Baby in room with us or not?

[Macaroona]

I'm 18 weeks with my first, and wondered what the norm was - do you/did you find it best to have your baby in your bedroom at first? If so, for how long?

My DH will be getting up for work at 6.30 daily so I know it'll be more disruptive for him, but I know he'll support whatever is best. I'm a heavy sleeper so worry that if we put the cot next door in the 2nd bedroom, I won't hear the baby cry. I'm planning to bf if that makes any difference.

Thanks in advance for advice!

The advice is to keep the baby in your room for the 1st 6 months to reduce the risk of cot death - the baby hears you breathing and moving around and this stimulates them to keep breathing and not fall into a dangerously deep sleep.

If you are breastfeeding, I'd have the baby in your bed, or in a bedside cot (I have a Cosatto close to me cot and found it brilliant). Newborns feed a lot in the night, so you want to be able to feed with minimum disruption to your sleep. If you feed lying down in bed you can doze off through feeds. I wouldn't even consider getting up and going to another room several times a night personally!

I moved ds into his own room at just after 5 months btw - he was down to one night feed before we went to bed and one in the early hours by that point so I only had to get up to feed once. In retrospect I should have kept him in with us a bit longer, as I got up to do that 3am feed for a month and it almost killed me!

I agree with RitMorgan. The current advice to reduce the risk of SIDS is to keep your baby in with you for 6 months. If your husband needs his sleep perhaps he can sleep in the spare room for a few nights. That's what we did.

Thanks Rita, that's really helpful

My MiL did a bit when DH told her we'd probably start off with it in the room with us, she said it wriggles and snuffles so much it keeps you awake. I don't agree that's a good reason to put it in another room.It may be a generational thing too?

Bunbaker I just read out your post to DH, he looked distinctly unimpressed and said I could go and sleep in the spare room with the baby! I think he was joking

"It may be a generational thing too?"

Possibly. Your MIL's ideas predate more recent research into SIDS. I also had problems with MIL who had very out of date and sometimes dangerous views on childcare. Just ignore any MIL comments that you don't agree with and if you aren't sure you can always ask your health visitor.

Treatment of babies was a lot harsher generally when your MIL was having hers and putting them in another room was one of the ways of 'toughening them up'.

It really is a million times easier to have them in your room to start with - as much as anything else they don't wake up fully and so are much easier to get back to sleep.

There is another theory about why having them in your room reduces the risk of SIDS, incidentally - it's that babies can die of shock (as can anyone) and waking up on their own in a dark and silent world can cause it.

I've heard a lot of people say the baby snuffling and wriggling keeps them awake. Personally, I slept better when I had the snuffling there to reassure me everything was fine.

Did your MIL breastfeed?

One of the best things about breastfeeding for me is that you can do it without disturbing your sleep too much

Macaroona I think your DH may have to be prepared for a little disruption!

We use the spare room a lot - if DH has a meeting or something or a particularly heavy day ahead then he'll sleep in there, or decamp in the small hours if it's a busy night. Also, when they were both getting up at 4am he would sleep in the spare room while I did the overnight shift, then he'd get up with them at 4 while I got another three hours sleep by myself. Worked pretty well.

both mine stayed in the room with us until they were about 7/8 months old and were sleeping through the night

We just moved DD out of our room. She is 6.5 months old.
DS was in our room only for about 4 months but in the house we were in then, his bedroom was directly joined to ours, so it wasn't really like he was properly separate iyswim.

Your DH needs to realise that having a baby disrupts the cosy little setup you have as a childless couple! SERIOUSLY he needs to get his head round this now, before baby arrives.

I co slept with my DS, til HE decided to sleep in his cot. . Wait and see how you feel when your little one is born. Either way, enjoy it! It's a magical time!

agree with rita re sleep and with queen re your dh! He needs to realise it isn't about him anymore.

I sleep in ds's room with him. Dh sleeps in our room. It works really well for us. Ds is 17m. We'll cosleep till he decides he's ready for his own bed. In a couple of months i'll be cosleeping with 2 dc's! Imo it's way easier when bf.

Agree with Rita re sleep too - the baby should be in your room for the first 6 months as this helps to prevent cot death. Also I found it much easier to wake, get baby and bf them in the night when they were in the room with me. I slept better knowing they were ok. dh slept thru it all! I co-slept with ds and still do some times when he's ill - he's 4. DD went into her rom at about 5 months as she snuffled and made such a noise that she kept us awake, and we would wake her - accidentally - when we came to bed, but ds stayed in our room till 7 months - but co-slept for part of the night for much longer.

Agree with all that in the same room for first 6 months (or there abouts) is preferable, especially if breast feeding. My DH actually had the crib on his side of the bed so he could actively participate in the feeding schedule by rocking to sleep afterwards even though he got up at 6am for work.

