Do you let your baby sleep alone?

[Nessalina]

Can't decide if I'm being PFB, but me & DH have been following safe sleeping guidelines to the letter, so at 7:30 I put our 4 month old baby to bed and I sit in the darkened bedroom with him, watching Amazon prime on my mobile until about 10:30 when I go to sleep.

In chatting to other mums at baby group it seems that a lot of them put the baby down and them leave them to it with a monitor, and then come up to bed whenever they would normally.

So I know SIDs guidelines are that baby should sleep in a room with an adult, but am I taking it too far?? I would kind of like to get my evenings back...

We kept ds in the living room in his Moses basket. Personally with all the sids risks my view was ' would i forgive myself' I had a v v v hard time getting pregnant so have no 2nd chance. I also had heard of a baby dying during a nap time of sids when left alone so I was terrified. We used an angel care so I could have peace of mind when I was asleep. But as you can see I was v scared of loosing my hard won son. I think the peak month for sids is 4 months so 6 months is just covering the bases

It's not about watching them breathe. I believe the theory is that the adult's breath and movement prevent the baby from sleeping too deeply (like the back sleeping and bf). You just need to be there not be watching.

stargirl That's why mine ended up in their own rooms. Our breathing prevented them from sleeping full stop. They were and are very light sleepers, so for any of us to get any sleep common sense prevailed. (Yes, and I am aware of the theory etc etc)

But babies years ago very rarely slept alone ever. So the theory of this being 'new' isn't at all new.
Years ago the majority of the population lived in tiny tiny homes. Entire families always slept in one room. Those Wealthy had separate rooms but full time wet nurses who would sleep with baby. It's only in the last 50 ish years people have started having separate nurseries just for babies. How many of your parents/ grandparents were one of 5/7/8 children in a 2 bed house?

They are not assuming anyone would sit alone in a dark room belonging to baby. They are assuming baby will just sleep in living area, until parent goes to bed with them. A baby will learn to sleep in living area, what would you do if you had no other space? They would of course just sleep in the same area as you.
How do you think babies worldwide sleep? In African huts? In Tokyo studios? In London cramped flats?

Noyoucant - I'm not advocating it. I was just commenting on how unrealistic the guidance is. I had to do it for a couple of months with DS as he wouldn't sleep anywhere but on one of us and therefore, when DH was away, it was a choice between staying still and spending 30 minutes resettling him each time I moved. I thanked my lucky stars when he decided to settle separately.

I had DS downstairs because I was totally wet and missed him

I think if you feel happy leaving him then leave him. Don't tiptoe around him. 4 months is OK.

^"They are not assuming anyone would sit alone in a dark room belonging to baby. They are assuming baby will just sleep in living area, until parent goes to bed with them. A baby will learn to sleep in living area, what would you do if you had no other space? They would of course just sleep in the same area as you.
How do you think babies worldwide sleep? In African huts? In Tokyo studios? In London cramped flats?"^

Art - you've said repeatedly how your children would settle in the living room with you and you could go about your life. I think you've even said you could have guests round. If that is your experience, I can imagine you'd feel the way I've just quoted above. But it isn't a given that the baby will learn to sleep in the living area. The other possibility is that you may just have a baby who is an atrocious sleeper and needs to be resettled multiple, multiple times during the course of an evening and spends a good portion of it unhappy because they want to be asleep and aren't. If you've only one room, that's how it has to be. But if you have another room, you have a choice. I can understand how, if you've only had one type of child, the idea that it's all easy and they'll adjust seems attractive. But not all children do.

Just in case anyone was wondering, I was not without loo trips or drinks for the whole evening until 10pm or so, as my DS didn't sleep for that whole time! He would occasionally be awake and I could get things done.

I also used to have a stockpile of drinks and snacks next to me so I was set up for a while!

I am genuinely I am sorry but I think this is completely OTT! What are you going to do if/when child 2 appears on the scene? Ask DC1 to sit in silence in a darkened room too until DC2 is 6 months old? When do you get any time to relax and have a chat with DP about your day (when DC is 6 months + 1 day old)? Why does it magically change at 6 months. I really think the guidelines are being interpreted a little over zealously. Both my DC were put to bed at 7 (following all SIDs guidelines - temperature/ bedding/on their back etc) and we went to bed at usual time. Obviously we checked on them a few times before going to bed. Our monitor broke when DC2 was 2 months - never replaced it either. I am certain if you spoke to a normal Health Visitor (if you are lucky enough to have a normal one - but that is another thread entirely) they would tell you to relax a bit. I know you have to do what you feel is right but I think you will be looking back and smiling about the PFBness of this.

We managed it when DD2 appeared 6 months ago. With 2 parents, it isn't hard. One of us does bath and bed with DD1 while the other does bedtime with DD2. We do alternate nights.

That is good stargirl. I suppose that would never have worked for us as Dh never gets home in time for bath or bed (well maybe once a week if sea re lucky) and he is currently away for 2 weeks with work. But if it works for some, then fine. I am not saying don't do it - just trying to inject a bit of post baby realism into life. Believe me there are tonnes of PFB things I did - makes my laugh to look back but no doubt I wouldn't have done anything differently!

Penguin - I have more than one child. As do many friends who have done the same. I'm not saying you have to, just how it's not as hard as made out. When you have more than one child you just take baby to old child's bed and feed whilst reading bedtime story etc, then bring back with you. It's not rocket science. We are one of those families living in a small one bed flat. They only have the option of sleeping in living room or sharing the bedroom with us.

