To put 4 and a half month old to sleep alone?

[Giddyupballoon]

I know the official advice is to keep them with you until they are 6 months. But DD does sleep with me but she goes to sleep at 7. Until recently we had her in the lounge with us but we kept her up talking and with the TV. So she’s in the bedside cot upstairs. It’s OK right … <goes to check again>

It's not that you can do something, it's just that they're less likely to stop breathing in the first place.

Potentially.

I do believe another theory is that both parent and baby disturb each other during the night so baby doesn't fall into a deep sleep.

But again, they are all just theories.

As the mother of a child who was born profoundly Deaf, I could have breathed through a megaphone and she could never have heard it, so not a theory that I could mentally afford to get tied up with.

All 3 of mine have gone to bed upstairs from weeks old, they were all terrible at settling to sleep with any kind of noise/stimulation around. I have slept with them in my room overnight until 6 months though. I feel the NHS guidelines of them sleeping in the same room as you at all times until 6 months are more arse covering than anything else. Obviously it's important to reduce the risk factors where possible but you also can't 'stack' them up. So if you are already low risk doing more of the things isn't going to reduce it further.

I live in the US and this is not a recommendation here. All kids go in the bedroom from the beginning. Usually parents bedroom till they’re sleeping decently at night. But naps and nighttime are always in their room with a video monitor usually and often an owlet smart sock monitor if you can afford it.

My kids are older, but it was the same in ancient times except only audio monitors and no smart socks!

The SIDS rare in USA is 3x as high (per 100,000) as it is in the UK so the restrictions are worth it imo.

*rate

The thing that people often don't take into account is that SIDS risk peaks at 3-4 months. It's not newborns who are most at risk. By the time you get to 6 months, the risk decreases a lot. For the sake of a few weeks, is it worth it?

But maybe the increased risk is because more people are thinking "ah they are older so can go sleep alone"?

Ds would have stayed downstairs with us in the early days until we were going to bed but tbh he had colic so he just screamed from 8-11 anyways until he was about the age your one is now. I then would have put ds down in the next to me, turned on the video monitor and left the door open and we checked him regularly. He was probably going down about 8 or 9 and then dh was going to bed at 10 or 11 so ds was never alone for more than an hour or two and we would have checked him in between. This felt like my only opportunity to do housework or have any sort of time with dh. The majority of the time I was really exhausted or ds still had some unsettled nights so I'd have just gone to bed with him at 8 but it does feel very very restrictive so it's totally understandable why you are feeling this. I took the view that we followed all other sids guidance so I felt confident enough especially since ds would generally have woken by himself to feed every 2hrs anyway. You need to weigh it up for yourself though. I don't think there's a parent out there who has always followed every single piece of recommendation to the letter the entire time. Sometimes you need to survive by meeting your own needs in order to then meet the needs of others.

Things I found helped were getting blue tooth headphones so I could watch movies or tv series on my phone in bed, doing a sheet face mask in bed, getting some nice skincare i could apply in bed, reading a good book, we had just about enough space i could do some yoga before bed or meditate, take the opportunity for a hot cup of tea etc. It helped me to feel that I was doing a bit of self care rather than that I was being forced to go to bed so it reframed it in my mind as a positive thing. Plus ds often woke during the night and I was tired so I tried to think of it as me helping out future me. The alternative was I sent dh to bed with him so I could stay up.

I genuinely do not know a single person who stayed in the same room as their baby for every nap and from every evening put down at 7pm. Everyone I know had a monitor. We also had an owlet sock.

I'd look up this on Emily ostler's site. Surely your baby can't hear you breathing over the sound of the tv anyway? I think the data says being in the same room as caregivers is likely aligning with less SIDS in the data because of other things, for example, noticing strange behaviour, likely to check often, and that you're also the type of parents to adhere to other SIDS prevention eg back sleeping. I read about it and mine went upstairs at 4 months and I checked him often. Ours was a mezzanine bedroom above a living room but even so, he couldn't hear me breathing! And I doubt he could when in the living room with me either.

There's researchers in Australia who are looking into whether it's something to do with biomarkers linked to apnea. So they are delving into whether there is actually a biological propensity to babies stopping breathing in their sleep.

Do what works for you. Most important baby sleeps well, and you get some time to yourself.

Can you please share the evidence for this? Sounds like correlation rather than causation.

What causation are you wanting evidence of? The only thing she's stated is the fact that sids deaths peak at 3-4 months. She didn't guess at a cause.

Indeed it does.

My DC slept in their own rooms from birth!

For my second I put a ‘bedtime routine’ in around 8 weeks old. Our older child was 6 at the time so once little one down about 7 we could spend at least an hour with her before she went to bed. We had a monitor and obviously checked on her regularly. We then moved her into her own room when she was 6 months old - we kept waking/disturbing her when we went to bed. Unlike my older who still slept in our room till she was nearly 4!

During the day she slept in the living room in the Moses basket - occasionally I would have to shower/toilet so left alone for 5/10mins.

No adult needs to go to up to bed at 7pm.

I'd keep her downstairs with you for now and have the TV and talking at lower volumes, until she's fast asleep. This would be a more normal evening for you and your husband.

Use a video monitor, mine is a £60 v tech job, can even hear him breathe if I put my ear to it, I used to go up with him at 8.45pm from 4.5m to 5.5m , then started leaving him on his own.
I think there are more expensive monitors out there that can track their breathing.

I just went to bed and watched TV on my iPad in bed until she was around 6 months and then I started leaving her, but she used to wake so a lot of the time I was back with her anyway!

It's up to you, it's not a rule book it's a guide. But if you're asking my own opinion it's that she shouldn't sleep alone without you until she's ready and tbh I don't think they're ready at 6 months either - just my personal opinion

@Daisies12 it's a fact that it does peak around this age

I assumed that they meant that the advice was to have them in your bedroom with you at night in case you sleep through them waking. It never occurred to me that you weren't meant to put them down to sleep without you whilst you were awake. That's what baby monitors are for, surely?

DH slept in his own room before 6m because it was the only way any of us was getting any sleep. He would only sleep in a dark, quiet room (day and night) and the lack of sleep started to affect everyone in the house. It wasn't ideal from the safe sleep point of view but, in the end, even the nurses were saying to do what we needed to do to get everyone some rest.

You're wrong about that, though.