Baby and own room - will she be ok?

[Blak]

Ok, so my DD is 4.5 months old and we are due to move home on the next couple of weeks, she’s been in the same room as us since birth but she doesn’t fit her Moses basket anymore so is in her cot bed. The new home we are moving too is a bigger house but the bedrooms are smaller which means because DD is not in her Moses anymore and her cot isn’t a cot it’s a cot bed it won’t fit in our bedroom with us and she will have to go into her own room. Is this ok? We have brilliant baby monitors and her room will be opposite ours?

@Feminist10101 there is also a chance I will crash the car and kill her when I drive to visit family. Do I stay in my house forever? There is a chance she will catch measles at a playgroup and die before she gets her vaccination. Do I avoid other kids til she is 1? There is a chance she will die in her sleep while I am asleep in my bed beside her. Do I sit up all night watching her?

Yes. Everything has a risk. Every action comes with a possible negative outcome. SIDS is a negative outcome we try to avoid. But, if we as parents were to strive to eliminate every single risk, no matter how small, we would literally go insane. In fact, I did go insane, actually medically insane with post natal psychosis because I tried to avoid every single thing that could kill her, all brought on by well meaning fellow mothers telling me about the invite number of guidelines I was supposed to have a degree in, and how I could kill her if I dont follow them.

As a parent, you have to weigh up risks every single day. With SIDS , as with car seats, and measles, you do your best, but sometimes you cant follow it all.

Squidge it's about mitigating the risks not eliminating them.

Use a carseat. That reduces risk of death or serious injury. To not do so would be reckless. Imo putting a tiny baby in a room on their own is ignoring a very easy mitigation to the risk of SIDS.

@SqidgeBum no one knows for why rooming in reduces SIDS there are theories that Mum moving around and breathing stops the baby from going into a deep sleep and another that it’s due to the carbon dioxide which is being released. It’s true that SIDS can happen even if there is a parent in the room research shows that’s it much less likely.

OP you should look at research yourself, BASIS by Durham University is a good place to start, then consider other risk factors eg formula feeding and if a parent smokes and make your decision based on that.

Thanks all for the replies and I don’t mean to sound abrupt but do you not think I’ve thought about moving furniture or even staying in a different room? I have but the wardrobes are fitted and her cot is a cot bed, if it was just a cot it would fit but the cot bed is loads bigger. I will consider getting her something smaller to sleep in for the time being

OP, there are other things you can be doing to reduce the risk of SIDS, i.e. dummy whilst sleeping, fan keeping air moving, sleep aids like MyHummy that go all night.

@Blak if you are worried you could put them in a travel cot for a few weeks?

They are only £30 from Argos /Amazon and smaller than a cot bed.
Ours outgrew the snuzpod really early and we put him in the travel cot for a couple of months instead of moving him into his proper cot in own room.

Really useful to still have up in our bedroom if having a difficult night / use as a play pen when having a shower.

I moved my daughter into her own room at around 4 months, 16 weeks. She had been sleeping through since 10 weeks and was the most incredibly noisey sleeper!! To the point where I couldnt get any sleep at all even though she slept through the night! She was in the next room and we had a monitor. I knew 6 months was ideal, but you have to do what is best for your baby and family.

I’d also suggest a travel cot. You can get them really cheaply and in different sizes.

I put my DS in his own room from about 8 weeks, and he was sleeping through from 3 months I think. We just kept waking him up in the night by moving around, so he slept a lot better when we moved him to his cotbed...and it helped with our sanity! Appreciate the majority would disagree, but he was right next door and it worked well for us. I know SIDS is a risk, but it's such a low risk. We don't smoke and the cot was always clear, so I was satisfied with our assessment of it.

My mum put me in my own room at 2 days (face down, as was the advice then. She couldn’t sleep with my snuffly noises.

40+ years on we barely speak. Predominantly because she has little regard for anyone but herself.

But it could be a total coincidence, I guess.......

