To leave a five month old sleeping unsupervised on a bed

[Throwaway2025555]

The situation: a five month old baby is put down for a nap in the middle of a double bed, in a bedroom, and left unsupervised (door closed), but parents check in every so often (realistically every 3-5 minutes or so). The baby is placed in the middle of the bed. The duvet is folded down, away from the baby, a loose blanket is placed on the baby, from chest down. Two pillows are placed on either side of the baby, at the side edges of bed, in case baby rolls off bed.

YABU - this is fine, I would be happy with this situation

YANBU - this isn’t OK, I wouldn’t do this.

If the baby is rolling, those pillows are a suffocation hazard.

Why would you even take the risk?

Not a chance I would do this. Pillows are a suffocation risk, pillows also wouldn’t 100% stop a baby from rolling off the bed, and that’s not to mention that per guidance baby should always sleep in the same room as an adult until 6 months.

I wouldn't do this.

Is baby rolling? I would never do this with a baby that age (risk of suffocation and falling off bed)
I’m going to assume that this is a reverse and something that your h or one of the baby’s grandmothers have done.

I wouldn’t have done this at five months, but I do this with my eleven month old now (in a king-size bed).

I used to leave mine asleep on a double bed at that age but no pillows, no duvet and no blanket. Just an empty bed

No, I think that situation is dangerous and I co slept with mine all the time.

Even weeks old dc can roll.. At 5 months my dgc was crawling...

Seems a bit pointless if you're having to go check every 3 mins anyway. I'd just stick headphones on and watch something on phone or read a book while lying/sitting beside them.

DD2 was crawling at 5 months so she'd have been away

Yanbu. Totally unsafe and huge risk of death. Inappropriate mattress, pillows as suffocation risk and being unattended on top of all that.

Put the pillows under the sheet and it's ok.

Don’t do this. I did it with one of mine thinking they couldn’t roll..and they did. Thankfully onto a thick carpet but it was really upsetting. Please don’t do it.

This, and even if you’ve not seen them roll yet, there’s always a first! My daughter was rolling really quickly at 5 months as well as using her arms to sort of pull round in a circle, in 5 minutes she could have easily rolled off the bed or got herself wedged under a pillow or duvet.

Nope!!!!

DC1 was so astonishingly slow to roll that you could have set them on the mantelpiece for a nap with no qualms.

DC2 could roll from a couple of weeks and could - and did - throw themselves off the side of a king size bed at just a few weeks old, having started off sound asleep in the middle.

So I’d have to err on the side of caution here.

realistically every 3-5 minutes or so).

Why would you even want to do that? Sounds really irritating.

I'd transfer baby to cot once asleep.

No. Checking every 5 minutes means you can’t be doing anything else which is why I’d never put a baby to sleep in a bed anyway.

I’d just put baby in their cot.

I did this, not to nap but placed my 5 month old eldest on the middle of the bed from the bath and nipped to the bathroom quickly for something I'd forgotten ans he had rolled off onto the hard wood flooring.

Not worth it, from experience.

No, this is not safe either. Suffocation risk.

Erm, no. Just put them in a crib with the door open/baby monitor on, and then you can relax instead of going in every 3 minutes to check that they haven't rolled off the bed/suffocated?!

Checking every three minutes is nonsense why would you leave the room to return (and possibly wake them by coming in and out) every three minutes. Thats 30 checks in a 90 minute nap.

Whoever did this no way were they checking this often.

Not a chance on their own absolutely not

Also probably just as annoying for whoever is checking to do it every 3-5 mins than just be in the room with them anyway...

This is horrendous!!!

Nope. This is how we ended up in A&E. Thankfully fine apart from a bumped head but terrifying and I felt awful. Got a bit of a lecture from the dr too.