Newborns sleeping outside alone

[Wonderflonium]

I'm expecting my first child in winter. I live in Denmark. My boyfriend is a Dane and we live fairly close to the in-laws.

Danes still put their babies out to sleep in cots, in all weather. They put them out in a pram in the garden/on the balcony, and they leave them outside shops and cafes.

I am not keen on the practice for a lot of reasons but mostly because the baby is alone. Before I got pregnant we came up with some ground rules:
If the baby is supervised, it can sleep outside.

The in-laws were talking to us about our choice of pram and the MIL made a comment about "well, as long as you can put the baby outside to sleep, it's fine" and I waited for my boyfriend to let her know what we are going to do. He just looked awkward. The MIL could see the awkwardness and came up with a few advantages:-

1. The baby becomes more robust
   
2. The baby sleeps better
   
3. It's our culture
   
   But the boyfriend said nothing. We had a chat about it and I told him about the guidance that babies don't sleep alone until 6 months. I'm not keen about leaving the baby outside AFTER 6 months but at least it'll be summer.
   
   I think the first two advantages are red herrings and, sure, it's their culture but so is drinking schnapps at breakfast on special occasions but I don't partake in that, either.
   
   Clearly, I need to kick the boyfriend up the butt so he can make it clear to his mum how in a lot of ways the baby is going to be brought up Danish but in some other important ways, it's going to have a British upbringing. But he's so conflict-shy, it's unreal.
   
   Any words of wisdom?

[BertrandRussell]

"So get ready to set your boundaries, to say no. To be firm, to be disliked, to be strong in the face of pressure and disapproval. At the start you can say 'I'm not ready for that yet'. And the over time make clear not yet means never."

While always keeping in the back of your mind that they may have a point. One of the most important attributes in good parenting is flexibility. An anecdote. My mother was always dubious about babies spending a long time in slings- she felt that it was too restricting and that they needed to be able to stretch out. I was vindicated by my dd who loved the sling and practically lived in it, when she wasn't co sleeping. When ds came along I assumed he'd be the same, but he was incredibly unsettled. One day, just to prove mum wrong, I laid him down. He instantly stopped crying, stretched out as far as he could and fell asleep.

So try things. I've never yet met a bay who didn't sleep well outside. Obviously, don't do anything dangerous. But sleeping in a pram in a safe place outside isn't dangerous. Keep an open mind. Don't say no for the sake of it.

[RiverTam]

When DD was tiny I used to visit my mum often. If she'd fallen asleep in the pram I would leave her in my mums back garden rather than risk waking her by bumping the pram up steps.

I must say it never occured to me that there's was any risk attached to this.

Oh, and anyone can find anything on the Internet to back up their argument, so I'd stop doing that right away, it doesn't really prove anything.

[Natsku]

Same in Finland daisy the fence round DD's nursery is just waist high, the children can climb over it and anyone could reach over and grab a child which worried me at first but I soon found out it never actually happens and none of the children have climbed over to escape (though mine has occasionally climbed back in because she didn't want to leave!)

[corythatwas]

Agree that the OP and her dh need to maintain their own boundaries here. However, it is a complicating factor that the OP has married a man from another culture, and is actually bringing the child up in this culture. So it is very likely that the dh's ideas and boundaries will be different from hers and compromises will be required regardless of the IL's. It is all very well to say IL's can't treat them as their own children- but they are actually the dh's children and he will need to have a say.

Speaking as someone who moved in the opposite direction, from Scandinavia to the UK, to have children with an Englishman, I have found openness and willingness to compromise absolutely essential. If I had just carried on treating dc as my Scandinavian upbringing had told me was best for them, life would have got very difficult for all of us. Otoh there are some ideas I really do believe in and would have found it very difficult to compromise on. And there were some ideas that actually sat quite well with dh's generally philosophy too. Some things we did horrified the HV, other things we avoided doing because it would have clashed too much with local community ways of doing things, some things we did a certain way because I felt strongly about them, others in a certain way because dh felt strongly about him. But the foundation of it all was that our dc were brought up as part of two different, equally valid cultures.