Four month old bedtime question

[whatswithtodaytoday]

How do others do bedtime for slightly older babies who can't be left in a room on their own yet?

We're lucky enough to have a really good sleeper, but because he sleeps very deeply I want to keep to the Lullaby Trust advice of not leaving him to sleep on his own in a room until he's six months. He currently goes down for the night around 8.30pm, and until now we'd been putting him in his pram crib in the living room with us, lights low and TV quiet. However, now it's so light in the evenings it's impossible to make the room darker (glass door) and he's more likely to wake if we make a noise as he's not in that newborn total zonk out sleep. It's taking ages to get him to sleep because he's so distracted and I often end up taking him upstairs to the bedroom, but then I'm stuck up there on my own the rest of the evening.

Am I missing something? Does everyone ignore the six months advice and leave them with a monitor by this age? Or do I just have a particularly difficult to settle baby?

For the sake of two months, I'd be going up to the bedroom with him. I go up earlier with DS as he's not yet sleeping through and from 8pm is the only time I get a block of sleep. We've figured it's not forever so it's fine in the interim.

We put DS2 to bed in the bedroom from 3 months. Sometimes I'd sleep there with him if I was tired but usually he was alone (with audio monitor). Lullaby trust is the only organisation in the world who have interpreted the research in this way and included the "never let them be alone" in their guidance, and that even only in the past few years. All other advice (including NHS and RoSPA advice) simply states that they should share your bedroom. I would be most concerned with the longest block of sleep being in the same space as you, and not so much for naps or the period in between baby going to bed and you going to bed.

In any case by 4 months the risk of SIDS drops so dramatically it is OK to relax some of the more impractical guidelines, particularly if you're still keeping to the ones which are easier to do - dressing them appropriately, feet to foot or avoiding blankets, back to sleep, no pillows (including sleepyhead etc), toys, bumpers in the cot with them.

We have this discussion group run by health visitors and other new mums. The topic came up and they said by that age they recommended putting the baby in your room with a baby monitor as it means you get a bit of an evening and will be better rested yourself. We did it from about 5 months with a good monitor and checking in on him regularly. He's up there about 3 hours before we then join him for the night.

Do what is best for you though x

Most people I know started ignoring this advice at some point

@whatswithtodaytoday I came on here to ask exactly the same question! So i hope you don’t mind jumping on your thread!

My baby is only 2 months and is definitley out of that sleep zonked newborn stage! When she’s downstairs with us she is SO alert and has started really taking everything in, even when things are quiet and relaxed there’s always something grabbing her attention! Which is lovely but she then gets over tired and really fractious, and I can’t tell if we’re just making things worse keeping her downstairs with us. Then again, I’m very keen to follow safety guidelines as she is still so tiny.

Any suggestions?

From about 3.5 months I've been putting DD to bed upstairs at 6.45 and then coming back down for three hour or so. Everyone I know does this too - I don't really want to sit in a dark room for three hours not making any noise! It was fine when she was teeny tiny as she went to bed later!

My kids slept in their own room from first day home. Used a baby monitor. Meant I had an evening with my husband.

I lay in bed and read on my kindle paperwhite
It's back-lit and you can adjust the brightness

I just go to sleep when she does, before the middle-of-the-night boob rampage begins. Mine's not really a sleeper, only naps on me in the day, and takes a while to settle, so I'm quite happy to get the kip as soon as she conks out. It's such a short space of time in the grand scheme of things that DP and I are OK with not having an evening together for a few months. And I need the sleep.

Until around 5 months I (or my partner would go up to bed at the same time as baby) and either read on kindle, watch TV with subtitles or listen to a podcast. From 5 months used the monitor and chilled downstairs

Yep my dd went up to bed in her cot on her own from around 12 weeks.

Feeling very jealous - my dd was up until about 2-4am at that age no matter what we tried!

We used to do that crazy thing too... but at around 3 months we got a monitor. We put the camera in the cot so that we could see DS close up and hear his breathing.

We had to do this at five weeks. Not ideal, but she was screamy overtired by 6.30pm and would only calm down if in a pitch black room, with loud white noise. We used a video monitor and lightly stroked her every half an hour to make sure she wasn’t in too deep a sleep.

Oddly enough, her bedtime at 7.5 months is still 6.30pm; any later and she turns into a wailing banshee!

Erm my DS went up to bed alone at 3 weeks at 6pm and my DD went up to bed alone at 2 days from 6pm.
Have baby monitor and angel care pad and pop in to check on them both every 15mins Ish.
DS went into his own bedroom at 13 weeks he outgrew the crib. DD will go into her own room about the same time.

We started putting our little one upstairs in our room with monitors for bed and naps at 4 months because, quite frankly, we were disturbing him. It was amazing to get our evenings back even if I only managed an extra hour or 2 before I followed him to bed. In my experience, most of my friends were doing the same with their babies by that age. I was also more relaxed by then and didn’t feel like I needed to constantly stare at him anymore, just in case.

Similar to PP, my DS couldn't deal with the distractions that came with being in the same room as us from about 4 months. We bought a video monitor and put him in his cot in his room. I was nervous at first and checked in on him a lot, but he slept much better, partly because it was dim and quiet but also because he had much more room than in the carry cot - he liked to sleep with his arms out like an aeroplane.

He was having a dream feed, so I used to do that in his room on my way to bed, and then bring him into the side sleeper crib for the rest of the night. He did the whole night in his room from 6 months but in hindsight we should have done that sooner; we were just all disturbing each other.

In hindsight I wish I'd started putting DD up to bed when she stopped the manic evening cluster feeding. She struggles to sleep alone even at over a year.

I'm pretty cynical about recommendations that are too impractical for many people to follow

Hi there
I remember going through the same thing- there's good evidence that b babies do get more 'fussy' at around this age for a while which is quite normal.There's some good information on this website for parents (Look under pre-school, then sleep0
www.happymaps.co.uk
Good luck !

We implemented a bedtime routine at 8 weeks. For the first few weeks, I went to bed at the same time as him, or maybe read a bit if I was feeling up to it. But then he started sleeping better so I was less knackered and we used a baby monitor with the movement sensor pad. It's not perfect, but we desperately needed the adult alone time.

I came to the same conclusion a week ago that bringing our 5 month old back downstairs after her bath was pointless, far too much going on. We now do bath, massage, story, bottle all in her nursery and then I put her in her moses inside her cot to get her used to her room also this is where her monitor is set up.

We can either come downstairs or chill in our own bedroom with the tv on until lights out when she comes next to me.

She goes to bed SO easily now, it's a dream compared to bringing her back downstairs.

Thanks everyone, good to know it's a common concern! I do leave him in his cot during the day, I figure he sleeps quite lightly compared to nighttime and there's more daytime noise around.

I think it is probably time for evenings upstairs on his own now. Or maybe in a week or two 🙈 I need to give the next to me to a pregnant friend soon after he's six months, so I need him to be used to the cot and sleeping on his own by then anyway.

Ours goes Down in the moses basket in the living room with us between 7/8 husband then does a dream feed (shes formula feed) and nappy change around 11 afterwhich he brings her upstairs I'm usually in bead by 10 at the latest ... Id like to drop the dream feed ideally but I feel she still needs it plus it means she then goes through till around 7am