4 months old with baby monitor

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Hi! Just curious of what others do on this

My son in 4 months old. We start to wind him down around 7pm, pjs, bottle, story time etc then by 9pm he's ready for bed, we put him up the stairs in our bedroom in a next to me crib with a baby monitor on, we sit down stairs to watch TV for a bit with a cuppa then head up a couple of hours later, the monitor is on and we can see him clearly in it, I've read a few things that you shouldn't be putting a baby to bed alone until they are 6 months old, any advice would be much appreciated

Thanks x

Well if you’re comfortable doing so then do it, we started to as well around this time and DS was sleeping on his own for naps. He did so much better with his own space and quiet time. He was in his own room completely at six months, no drama at all.

I’ve read that they rely on you being near them to regulate their breathing.

Could you have a Moses basket with you downstairs and then carry up at your bedtime?

How does an awake adult in the same room help regulate a baby’s breathing though?

Yes I think our DD was upstairs asleep (in our room) while we watched television downstairs from around the age of 2 months. Probably only on her own for an hour or so before we went up. We needed that time alone to chat and catch up and not just talk about the baby, it worked wonders for our relationship and the baby was just fine asleep.
She went into own room at 6 months no problem at all and is a great sleeper

We have our 4 month old asleep up in her room with the monitor on while we have a couple of hours too op. I think it's fine. She's in her next to me crib right beside me for nighttime sleep and right near or on me for all daytime naps so I think an evening alone is fine. I'm always up there bloody checking on her anyway!

We did the exact same as you are doing. Had 1-2 hours downstairs alone. It isn’t fully following safe sleep guidelines no but I was comfortable at 4 months with leaving her in her crib for that length of time without us in the room.

as pp said, it is to do with regulating their breathing with yours and reducing the risk of SIDS. I felt the small risk at 4 months versus getting her into a routine for going into her own room was worth it.

Thanks for everyone's replies! I'm new to motherhood and reading things up just gets my mind wondering if I should be doing thing different. He's never alone for long, an our or 2 max and the monitor is right beside me with volume up so I can hear him. Can I just ask another question? Does anyone have a routine through the day with their 4 month old or roughly the same age? We don't really have one yet, he naps when he wants and feeds when he's hungry, he'll get a nappy change every few hours, he's only got his 7pm routine because he basically let's us know he's starting to get tired for bed time.

He’ll probably start falling into a more predictable routine pretty soon OP. About five months ish DS sort of formed his own routine of morning nap, play, lunchtime nap,, afternoon snooze, more play and then bedtime bath wind down etc. Naps taken in buggy if we were out and about, we went out every day to get fresh air and so he really got into a day/night rhythm.

how are his wake windows? At that age DS was still only awake for 2-3 hours in the day before needing a snooze.

Oh and he naturally fell into a routine of wanting a bottle pretty much every 3 hours. But sometimes more frequently if growing etc.

I think you have to trust your instincts. Tbh it wasn’t until I read on MN that anyone took the advice literally to never have them asleep out of the room from you til 6 months! I know my 4-6month olds would not have slept well in a noisy downstairs room with us. I think what you are doing is fine. Generally you can hear their breathing with the monitor and if you feel at all worried you can go and be with them.

No expert but sounds to me like you are doing great!
I do sometimes wonder how any of us survived the 80s at all! Can just imagine my parents being told we needed to be near them to regulate the breathing... or evrn watch us on a monitor!.. lol.. I know times change and we improve on these things but it just makes me smile when I think of such things!!

With DS1, we kept him in the same room as us u til he was 6 months. He'd sleep in his nest and we'd take him through to his next2me.when we went to bed.

DS2 isnjust about to run 5 months and we've just today set up his monitor so that we can put him in his next2me for naps as DS1 (who is now 2) keeps waking him so he needs a quiet place to sleep.

The guidance is, according to The Lullaby Trust:

"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".

This is because the noises we make stops baby falling into too deep of a sleep and reduces the risk of SIDS.

