Supervised naps... what does it actually mean?

[user1466068383]

Hi there, I'm a new mum - my baby is 7 weeks old - and I'm really struggling with the advice that the baby has to have all naps in the same room as you for six months.
She sleeps in our room at night, and that works great as shes breastfed so super easy to feed her and put her down again. It's juts during the day I'm struggling. She has fallen into a routine of a one hour nap in the morning and afternoon and a two hour nap at midday - with a 7pm bedtime. She goes down for all of these with minimum fuss but she does prefer a darker room (curtains drawn) and some peace and quiet. Which means I'm sitting in a darkened room for four hours a day doing nothing except watch TV and read whilst theres loads of stuff to do like washing, cooking etc. I also end up just going to bed with her at 7. It's not the end of the world but it would be so much easier if I could pop in and out of her room whilst she sleeps to do some things round the house...
I feel its cruel to just drag her round the house with me, interrupting her sleep - which she seems to really need and enjoy.
How do you all interpret the supervised nap advice - do you feel its ok to be going in and out of the room?

[LIZS]

I never stopped doing other things while mine napped. They used to nap in a carrycot in the lounge with normal day light which helped distinguish it from night. Supervised doesn't mean you have to sit and watch.

[bigboypants]

Ds just went into his cot in our bedroom, but we were in a one floor flat and I could see his room from the kitchen. Dd was a poorly baby so slept in the living room during the day in the travel cot.

I didn't do the darkened room and silence thing with either of them, they need to learn the difference between naps and night time sleep imo and nothing would have ever got done around the house. Ds slept through anything, I'd go in and hoover under the cot and he still didn't stir.

At 7 weeks though you should probably still be taking it easy when the baby is asleep anyway, it's really early days. I don't think I worked out a way to get things done that worked for us until at least 3 months.

[whenwillsummercome]

crumbs, I just put mine to bed with a baby monitor on and went and did other stuff! mine also liked darkened rooms etc. etc. Youngest is 4, so this isn't all that long ago...

[user1466068383]

Yeah - my mum says the same thing, used to leave us without a second thought for naps. She can't believe the current advice.