Sleeping

[overduemamma]

At what age did you leave your babies to sleep in the bedroom alone with a monitor? I have an 8 week old baby and just wondering what's the right age to start taking them to bed and coming back downstairs?

DS was in his own room at 7 weeks. Has a movement sensor pad but I still checked regularly. He is now 22 weeks and I don't check as much through the evening before we go up.
I do realise that everyone will come and say SIDS guildelines are 6 months but I'm just being honest

SIDS guidelines are 6 months. (The safety comes from them hearing you rather than you hearing them so monitors etc don't cut it).

DD coslept for 9 months so was with me wherever she slept.

I didn't until about four and a half months but i was seriously overcautious, now I put her down for a nap in her room and go downstairs. I think your baby would be fine if you have a baby monitor and check on them fairly regularly.

@TittyGolightly I didn't know about the safety coming from them hearing you! Why is that?!

Because they can forget to breathe if they don't hear you.

Human babies all arrive premature. First 3 months are the fourth trimester where by rights they should be inside. Babies in the womb don't breathe so babies outside don't always remember to.

(Worth noting that in societies where cosleeping is the first choice of approach to sleeping, SIDS risks are significantly lower than western countries where separate sleeping spaces/rooms and monitors are common.)

Wow. I had no idea!! I thought it was just so we could check on them is that just for the first three months?

We had DS in our room until 6 months, he napped in the living room until we went to bed. He sleeps much better now he's in his own room as we aren't disturbing him when we move but I was really conscious of the SIDS advice about not leaving them to sleep alone until after 6 months.

6 months.

co-sleep (which also goes against the official guidance)

Oh no it doesn't.

7 months. I was waiting for 6 months but was so tires I missed his coming of age...by a month!

Are people confused about putting them to sleep in their own room (guidance is 6mo) and putting them to bed and going out of the room? I have never heard that you are meant to keep them in the living room with you until you go to bed til 6mo! I put mine in their cots and went to the living room with a monitor when they were 8 weeks, own room to sleep 6mo

putdown I don't think there's any confusion, the guidance is that they should always sleep in the same room as you whether that's naps or whatever, it doesn't just apply to over night sleeping.

titty the guidance says the safest place for baby is in their own cot/Moses basket or whatever. Although it has extra guidance for if you are going to co-sleep, the recommendation is that you shouldn't at all.

What advice are you referring to? Can you provide a link? I can't tell whether this is published advice from an authority or just some random midwife/HV.

Mine is 6. She slept on me for 4 months, in a hammock/my bed next to me for another 5 months and then between cot/her bed and my bed for another however many years.

My HV at the time was fascinated by the hammock and had nothing bad to say about cosleeping - but then I was very well researched and know about the failings of NHS advice.

There are loads of threads on this at the moment. Some people will say there baby is always asleep in a room with them at 3 years and others will have put them in a room in their own from two weeks.

SIDS advice is to keep the baby in the same room as an adult. It has drastically reduced the number of babies who have died.

I think titty is talking about DUrham university ISIS research.

Not solely. There are lots of sources of information about bedsharing benefits and risks.

I didn't leave DD alone until she was over 6 months.

Just as GP doesn't need know everything about every condition, diet etc not every midwife/HV knows about things outside of the selective informationprovided by the NHS. (Have you seen their diabetic eating advice, BTW? We KNOW the science of is wrong but they keep pushing it. Similarly the Eatwell plate etc.)

I have friends that are GPs and some will prescribe antibiotics for colds to "get patients out of the surgery" even though they know the antibiotics will do nothing for the patient and are causing harm to the rest of us.

The midwives and HVs I know personally are equally poor at updating their knowledge. One couldn't see the difference between true SIDS (i.e. Unexplained death of an infant) and a baby being smothered by a parent. One has a known cause, the other doesn't and yet both are called SIDS. They push formula feeding for sleep (research shows it makes no difference), cry it out/controlled crying for all sleep "issues" (seemingly misunderstanding that most sleep issues are down to unrealistic parental expectation rather than a problem with the child).

Hence I do my own research to work out what's best for me and my child. You don't get an accurate picture from any single source.

www.lullabytrust.org.uk/safer-sleep-advice/room-sharing/

Guidance states that the safest place for your baby to sleep is in their own space (cot, cosleeping cot, Moses basket etc) but in the same room as you, both day and night, until at least 6 months. Whether you choose to follow the advice is obviously entirely up to you, but I don't see why you wouldn't. But maybe I'm weird for wanting to do everything I can to make my baby safe. It's like extended rear facing car seats. My family think I am utterly bonkers for wanting to keep DS rear facing but that's the choice myself and DH have made for our baby, that we are comfortable with. Everyone has different levels of risk they are prepared to tolerate.

The lullaby trust is a great resource for safer sleeping advice. They have their evidence base on the website. Guidelines are also published by the NHS. When researching what bed, bedding etc to get and what is safer when my daughter was born they were easy to find.

The guidelines recommended the baby sleeps where you are for. 6 months. I know a lot of people recommend an angelcare monitor and put them in a different room but an alarm saying the baby isn't breathing is surely too late ?