0-6mth should not sleep alone EVER??

[Luk]

Hi all, FTM here due in May.

All the SIDS advice says baby should sleep in same room as parents for first 6 months. NHS website wording suggests this means every single nap as well.

If I'm trying to introduce a routine and settle baby down in her cot in the dark at 7pm, am I supposed to sit in the dark with her until I fall asleep too??

What do you guys do with daytime naps and early bedtime? What's practical and safe?

Yes baby should be in room with you, when they were little we did naps and first part of the evening in the moses basket downstairs with us (or naps tended to be contact naps as that's what she needed) and take her up when I went up.

At what age do you plan on implementing a 7pm bedtime? Its sort of pointless if you plan on breastfeeding as babies tend to cluster feed all evening so you're best off having a moses basket or similar in the living room for baby to go into between (many many) feeds.

Even if formula feeding, they just sleep in the living room too - lamps on, tv turned down a notch, they don't usually care about that. Then you do a feed and a bum change when you go to bed around 10.30/11pm and settle them in your bedroom with you.

The best advice I had when DD was born was from my auntie who had three children - getting your child to go to sleep in a dark and quiet room will be making a rod for your own back. They need to get used to falling asleep if there is some background noise or if it isn't dark.

So, we kept DD in the living room with us until we wanted to go to bed. The TV would have been on at a low volume and the light would have been on.

Sometimes I would go up earlier and have the TV on in the bedroom.

Sitting in the dark in the bedroom waiting for a baby to sleep is unsustainable and impractical.

In the end DD cluster fed nearly all evening until she was about three month old so the idea of putting her to bed early evening never happened.

It will be many months until you are able to establish a 7pm bedtime. Just forget that idea until baby is at least 6 months old!

We kept DD in the living room with us until about 3 months (often with DH staying up for the first part of the night and me going to bed early in preparation for the 2nd part of the night). After about 3 months she started getting overstimulated or overtired in the evenings and it was hard to get her to sleep in the living room so we started putting her down in the dark quiet bedroom (next to the living room as it’s a flat) and watching her on the monitor for an hour or two before we went to bed. Not following the advice but I don’t consider it a significant risk despite being the type to worry over lots of other stuff. I’m sure a lot of people don’t follow the exact guidelines until 6 months.

At 6 months naps are still mostly contact naps or in the pram. Initially she would also nap in the Moses basket in whatever room we were in. A Moses basket is great until they outgrow it as it’s so easy to move around the house. Not all babies will sleep in one of course but that’s another issue.

Just to add we did bedtime routine from around 4 months although it would often be around 8-9pm. Now we are at 7:30-8:30pm at 6 months.

How old is your dd? If post 4 months I'd probably put her up there with a monitor no more issue. If less we put her to sleep downstairs and took her up when we went up

I had a bassinet with wheels that I put in the lounge during the day, I found this good as DS slept with noise around him so he didn't just get used to it being completely silent once he outgrew that he moved to a cot, I think about 7 months and then about 8 months the cot was moved into his own room

My baby is 5 months and we would have her downstairs with us and she would sleep on her pod on the sofa til we went up. To be honest, sleep is very inconsistent in lots of babies so we've just gone through a month of hourly wake ups! Some nights we've taken her up and stayed up there til bedtime and some nights we've had her downstairs with us. We will probably start leaving her in the next couple of weeks with a monitor on. I've been very worried about SIDS and it's not worth the risk in my opinion, my HV said they recommend you being in the same room as baby to prevent them from falling into a too deep sleep which is linked to SIDS so for me I was happy to be with her at all times. You can make it work for you though and I wouldn't necessarily expect your baby to have a 7pm bedtime before 6 months! Our baby would consistently be asleep for about 7.30 until she hit 14 weeks and then sleep went out the window and we have been up every single hour!

Current routine:

Last nap between 5 and 6

Bath: 7.45pm
Book: 8pm
Feed: 8.15pm
Sleep: between 8.30 and 8.45pm

Baby is then fed on demand through the night and settled as needed. We've actually just had the last 2 nights of only 2 wake ups which compared to hourly has been great!

Yes, quiet silence is alien to babies, in the womb it is never quiet, and if you get them used to it it's a pain for years. My mum did this with my sister and to this day she struggles to sleep if there's noise.
Better sleep cues are being calm and full of milk. I had mine sleep wherever and whatever we were doing, by the washing machine, in the garden at a BBQ, in a dark room, wherever and would nice them if I needed to while they slept.
My kids can sleep through anything even n now.
In the first 6 months there is so much development going on and constant changes that if you try to nail yourself and baby to a routine you'll likely you're yourself in knots and be upset when it fails. Just go with the flow and start thinking about routines when they're nearer a year or so, but see how your baby is.
Google 4th trimester, it is so key.

I'll always remember reading a webpage that managed to both talk about a good routine in a dark room in the evening and how you aren't allowed to let them sleep alone until 6 months and thinking WTF? How the hell can you do both those things?

In my case it was irrelevant as mine cluster fed all evening. I knew a lot of people who ignored this and left babies in their next to mes for an hour or so in the evening. Then again I've also heard of people moving sleeping babies into and out of the bloody toilet while they went. There doesn't seem to be a universal interpretation of this advice.