Yeah he's pretty much the same tbh! He'll have naps through the day, he's with me all the time for his naps, awake roughly for 2/3 hours then will go for a little snooze, he also feeds roughly every 3 hours but sometimes he won't finish his full bottle, he's on 8oz at the moment, I would rather have too much though because sometimes he does take the full lot

Please excuse all of the typos 🥴

Having an adult in the room reduces the risk of SIDS. There are a few theories as to why this is the case but no one knows for sure. A baby who is dying from SIDS doesn’t move or make noises so a baby monitor won’t help. Far fewer babies did survive the 80s and earlier due to lack of understanding of SIDS.

@Flopisfatteningbingforchristmas I am literally right with my baby for 22 out of every 24 hours, i'm teetotal, have never smoked and am exclusively breastfeeding. My baby is in a crib with a new mattress. I'm sure she will be ok!

Once DC3 left the "will sleep through any noise" newborn stage, around 3 months, I started putting her down for naps in the Snuzpod upstairs alone with white noise and a baby monitor on. There is not a chance in hell she will fall asleep for a nap in the same room as her 3 and 6 year old brothers.

She's 4.5 months now. No routine, but her sleep has gone downhill in the past couple of weeks. Having really short naps, totally unable to link sleep cycles, getting overtired. Hoping once schools go back (next week in Scotland woohoo!) I'll have a better chance of sorting something out with her brothers out for the day.

I'm a bit surprised at the responses here. I and most parents I know followed the advice to keep them with you for six months. Doing this and putting babies on their back to sleep has substantially reduced cot death rates. As a parent you have to assess risk versus benefit for your kids all the time and for me this was something with no downside beyond some mild inconvenience for us with a potentially huge upside in reducing the risk of SIDS.

We did this from 2 months. We had an angel Care on so if baby stopped breathing we would know though.

I’ve read that they rely on you being near them to regulate their breathing.

This is a misconception. And it makes literally no sense - you’re supposed to be in the same room, not within your child’s hearing distance. There’s no suggestion they need to sleep right by you, just that you are in the same room. Some people have big bedrooms, the cot can be on the far side, that’s seen as acceptable. You’re free to have the tv on the background, or a white noise machine right next to them so they won’t even hear you if they are right by you. And babies breath faster than adults, just as their hearts beat faster, so they don’t and certainly shouldn’t match your own breathing.
Them not falling into a deep sleep because they can hear you snoring or turning over in bed is also nonsense.
Correlative evidence shows it does help to be in the same room to prevent SIDS, but no one can really explain why. Common sense suggests it’s simply because if something occurs, like breathing difficulties or a coughing fit or something, you are more likely to notice, step in and help - if you’re not there then it may unfortunately go unnoticed. Unless you have a decent monitor, in which case you likely will still hear something that prompts you to go and check.
There seems to be this misconception that SIDS refers to babies randomly and silently passing away in their sleep - that is extremely rare. Putting them on their backs, not smoking, not falling asleep with them on the sofa unintentionally or in the bed after you’ve gotten high on drugs already makes the most significant impact. Being in the same room and happening to notice they’ve randomly stopped breathing not so much - unfortunately you’d have to notice that very quickly to make any difference. Even being in the same room won’t necessarily help you there - it’s just luck if you happen to be looking at them in that moment or holding them at the time. But sometimes people do, and that then brings the overall risk down further.
To be as safe as possible you would have to watch your baby 24/7 - they could advise that but presumably they realise it isn’t practical. The next best thing is to suggest staying in the same room until 6 months - but I think many people realise that is just as unpractical.
You just need to risk assess it for yourself. I think most people do find that that particular part of the advice is not practical. We put all of ours upstairs in the evening from about 4 months too, when they more alert and didn’t seem to be able to sleep with the tv on in the background anymore. They seemed to need quiet and a dark room at that point. I don’t know anyone who kept their baby downstairs until 6 months out of choice - they did it just because they couldn’t get them to sleep. I definitely don’t know of anyone who went up to bed with them at 7pm in real life. Only on MN.

I’m not judging you. I am stating the facts. What you choose to do with that is your choice. Parenting is all about managing risks and you can only decide what is right for your family if you have all information to make that decision.

Thanks for all the replies, you all have very valid points 👍 we ended up just heading up to bed early last night. DS slept like a log until 5am 🙂