I think I'm relatively risk adverse, I still chop grapes for my 6 year old - but never did this. They both started having a bedtime at 3 months (5months for dd2 as she was prem) and they were alone upstairs for a few hours before we went to bed.

I'd have missed the chats with dh in the evening, time to do my own thing, ring a friend etc. Having a baby can be isolating, spending all evening sat in a darkened room after a tiring day? Blimey! I'm glad for those who had dcs who would sleep happily downstairs but that didn't work for us.

You seem to be responding to a totally different post to the one I actually said Art.

I know you have two children. I commented that if you had only had one type of child (i.e. one who will sleep in the living room whilst you have friends round, etc) it all seems very straightforward to assume that all children will learn to sleep with stuff going on around them if you do it enough. But not all do. Some just make your life really, really difficult if you are in a situation where they can't have their own space and sleep in quiet dark.

Penguin - not at all.you keep saying about different types of babies. I keep saying many haven't a choice regardless of 'type'. We have 2 children, ds2 probably would have settled more alone, but we haven't that option as no space, so he had to learn how to sleep with noise. There wasn't option 2/3/4 available. So type of baby made no difference.

Yes, I recognised in my post that not every person has a choice about what they do - for example if they live in a studio flat. I'm just pointing out that keeping your baby in the living room and trying to go about your normal life can be impossible.

So if you don't have a choice, you have them in the room with you all evening and you struggle through. They don't necessarily magically adjust.

If you do have a choice, for a lot of babies it is a choice between everyone being miserable (with them in the living room and you trying to do things), sitting in the dark (a recipe for mental health problems for a lot of us) or recognising that it is a very tiny risk factor and putting them to bed in your bedroom a couple of hours before you go there.

Cacofonix When the hv saw us at 8 ish weeks she was quite reasonable about this really. She more or less said, if your baby will sleep downstairs with you,do that, if they need to be somewhere quieter take them upstairs (also gave all of the safe sleeping advice).This seems very sensible. She said that she'd experienced two SIDS cases in her career and one was when a baby was in a pram being pushed in the park.
The mw were much more interested in the temperature of our house/amount of bedding. DS was born in December and, influenced largely by the centre-of-the-sun temperature in hospital, we had the heating on too high apparently. We got to the stage where me and oh were in pjs, socks, with hot water bottles under thick duvets and ds had a cellular blanket. In a 17 degree room. And we wondered why he didn't sleep.

An interesting point is my MH mw made a firm point that death relating to pnd is now as common as SIDS so my dh was NOT to let me stay awake all hours and relieve me of sitting with baby/ensure I had regular adult conversation. This was because I have mild PNA.

How many times is it the WOMAN who sits in the dark? The WOMAN who would blame herself/get blamed if something went wrong.

In recent months I've noticed there's a lot of terrifying toxic thinking around mothers and young babies. Behaviours and thoughts I know from hcp to be obsessive are lauded and pushed via FB memes and a "daily mail" blame mentality as good mothering (a bit like mothering "size 0"). I've had breakthroughs destroyed by - when i say "I used to obsessively watch/do xyz" - some busybody saying "but what if you stop xyz and something happens, could you forgive yourself?" (bearing in mind the context was a convo about my PNA making me obsessively perfectionist and terrified my baby might die, and I'd made a step to recovery).

There also seems to be a bit of a pnd epidemic generally.
I can't help wondering if the 2 are connected.

That is a really good post Squizita.

what sort of FB memes, Squizita? I don't get much on that sort of topic appear on my FB feed, and I'm curious what sort of obsessive behaviour is being pushed?

...death of a parent not a child I mean. Women dying don't make the papers.
Thank goodness tragic though that is the death of a child is still exceptional.

But I guess some would say that makes the mh risk ok. The mum is after all less important than the child.

Culture Soft focus ones with a photo and then some kind of thing like "A mother will do anything for her child, even though society says she shouldn't ... post if you agree" I think you have to have a certain brand of glurge loving net mums and babycentre poster to be exposed. Old school friends etc not current ones. Or they post a tragic DM story about an accident with ill spelt demands the poor mum be locked up or sterilised because her baby ran off and got knocked over or whatever.

It's really quite sheltered here in this pit if vipers in some regards!

When you are suffering from post natal depression/anxiety I think it is a problem that the NHs safe sleeping does not list all SIDS factors and puts the sleeping with an adult in the room quite prominently, when babies on backs with no covers, smoking etc is a massive part. This acts on a worried mind to the point that 'leave them alone = baby will die' rather than 'leave them alone = baby will be more more at risk then when you do a thousand other things'. I've noticed actually that a lot of what were previously seen as AP practices seem to be pushed as the norm in childcare now. If you haven't got your baby strapped to you for 24 hours a day you are lacking. whereas AP isn't for everyone. And feeling as if you are failing or being guilty because you aren't like that must be leading a lot of mums into a bad state of MH.

No more at risk, not more more at risk! Changes my point somewhat!

Exactly Buglife ... not to mention lifestyle things like baby yoga/swimming/Mozart (or you're giving them U in future GCSEs) and products (Doidy cup not Tesco sippy or they'll not learn to drink).
FFS they have us over a barrel and I seriously think I notice it because I've had "normal/appropriate" outlined to me and see the media ploughing through that. Because feeling insecure sells things and keeps us obedient.
Bloody hell do they make mum n baby tinfoil hats? I sound a right conspiracy theorist!