Those of you who put newborns down to sleep at 7pm-ish...

[CharlieMouseWillDoIt]

How long do they sleep for? I've always thought that "sleeping through the night" for a newborn is 5 hours unbroken sleep, so if they go down at 7pm, that means them being awake again at midnight. And then what happens if/when they do wake up?

I'm asking out of genuine curiosity as my DD (who is now a strapping toddler) would never go to sleep that early in the evening. She would cluster feed during the evening and would eventually go to sleep at about 11.30-midnight. Even when she was a bit older (6 months or so), any sleep she had before about 9pm would turn out to be a 40 minute nap, then she'd wake up and be awake for another couple of hours. It has taken a long time and a lot of patience to get her to go to sleep (and stay asleep) in the early evening.

I guess this is where the phrase every baby is different comes in, but I do remember feeling a bit in awe of my friends whose babies went to sleep at 7pm and stayed asleep.

Ivykaty the data you want are freely available in the full text of that paper here. Most SIDS deaths happen during the night and it is well established that lone sleep increases the risk at night (hence the cot in the parents' room recommendation). However what was not well known was that lone sleep during the day was just as - even more - important a factor for the substantial proportion of daytime SIDS. That is what the paper adds. And I would dispute that a sample of 300+ cases is 'small'. It is huge in modern SIDS case study terms.

Often deaths of infants whilst co-sleeping aren't SIDS. They are down to overlying or similar. Co-sleeping also frequently covers sleeping on sofas/armchairs etc. The oft quoted NZ study was very flawed research.

I think there's a study which showed that in certain communities safe cosleeping minimised SIDS and there were proven increases in infant deaths in countries where it became customary for babies I sleep away from their parents.

I don't leave ds to sleep for a while nap inn the daytime, I'll have a quick shower or make a be but then I go back to where he's sleeping to MN supervise. Really not a problem as he's my pfb

I got my DD in to a routine at 6 weeks, it's not perfect but by 7.30ish eace night she is fast asleep and will now sleep till 12ish then 5ish. She is now 12 weeks. From 6 weeks she went in her basket in our bedroom at bedtime (not day time just night) as I felt it was best for us to establish a routine and she won't sleep in a basket downstairs. We weighed up risks and benefits and decided this was best for our family. Each to their own I guess! As a baby I was in my own room from 6 days old!

I also leave her sleeping during the day to do housework, bottles, washing, etc (shrugs) otherwise nothing would get done!!

To answer the OP, DD is 15wks old and I put her down at 6pm-ish. This is so I can then do DS's dinner and spend some time with him before he goes to bed at 7.30pm. I've done this since she was 6wks old. She started off waking around 11pm, then 3am for a feed. This is now just 3am. She is EBF. She wakes up "for the day" at 6am, which is actually fine, as DH and I get up then anyway, as does DS.

I did the same routine with my DS. He fed more frequently at night for longer than DD has, but with both of them they literally wake up, feed, go back in the cot, go to sleep, so although they're waking to feed, they're sleeping constantly for 12 hrs- i.e. I'm not having to resettle in that time, unlike in the first 6 weeks where I'd be sleeping one hour in three, with the other two spent either feeding, burping or resettling.

This one again!
When my twins were 5 months they wouldn't fit in the same cot anymore and we had to move their downstairs napping cot upstairs and they went into their own room. Everyone slept better! DH and I are massive snorers though! At 10 weeks thy were feeding at 6.30, 12, & 6am - ff. They dropped the dream feed at about 10 weeks and apart from when they've been unwell, have pretty much slept 12 hours straight each night since, they are now 13 months.

We never co-slept (too wriggly, bed too small for twins!) or cuddled them to sleep (mn crime!). They learnt to self-soothe from day one, but also slept nose-to-nose for the first three months. They now go down in a jiffy and have a 2-2.5hr nap in the afternoon.

The limitation of SIDS research is that it's impossible to isolate the risk factors, so for example, we know that more cot deaths occur when the baby is asleep in a room by itself. However, this might be a correlating factor, not a cause in itself. In other words, who is more likely to put a baby to sleep in their own room?

• Smokers? Quite possibly- you dont want to smoke in the same room as the baby
• People who dont breastfeed?- very likely to be the case- most people who bf are likely to co-sleep or at least keep the baby in the same room. FF are less likely to because they hve to get out of bed anyway to get the formula from the kitchen.

So smoking, lone sleeping and ff are all SIDS risks BUT it might be that one of these isn't a factor at all but that they correlate strongly with things that are.

Remember that all SIDS data is retrospective (obviously- it would be completely unethical to do anything else) but it does limit the data set.

Another one cited by a SIDS expert was dummy use. Dummy users are less likely to get SIDS but what this researcher said was that it might be that poor sleepers are both

• more likely to be given a dummy and
• less likely to sleep very deeply, and one theory us that very deep sleep may trigger SIDS

and not that actually using a dummy has any benefit

I used to put DS down in the moses basket downstairs in the evening and only put him in his cot when I went up to bed, always too late at around 11-12pm.