Personally I wouldn’t due to the SIDS risk. Both my DS are big and outgrew their side sleepers by 4/5 months so they went into a decent travel cot until they were old enough to go into their own rooms - could this be an option for youv

As far as I understand, the risk of SIDS is still not hugely understood. It is mooted that hearing you breathe helps baby to regulate their own breathing but it's not a definite. Statistics also show that the risk starts decreasing after 4 months, to be considerably low at 6 months although still not zero. I
For me personally after 4 months the risk was low enough to be acceptable - for us we were all starting to disturb each others sleep at this point too, and having our room back as a baby free space really improved my emotional wellbeing. These are all important factors too - having a parent who has constantly broken sleep is not sustainable either.

@jlr1986

I moved my daughter into her own room at around 4 months, 16 weeks. She had been sleeping through since 10 weeks and was the most incredibly noisey sleeper!! To the point where I couldnt get any sleep at all even though she slept through the night! She was in the next room and we had a monitor. I knew 6 months was ideal, but you have to do what is best for your baby and family.

This is confusing. You moved her because you could hear her but you used a monitor so could still hear her?

OP I'm sure you've thought about moving furniture - but I'm just reiterating to consider all of the options. Could you afford to buy another cot for the time being and sell it on later? You can get "small" cots that are much bigger than side-sleeper next2me style ones, but not as big as a standard cot or cot bed. Check FB marketplace.

Our bedroom is SMALL (we have the smaller room). We have space for a double bed (divan so no frame adding space), and a cot bed. That is all we have in there. At first we had the cot bed directly next to our bed, but now we've moved things around so it's on the opposite wall to our bed (although still only a foot away) with only a tiny bit of manoeuvring space. DS is nearly 9 months and we're keeping him in our room (and all our clothes, etc in his room) until 12m, unless something changes and we feel he needs his own space. When we moved into our house we thought we'd move DS into his own room (he was 6.5m) but I just didn't feel comfortable doing it. NHS guidelines are 6 months, but the AAP (USA) recommendations have recently been extended to 12m.

I wanted our baby in with us as long as possible. He was in our room until he was 16 months. We only moved him then because he was going into a toddler bed and we wanted him to get used to his own room first.
I didn't see the need to move him at all. And we had plenty of room. (All this there's not enough space is rubbish. Move the furniture if you have to to make space for the cot).

It really is up to you, guidelines are just that. The only thing that confuses me is how all your kids outgrew their Moses baskets etc so young, both mine fitted until 8 months in their carry cot which I had stood on the floor next to our bed (not that they slept in it much, they preferred to cosleep.

Ps we had them in with us until they had toddler beds around 16 months, though they still trotted in and climbed onto our bed then.

6 months is the guideline. But DS went into his room at just over 4 months. I think we all slept better as a result and I was still up 3 times a night with him anyway x

Another vote here for a travel cot! They really are extremely useful and not expensive. They can double up as a playpen after it outgrows its use upstairs.... Somewhere safe to put a crawling baby if you need to leave the room.

We had a chicco next to me crib as it was nice and big and fitted both tall dc in until 6 months no problems.

@movingonup20 I put DD in a Moses basket in a shop at about 12 month, she fit in it fine, could have slept in it I guess if it was in the floor

The US has recently extended their recommendation to 12 months, I'd go with that tbh but we're way passed it and DD is still in our room at nearly 2.

'I put DD in a Moses basket in a shop at about 12 month, she fit in it fine, could have slept in it I guess if it was in the floor'

It depends on the size of your child tbh as my DC were tall and outgrew it by about 4 months old and hated it well before that and that was a larger size basket. Luckily we had the chicco for upstairs sleeping and it was so spacious it worked for them and they loved it. Also I think the UK recommendations of 6 months worked for us and after that we were all disturbing each other which would have been detrimental to dc development. Like anything you have to weigh it all up and do what is better for your family/situation/child.

@StickTheKettleOnAlice I mean she found it funny to be in it but that was probably novelty and by sleep in it I mean I could have dumped her in it when she was already asleep. She doesn't like cots at all, I guess it's the high sides, she could have just stood up and stepped out of a Moses basket

@olderthanyouthink My first was like that and slept mostly in our bed from about 14 months to 2! When he got his single bed with guard on he loved it and we never looked back.

Just another thing to consider. At 4 months DS was starting to roll onto his front and I preferred having him next to me so I could flip him back when I noticed. He could roll onto his front but not back again.

By 6 months he was much stronger and could roll himself back, at which point I felt happier letting him sleep in his own room.