when did you move your baby out of your bedroom?

[xenabelly]

hi all

I should be confident about this cos i'm on baby no2 but I've turned all neurotic and obsessed with cotdeath - my friends say it's cos i've got a boy (first born was girl) and mums are always more 'precious' about their boys...anywayyyyy...

He's 9weeks and sleeping from 11pm - 6am (what a star!). I know the HV says to keep him in your room for 6months !?! BUT our room is tiny and would be nice to not keep falling over moses basket etc.

My daughter was a great sleeper too and we moved her into her room at 7weeks without batting an eyelid - don't know why i've got all freaked out about it now.

Just keep thinking if he died of cotdeath cos he was in his own room before 6months i'd never forgive myself.

BTW: our house is fairly small, his room would be next door and we'd leave doors open nad have monitor on if that makes any difference to anything..

Thanks

We put dd in her own room about a month ago. She is 16 months now! She has slept through the night since about 3 months old so it was totally unnecessary for her to be in with us. If anything we disturbed her, going to bed, getting up in the morning, etc. She loves her room. We can now read in bed (yipee) and watch Newsnight in bed etc whereas when she was in with us we had to creep and whisper in the darkness. We are expecting another baby in July and I will try and move him when he is six months.
I also have DSs (15 and 11) and I moved them to their own rooms once they slept through the night which was around 3 months if I remember correctly.

So what about babies sharing a room with an older sibling? Would this have the same effect (i.e. hearing another human breathing, stirring in sleep etc) as sleeping with a parent? Just interested...

I am not sure MW - i doubt that there are sufficient numbers to demonstrate I suspect, but the principle is the same.

maewest, i was just having similar thoughts, but it might depend on age of said sibling, as cot death can affect older children too, so surely their breathing patterns may not be established?

oh i dont know!

DS stayed in our room until he was about 7mths old as I didn't like getting up really early for his first bf of the day.

After I found dd with her face pressed against the fabric side of her carry cot 2 mornings in a row at a 8 weeks old - her big cot is too big to fit in our room. I took the decision that it was a bigger risk for her to press her face into fabric than to sleep in her own room. Mind you 5 months later, I still don't sleep through the night - I get up several times to check on her - although she does .

We moved him out at about 9 mths, but only because his room was unlivable before that! Before that, he slept in Moses basket and then later on, with us. He took to the cot no problems when he went in his own room.

the risks of cot death do drop off pretty sharply after 6 months though, and it is very unusual after one year, although it does happen of course as we all know.

My 8 mth old does have day time naps in his cot. There's no way in a million years he'd sleep downstairs. I think you'd have to get them used to that from a very early age. So the new advice is too late for us

my 5 month old wont sleep in the living room during the day, never would do, even tiny, prob coz his big sis makes too much noise

dd was moved out at 3 weeks. She was pretty much sleeping through by then (ie only 1 night feed after the OH did the last one at 11), our walls are paper-thin so we could still hear her crying/snuffling/coughing and I was on such tenterhooks over her that I was instantly awake if she even turned over in the same room as us, then couldn't get back to sleep for hours... so for the sake of my sanity, she went next door!

(she was completely unaffected, btw).

I'm not trying to be funny, but when everyone says "I put my X month/week old (under 6 months) in his/her own room at X time and he/she was okay" it still doesn't change the fact that babies are much safer in their parents' room until 6 months.

Obviously for every baby that dies there will be many more who don't, but sadly some babies will die. Like my poor cousin, who went into his own room at 3 months and was found dead one morning by his mum

oh Nut, thats very sad and i can see where you are coming from!

but acctually i owuld have strangled dd if i hadnt slept for the first 6 months so i think she was probably a bit safer in her room!

ds is suffice to say still in our room at 5 months as he doesnt fidget as much and im not quite so neurotic!

would have loved to keep dd in till 6 months (something to deter dh from going near me ) but it honestly wasn't for us! ds however is a new baby!

Stacey I didn't mean to sound judgemental, honestly, and obviously severe sleep deprivation can cause accidents and depression, etc.

I do know what you mean about snuffling, etc. My DS was very bad for this for a couple of weeks. My DH wore ear plugs it was sdo bad but I didn't have that luxury...

Same as fifisworld. 3/ 4 months. Each of them got too big for the carrycot at that point so we moved them into the cot which was in their own room next door to ours. We left doors partially open too.

oh nut i know you werent being judgemental, just your experience, i just know id have killed her which wouldnt have been good! must go ds crying!

DS was 5 and a half weeks !!

I just couldn't get any sleep, as every time he snuffled or took a deep breath I woke to look at him (and I wasn't a particularly anxious mother!)

Eventually dh waited until I settled down one evening, then carried the moses basket out and into the cot we had ready in the other bedroom. From that night I slept soundly, so did ds (and dh).

Seeing as we don't live in a huge stately home, I figured we were as likely to know something had happened, as we would be if we were asleep all in the same room. And I was a much calmer mummy cos I was getting some sleep.