He slept through a handful of times at around 3-4 months just to tease me then never did it again until he was nearly two. [knackered] We started to sort-of co sleep when he went into a bed around 15m as he would wander in in the night and spent the rest of the night in with me after a feed or seven

Nearly four now and still wakes most nights and sneaks into my bed. Not still BF though.

375 cases is to small to complete a study on, yes thankfully the number is low but to use this and then say the reasons are is looking for a maths patten of risk will possibly mask the real reason that these cases are happening.

Declutterbug- I don't ignore the risk, I accept it. There is a difference. Everything we do in life carries risk (which is a shame because humans are notoriously bad at assessing risk, as numerous studies have shown).

The risk of SIDS is 0.4 per 1000 births, or to put it another way, 1 in every 2,500 or 0.04%. Take out most other risk factors, (such as being a non-smoking household, breast feeding, using a dummy, not using blankets, not overheating the room) and take out incidences of suffocation (sofa sleeping etc) misreported as SIDS, and I can probably halve that risk to 0.02%. That is minute. I don't think you can say anyone is irresponsible for accepting that risk and putting a baby to bed at 7pm. Bear in mind that the chances of dying in a car crash are not much less, and you still drive your car, don't you?

Yes, you are right Richman, poor choice of words on my part. There is a risk though (albeit small in the absence of other factors), and many people are not aware. It's not a risk I choose to accept , but I can understand we differ, as I said above.

Yes, I do use my car, but I keep my children rearfacing until 4 years plus to try to minimise the risks to them, and chose a car with a good NCAP rating deliberately. I actually don't take the baby in the car much as she hates it! I guess I am generally quite risk-averse .

I ignored the advice too .

My (bf) DS went to sleep in his own room at 7pm from the day he came home from hospital; he would wake around midnight for one feed and then slept through until aboput 7am. He started sleeping right through about 6 months - from memory, it's 11 years ago now .

He also had his naps in his own bedroom, (and had an afternoon nap until he was about 3 most days). Never had a monitor either, really can't see the point unless you live in a mansion.

Perhaps it was just sheer luck, but he never, ever had a problem sleeping. I constantly bite my tongue when I see parents (mostly mothers I have to say) who just will not even try to let their baby self-settle.

Richman - yes, that is a better way of saying it, I 'accepted' the risk.

Not going to direct this at any one poster, but please all contributors just watch the tone of your post to ensure it is neither dismissive of the risk or disrespectful. Remember there are posters on mn who have very sadly lost their babies to SIDs, some of which I believe did not have any other risk factors.

I have asked for my post of 11.23 to be deleted. Reading it back I can see it could be upsetting and I did not mean that, sorry.

My newborn has gone to sleep about 7/8pmish since she was a few weeks old. She then wakes about midnight and 4am for a feed. Up until last week we kept her in the Moses basket downstairs with the lights dimmed but then she started to wake herself up as she didn't have much room to move in the basket so we have started to put her down upstairs in her crib but either dh or I then stay in the room reading with a booklight or on the iPad. (or we go to sleep early!). SiDS terrifies me so we'll keep doing this until she's 6 months which is only a few weeks away, so not too long.

On this subject, I wanted to ask about introducing formula. dd is ebf atm but I would like to introduce a bottle of formula a day in preparation for going back to work. Would 1 bottle of formula a day increase SIDS risk at 4/5 months? Would it be safer to wait until 6 months to introduce? The data I can find doesn't seem to give any quantities. Just that bf babies have the least risk, mixed fed slightly more and fully formula fed highest but none say what proportion of ff/bf mix fed means and when baby was mix fed from. i.e. if from birth would that risk be more than introducing at 4 months?

A formula fed new born would need to feed every three-four hours, so if down at seven, would need a feed around 10pm, then say 2am and 6am.

DS1 didn't sleep through til 2.5. Ds2 and dd slept from 6pm til 7.30pm from 3 months, breastfed but with a bottle at forula and dream feed at 11.
None stayed in our room past 1 month.

Well said thermob, i appreciate everyone must make theiier own decisions, but i would be fairly confident that every one who has had a baby die would have done anything to prevent it, i have a close family member who lost a baby to sids, so i personally follow all the guidelines very carully.

OP - my 13 wk old goes to bed/sleep at 7 (sometimes earlier if tired) and usually wakes for feeds at 2 and 5 before getting up around 7. We have had 3 nights recently where she just woke once at 4am; I'm v lucky. She's done this according to her own body clock since about 7 weeks; realize now what I thought was evening fussiness was in fact over tiredness.

She is EBF and never had formula so I'm a believer its the baby not the feeding.

She sleeps in her own room now for a number of reasons, has done for a few weeks.

Mine slept 7pm-6am with feeds at 6.30pm, 10-11pm, and 2-3am, when he was being 90% BF (he normally had one bottle feed a day when he was small). Did that from about 3 weeks till he was 5 months, then he stopped the 2-3am feed, and then at 6 months dropped the 10pm feed.