7pm suggests you want to follow the contented little baby routine. In which case, your baby should be up for a feed about 3 hours later.

You could turn a light back on after she has fallen asleep. Or try to sleep yourself.

Alternatively, put her to sleep in a Moses basket in whichever room you are in and then move her after the 10 o’clock feed.

I didn't bother trying to put them down for naps until after 6 months. It was always on the go or on me. DC2 had her first nap in her cot at one year old.

Evenings with both of them we kept them with us downstairs till about 4 and a half/5 months. At that point they started getting disturbed and did better in their cots. Both were in cribs next to us so I would settle them by about 8.30 then have about an hour and half downstairs then go up myself.

Both had zero other risk factors (no covers, breastfed, full-term, never anywhere near anyone who smoked).

7ish for bedtime was a lot later just because of the early evening nap and a final feed but it comes naturally.

I never really experienced cluster feeding though so can't speak to that.

As others have said, for the first few months you'll presumably be using a Moses basket or bassinet of some kind so can take that to wherever you are. If I did manage to get my newborn to sleep at 7pm, I went to bed then too so I wouldn't worry too much about it until you see what your routine is actually like then adapt as things change.

It's good to understand the guidelines and the reason behind them. Being in the same room is because they hear your breathing and it helps them regulate their own, so a monitor is not a substitute. However, you should also asses the risks yourself and decide what you are comfortable with.

I don't think you need to be worrying about this for a while yet. Newborns especially don't follow a routine for a few months (google fourth trimester)
You'll find your own routine when the time comes. Don't worry about what this website or any other ones says.
Once baby is asleep you can go downstairs and have them on a baby monitor though, you don't need to stay in room with them. Well I never did anyway.

We started a routine for my DD when she was six weeks old- we did bathtime, feed at 7 and put her down in her snuzpod in our dark room. She’d need her next feed at 11, then once more at night. At that point we were in a tiny flat so we kept the door open and had dinner. We were so knackered that we went to bed half an hour later but it worked for us.
When she was bigger, we closed the door and had a hand held monitor while we ate. She slept through the night from 3 months, and she got her own bedroom at 6.5 months when we moved out of the tiny flat. I think getting them used to a dark room early is good, and getting up early with the them at 7am worked like a charm. Not sure how this translates into a house with stairs though. Our old flat was 400sq ft!

OP, congratulations and what fun you are about to have!

My first was totally different to the second. He just constantly stayed with us whatever we were doing. When he went to sleep on a night (defo not at 7pm) we would just lie with him and nap or watch TV. We co-sleep though.

Remember that your baby will be waking at least every three hours if not more for food, unless you get one of the unicorns that sleep through.

Second child was a different kettle of fish. Awake every forty five minutes for a breastfeed. We contacted napped during the day and co-slept at night.

My kids are now 3 and 1 and we still tend to go to bed when they do at 7pm

You'll find your way, trial and error.

Yes you stay with them. Or you don’t try and implement such an early bedtime before 6 months, very few babies need to go down that early. For day naps my son mostly slept on me on the sofa for the first 6 months, or being pushed in the pram. He didn’t like being put down. I’d wait and see what your baby is like when they get here rather than worrying about implementing routines that might not even suit them before they’re even here. 7pm has always been way too early a bedtime for us.

I think the advice is totally unrealistic. If you have a c section you wont want to be carting a baby in a Moses basket all around the house. It's not safe to carry a baby in a Moses basket anyway, and probably not a great idea to carry a baby up and down the stairs in any kind of cot/carrier. I slept mine downstairs in the day and upstairs at night.

Also the bit about putting them down before they’re asleep I’d take with a big pinch of salt. The babies I’ve known to go down ‘drowsy but awake’ are the absolute minority. Most will want feeding/rocking/cuddling to sleep for a long long time.

Both of mine were unsettled every evening until about 5/6 months so every evening was spent passing the baby between us while we tried to get on with cooking, eating etc. Naps were usually on an adult or in the buggy, on the rare occasion it was in the basket/cot I'd stay in the room for the most part - might pop out to go the toilet or make a cup of tea or to grab some washing but was there for most of it.

A baby’s breathing while asleep will slowly synchronise to that of its mother. If you take a deep sigh next to sleeping baby, so will the baby. It’s amazing and if you get really good at it, you can even stop a half awake baby from fully waking, you sit very close and give a long slow in breath and long slow outbreath and the baby copies it and slides back into deep sleep.

If your young baby is one of those unlucky few who struggle to breathe sometimes while asleep, having the mother in the room breathing acts as a kind of metronome for the baby’s breathing.

No one knows much about SIDS but it makes sense to me from what I’ve experienced that there are more cases among babies left to sleep alone.

Baby before 6 months used to sleep downstairs with us and when we went to bed around 10/10:30 she had a feed upstairs, a cuddle and went to sleep in her crib in our room.
During the day she slept downstairs and I just pottered about tidying up etc

The first three months are known as the fourth trimester, your baby will not have a routine or want to do anything much more than suck, sleep and poop. You will be tired too.

Get through that bit then think about routines.

But yes, the advice is not to let them sleep alone at all until then. I think the theory is that hearing someone else breathing is supposed to help remind them to breathe.

Also I had a Moses basket downstairs and a crib upstairs