I don't want to disrespect anyone on this thread as many of the posters have very good advice on this and other threads but I feel quite strongly that I need to point out that the research on SIDS doesn't just say you should sleep with the baby in the same room as you. It also says DO NOT sleep with the baby in the same bed as you.

Recent research in the USA suggests that sleeping in the same bed as your baby increases risk of SIDS.
In a study that looked into the cause of SIDS in 209 cases in the USA
52% were in adult beds, of these 83% were bed sharing.

Pasquale-Styles MA, Tackitt PL, Schmidt CJ. Infant death scene
investigation and the assessment of potential risk factors for
asphyxia: a review of 209 sudden unexpected infant deaths. J Forensic
Sci. Jul 2007;52(4):924-9.

Full paper:
chawisconsin.org/documents/IP5SceneInvest.pdf

Abstract:
At the Wayne County Medical Examiner Office (WCMEO) in Detroit,
Michigan, from 2001 to 2004, thorough scene investigations were performed on 209 sudden and unexpected infant deaths, ages 3 days to 12 months. The 209 cases were reviewed to assess the position of the infant at the time of discovery and identify potential risk factors for asphyxia including bed sharing, witnessed overlay, wedging, strangulation, prone position, obstruction of the nose and mouth, coverage of the head by bedding and sleeping on a couch. Overall, one or more potential risk factors were identified in 178 of 209 cases (85.2%). The increasing awareness of infant positions at death has led to a dramatic reduction in the diagnosis of sudden infant death syndrome at the WCMEO. This study suggests that asphyxia plays a greater role in many sudden infant deaths than has been historically attributed to it.

what do you do if your room is only big enough for a moses basket, and they have outgrown that?
We can't fit a cot in our room!

Just a note relating to Octaviapink's comment, when one hears of someone dying of shock it is not referring to surprise. It is a common and understandable mistake.

Circulatory shock is the inability of the body to supply enough oxygen to the tissues. It is unrelated to the word shock when used simply to mean surprised.

Common causes include massive blood loss, heart failure, sepsis and clots.

A baby waking up and being afraid could not cause them to die of shock, this is not to say that a baby could not get a blood clot and die of shock.

You won't believe it now but actually the simplest solution for everyone involved is DH/P sleeps in the spare room for a few weeks/months and you have baby next to you in their basket by the bed. Especially if you are breast feeding. You'll be up at least 2-3 times in the night to feed & if you have to worry about disturbing a sleeping worker it's just stressful.

Don't rule it out...

My DD is 10 months today and still co sleeping in our bed. DH is in the other bedroom with DS! it's easier when breastfeeding.

I agree with you monkoray that there are definitely safety precautions that should be taken if co-sleeping - the No Cry Sleep Solution book has a useful section on this.

Basically, never fall asleep with a baby on a sofa, and set up your bed for safe sleeping if you are ever likely to fall asleep with the baby in your bed. Don't share a bed if you (or your partner) are a smoker, or if you have been drinking or have taken drugs/medication. Make sure your mattress is firm and no bedding is going to cover the baby. Ensure the baby can't fall out of bed or get wedged between bed and wall. Always sleep the baby on your side rather than between you and your partner - if you are breastfeeding you will probably find you sleep in a position where you are curled around the baby on your side.

monkoray as i understand it, having read around the subject but not the actuall research iyswim, the figures re cosleeping and sids are flawed. They include accidental cosleeping and do not distinguish between this and safe, planned cosleeping.

Safe cosleeping is bf only (something to do with hormones affecting how a bf mum sleeps), no quilts/pillows near the baby, firm matteras,correct position, no drink etc etc.

Accidental cosleeping often happens when an overtired (or drunk/drugged) mum falls asleep with a baby in an inappropriate setting. You can get a glimps of this from the abstract of the study you provided.

The sids guidelines lump these two different senarios together and so unsusprisingly say cosleeping is A Bad Thing. As i understand it planned bf cosleeping carries the lowest sids risk of all. Though i'm slack and on my phone so can't provide anything to back this up...sorry

I recommended cosleeping in my post and stand by it. However i should have urged that anyone interested check out the safe cosleeping guidelines. Sorry. Please check out the safe cosleeping guidelines.

Lots of great posts, thanks to all. I don't want to co-sleep sharing the bed with baby, the idea of suffocating it terrifies me, I'm a deep sleeper. I've asked DH to read this thread, he is supportive of whatever works best and feels it's our decision and it'll seem obvious what works.

And I've just bought a drop-sided cot off EBay

x post with rita

Macaroona you may be a deep sleeper now, but I can pretty much guarantee you will wake up to your baby very easily.