Has anyone moved their baby to their own room before six months?

[Lilbonbon]

My little one is 6.5 weeks old and currently sleeps in our bedroom in his crib. He's a 98th percentile baby - for reference he is already wearing size 6-9month clothes.
In the night he keeps hitting his arms on the side of the crib and waking himself up, he is also an incredibly loud sleeper and I think I keep getting him out of his crib too soon because I think he is stirring when he isn't.

He is a good sleeper and has a very chilled personality, he doesn't like to be fussed or held too much, he just likes to be involved and is incredibly nosy and watchful. He is so good at going to sleep, and will often just fall asleep if you out him down drowsy.

I am struggling though because his sleep noises are keeping me awake - last night was especially hard and felt like the last straw, he slept 4 hours which is amazing but was so noisy that I just couldn't sleep at all. This often ends up with me cuddling him in my bed because it makes him quieter for a while, but I don't want to cosleep, it's not the right decision for us.

I want to put him in his own room, I feel desperate to do it just to get some sleep. We have a good monitor and he likes his room for naps. But I know the guidance for refucing SIDS risk Is not to move them until 6 months. I don't feel that his risk is particularly high with being such a big baby, but I dont want to be a bad mother moving him too soon.

Sorry for the rambling, I'm just so sleep deprived and wondering id this would be a solution for me, baby and husband - has anyone else moved their baby to their own room early?

The noisy sleeping phase does pass. My child did this too and it got better. Is it worth the risk?! All the advice tells you not to, family members told me to put them in their own room too, but I could never forgive myself if something went wrong.

Have a look at cot deaths / SIDs in the 80s up to now, note when the new guidelines were introduced. And rethink.

Yes. Most babies are fine

Yes. Your baby is at far greater risk of dying if you move them

You decide.

Also, you do realise the noisy phase is because they’ve not managed to master breathing/ sleeping efficiently. This is very much why they need to hear their mother’s breathing to regulate

You need to make your own risk assessment and be happy with it. I read the research and was happy that moving mine at 6-8 weeks as with other factors such as they were on their backs to sleep, empty cot except baby etc made the risk almost negligible.

It's a personal decision such as co-sleeping.

I moved mine into her own room at 6weeks, when she'd started reliably sleeping 11-5. She's profoundly Deaf so the breath regulation thing was irrelevant for us.

@LimeShade A baby is at risk from co sleeping too. Cot deaths were absolutely not all down to a baby being a few yards away in a cot but just across the landing! Just to be clear: over heating, choking on things in the cot and cot bumpers, ignoring a baby and not having a monitor, rolling onto a baby when drunk, etc all have contributed to deaths. More parents are aware of DS needs now and babies don’t need to hear parents breathing! What a faff parenting has become.

48 hours

I appreciate this response - did you find the grunting improves?

I think after reading all the responses 6 weeks is far too young, I'm just desperate 😅 I will reassess in a few months.

I think we all did that years ago, we were not slavish into external sources of advice. The main reason for the reduction of SIDS is stopping putting babies to sleep on their fronts which was the 'official' advice at the time mine were born.

But the data suggests he is more likely to die in a different room at this age.

Data will usually produce the result the persons paying for the research want to see!

Whilst I agree to a point, I’m not sure who benefits (financially) from advice about keeping children in their parents room rather than their own room. If anything putting them in their own room means parents are more likely to buy extra things - breathing monitors and mats and baby monitors and so on.

If he’s wriggling then have you tried swaddling?

White noise too can help you both but I personally wouldn’t be moving him to another room yet.

Also, with breastfeeding, being close means you can feed him before he’s crying and fully awake so he’ll get back to sleep quicker.

Through work and personal life I’ve known two families who lost their babies to SIDS. Both were non smokers and their newborns were in a separate bedroom. A 6 week old is a lot different than putting a five month old in their own room.

Tiredness with a newborn is bloody awful but there are things you can do to try and mitigate this (nap when baby is, outsourcing domestic tasks, handing baby over to dad early evening so you can get a couple of hours kip) but taking a gamble with statistically proven risks isn’t something I’d choose.

Yes the grunting definitely stopped with mine, I can’t remember what age but long before I moved them to their own room. Maybe around 2 or 3 months? I can’t remember exactly.

Dd1 went in her own room age 4 months. To be honest I spent most of the night in there too on a fold out futon mattress.

She was soooo noisy and too big for her crib.

She was EBF and dh was working FT and not getting enough sleep with her grunts and noises and me waking to feed her.

It was brutal and I was heavily influenced by MIL telling me she needed to be in her cot (MIL was a CIO proponent too, which I resisted).

If worked though, and after awhile she would nap and sleep alone.

Actually yes, babies do need to hear their parents’ breathing. They use it and their heart rates to regulate their own breathing and heart rate.

So it doesn’t matter if he’s in a room next door or a room three floors up, if he isn’t in the same room then you have removed the ability to keep him safe.

The research was also quite flaky from what I remember. They don't even know for sure that it is the mothers breathing, it is just a theory.

Completely different to other strong research regarding safe sleep such as the back to sleep campaign and how life saving that was/is.

This!!!!

I moved my noisy baby round the corner to our dressing room at 2 weeks. Then to his own room at 6 weeks. Yes, it's not recommended, but he slept on his back with no pillows or cot bumpers etc, and frankly all of us slept a lot better.

But it's your own judgment call to make, don't be swayed by randoms online....

In our day, when God was still a boy and dinosaurs roamed the earth, babies were never in our room. Before anyone shouts, I know it's a different age and time but it really depends on proximity and a good monitor.

I think the travel cot idea is an excellent one if you can make that work.

I moved my daughter after 2 weeks - she was so noisy and with a toddler as well I just wasn’t functioning. I bought an owlet sock to give me reassurance and also have a fan oscillating in her room (not as much evidence on this but the few studies that have been done show this reduces SIDS risk by more than more sharing!).

We are currently on holiday and my god have I been reminded why I moved her to her own room she is so noisy still at 13 weeks 😅

if you end up cosleeping most / some nights then the safer option would be just to move him to his own room. That is certainly safer than bed sharing

Not true for all babies - some are just noisy always

Can't you just get a compact travel cot and pack it down during the day?

I remember reading Anne Diamond's book about her son Sebastian, who died from SIDS at 4 months old - she had done extensive research afterwards and she said if I knew then what I know now, I never would have put him in a room on his own to sleep. That stayed with me. It's just not worth the risk.

I didn’t and absolutely wouldn’t - but if you were going to put child in another room, I’d take turns with partner so you get a nights sleep every second night. If you’re breastfeeding, I would go to bed early and get husband to be in same room for start of night and bring baby into you when needed.
It has only been a few weeks so it’s likely you’ll get used to the sleepy noises too. Sleep deprivation is very tricky but depends on your risk tolerance levels.

I’m older and have 3 older children and the SIDs advice was the same as now but our eldest woke up when we moved about or got dressed for bed so we moved her early.

Our youngest co slept for 1.5 years so basically while advice is amazing you still need to use your own judgement for individual children.