How long do you think your baby should sleep in your room for?

[josben]

DD is 10 weeks and we are thinking about moving her into her own room this weekend as she is a very light sleeper and so we think she'll sleep better (and hopefully so will we!)
But I know that the recommendation is that babies should sleep in parents room for first 6 months (as we did with DS1 & DS2) but I was just wondering if everyone follows this advice?

3andnomore, I do think its important for babies to feel confident about going to sleep on hteir own. I actually think its harder on the toddler who has always slept with mum to suddenly be moved into a strange room and bed than for a baby to start knowing that their cot/bedroom is a safe place for them.

I also happen to think there are 3 people in this family and I deserve sleep as does DH, otherwise we don't have the energy and happy faces to play with DS during the day, I don't think its good for anyone no matter what their age to have constantly disturbed sleep, DS was always happier and eating better on nights he managed to sleep 6hrs+ in one stretch from an early age.

re the SIDS thing, I question all 'because they say so' facts and statistics. I have worked in research and i know how easy it is for statistics to say whatever you want them to say. I don't think i'm doing my job as a parent if I blindly take everything on faith. The doctor analogy is funny, some years before that doctors beleived that bleeding adults and children fairly frequently was a good idea. They could cite statistics and their own cases to 'prove' it worked!

Statistics aren't messages from gods, and they aren't uncontravertable fact, they are an average interpritation of what people say in answer to certain questions, and of course their answers depend on the mood, how the question is phrased etc etc.

Jess - 3 months

Becky - 3 days

I just cant sleep in the same room as them, even now - they are SO noisy!

Roskva...I think it's aprtly to do with the breathing rythm altogether, not just the sound....the whole mechnism and air exchange...but I might got that confuddled...so, using a monitor so they can copy you probably wouldn't do much good!
OH, and someone ask...no, if I am asleep and my Kids are in their rooms and I have no monitor they would need to cry or shout for me to hear them, I would not hear them missing a breath....when they were in with me I tended to sleep lighter and was alerted more quickly to any odd breathing pattern or the lack of it, etc....!
In the first few month etc...my dh would sleep in the spareroom or the couch or whatever, because he is a heavy snorer, and I am just to light a sleeper when Kids are lil....once they are oldeer and all that my sleeppattern seems to normalise and his snoring won't wake me up anymore, but I still would be alerted to a cry from the Kids...weird of what you cna block out if you have too or what you can tune into!

riab, mine learned to settle on their own in their own time, I don't see the rush as soon as the Baby is out of the womb, kind of thing...iykwim!
I agree with you on Statistics, teh smae research can be used to show x y and z, depending on how it is interpreted!
But, to me it mae sense about the breathing, etc...and to me it also makes sense, that in cultrues where co-sleeping is normal there is no cotdeath...although, of course i many of those cultures people will have learned to trust their instincts more then we generally do.

OH, and my querie about the why are people so obcessed....was more a general querie, as it is a thing that seems to be very high prioriity in our society....also, people tend to use phrases like...oh is your Baby good, does he/she sleep through yet....what has that got to do with anything, lol!

riab a 6 month old baby is certainly not a toddler.

well said, riab.

There's a brilliant sketch on statistics saying what the person devising wants them to say in one of the 'Yes Prime Minister' programmes ...

Of course, no statistics, no observations, are guaranteed reliable... so what? I mean we could all go on blindly winging it and take absolutely no notice of any evidence anyone might gather, on the grounds that it might be wrong, but then we're shutting ourselves off from any information that might actually be enlightening. I mean it's not all going to be wrong. (Should the people who spotted that there was a greater chance of birth defects with thalidomide, by looking at the statistics of incidences of problems, just have been ignored on the grounds that they might be wrong, because statistics can be misused?) Of course this research could be wrong, but I'd need to be a bit more certain it was wrong before I put my baby to sleep alone in another room for any of the reasons people have given here - and that's hardly 'blindly taking things on faith'. Deciding not to roomshare seems to be putting more faith in the research being definitely (not just possibly) wrong, than anyone is putting in it being right.