australia, Germany) does include this.

It does seem to only be UK that emphasises that it applies for every single sleep - which leads to some truly bonkers interpretations like it's unsafe to leave them alone while you have a shower. The reason it's worded like it is in the UK though is because apparently people have a tendency to take guidance overly literally - so when they said "Put baby's cot in the parents' room" people apparently interpret this that the parent's room has some magical quality, and would religiously put the baby there even if they decided to sleep somewhere else. So the guidance was updated to reflect the fact that it's the presence of an adult which is the protective factor (and we don't know why, the various theories about breathing / noise / CO2 are all just theories).

Even if you get everything wrong, the majority of babies will be fine. But we do know better than we used to know, which is why SIDS rates are much lower today than in the past.

Right. But I do think it's also important that mothers aren't left feeling so frightened of SIDS like OP's friend that they don't feel they can leave baby for 5 minutes.

And some reduction in SIDS rates will also be unrelated to any direct sleep behaviour - for instance it's thought that maternal, paternal and third hand smoking exposure has a large effect on SIDS risk, and smoking rates are lower today than they were at times when SIDS rates were much higher. Parents are much less likely to smoke, grandparents are also less likely to smoke and it's culturally unacceptable to smoke inside a non-smoker's house, especially if they have young children.

That I was glued to my children 24/7 the only child that was content was my second baby. She didn't need nighttime feeds and slept right the way through until morning. I will say we do put too much pressure on ourselves there are baby monitors that we can use these days to help mums and babies with routine. I have had 4 babies and they were right beside me 24/7 until they were 1 year old tne they moved out to their own room. Nothing happened it was me being over cautious and looking back did I need to be. Could I have put a baby monitor in their room for 30 minutes while I did the hovering?

What is reasonable can a baby settle with the Hoover on?

This is very extreme and really not a reasonable interpretation of what that poster said.

Think about what life was like before baby monitors etc. Women had to wash up, have a wee etc in those days without a screen to watch their baby sleep. something. Of course it's fine OP. With or without a monitor.

The LT evidence base seems pretty clear about the strength of the evidence, although I can see that room sharing isn't the most important factor in preventing SIDS. It says:

"2.1 Room sharing
There is evidence that when infants are placed in the same room as their parents, but they do not share the same sleep surface (i.e. room-sharing not bed-sharing), a significant decrease in the risk of SIDS is seen.96,114 A large study combining case-control studies from 20 regions across Europe showed the risks of SIDS in multivariate ORs of 0.48 (95% CI 0.34-0.69) and 0.32 (95% CI 0.19-0.55) when a room was usually shared and when a room was shared in the last sleep, respectively.96

Babies should sleep in the same room as their parents during the day as well as night. One case control study found that the risk of unsupervised sleep during the day was almost double that of unsupervised sleep at night (adjusted OR for daytime sleep 10.57, 95% CI 1.47-75.96 vs nighttime sleep 5.38, 95% CI 2.67-10.85).64 A travel cot, Moses basket, playpen, or carrycot is suitable for daytime sleep provided other safer sleep advice is followed."

I will admit I haven't read the studies referred to here, but I can see they were published in the Lancet, the BMJ and the International Journal of Epidemiology, so I would assume they are good quality studies. Is that wrong?

I can't really see why the Lullaby Trust and NHS would recommend room sharing if it doesn't actually help decrease SIDS rates. What agenda would they have?

I'm not a medical expert and I'll admit I didn't follow these guidelines to a T anyway, especially with my second baby, who I did leave in his cot with a monitor sometimes from 3 or 4 months. So I'm just curious.

My mother used to put the baby down for a nap in the pram, at the bottom of the garden. I survived. 😂

It isn't being a 'smartarse' to wonder why mothers today are so much more anxious and feel the need to be in constant contact with their baby, it doesn't make them better mothers! SIDS, of which most people have heard dear, may not be the danger it once was but I don't think that today's norms are producing healthier children in the broadest sense when many are afraid of their own shadow at 16, usually inherited from maternal atitiudes.

Patronising? Someone disagreeing is patronising? Other posters show far more sense in their posts.

@89redballoons the lancet study is small around 750 SIDS cases and only comparing 2400 live cases so it isn't proportionally representative of how many SIDS cases there are in a population i.e. they should have had many more live cases as the SIDS rate isn't nearly one in three

The BJM study was on 321 SIDS babies and 1300 control infants. Same issue.
It also found that the results for bedsharing which LT now endorses was around the same as for an infant being in their own room "infants who shared the bed for the whole sleep or were taken to and found in the parental bed (9.78; 4.02 to 23.83), infants who slept in a separate room from their parents (10.49; 4.26 to 25.81)"

IJE 325 SIDS infants and reference sleep of 1300 live infants same issue again. This study did not specify adult presence in the room in the results - only when infants were "found" so lots of things have been inferred from this

Not only this but in a healthy full term infant SIDS is so rare that even if you do choose to not room share the risk is tiny - it is more risk taking them out in the car for example. It's like when they say you have to be induced for being overdue or your stillbirth risk doubles - it doubles from 0.2 to 0.4 its not statistically significant.

The main things these studies have all concluded is that clear cot back to sleep has the biggest impact .

As for why? I imagine it is easier to promote a single message, such as room share for six months than it is to promote a more complex one such as - room share for six months unless it is too hard on your mental health and you cant cope and you aren't sleeping or showering etc.
That and the NHS are terrified of being sued for anything, if they give the strictest advice possible and they still get SIDS cases then they can say - we did advise room sharing - even though it is likely to not make any difference in the vast majority of cases.

I don't know where the "regulating breathing" or the "babies forget to breathe" thing comes from i have never seen a shred of evidence for it.

@AnnWithoutAnnie

just how do you think mums are supposed to go to toilet, cook for themselves, shower etc? You physically cannot watch your baby 24 hours a day, you just can’t.
and if you try to, most women’s mental health would be in tatters

Thank you for all the comments on my post

I had antenatal anxiety and counselling during my pregnancy - my DS is a baby born after previous losses so I know all the SID’s risks and what to do to reduce to risks. He was also in hospital for 10 days without me due to feeding issues so that is most likely why he can sleep on his own in his own sleep space - because he had no choice at the beginning! Although sad in a way I know I am lucky as he doesn’t want to be attached all the time to sleep x

Baby sleeps in the room with us and we are with him all the time other than when I have to go for a wee, a quick shower or washing up / steralising. I definitely wouldn’t leave him longer than say 5 mins - and he’s always in ear shot.

I struggle with anxiety myself but it does surprise me the amount of people who think they should be with you 24/7 - I mean I just can’t understand waking a baby up from their Moses basket to bring them in the next room with you to make a cup of tea. Do people really do this or are people exaggerating?

Also do not find the person who commented about an eagle swooping them off as belittling - it did make me laugh haha!

You sound like you are being more than sensible OP
Congratulations on your little one, you are already a wonderful mum 💐

p.s hope you manage to avoid eagles for the foreseeable :)