Trying to follow SIDS guidelines please advise

[whereisswampy]

I have a 3 month old dd. For 2 months she slept in our room, but during the night, even when she was sleeping she would make so much noise just babbling, snoring and gurgling that I drove myself mad and stayed awake all night every night unable to sleep. I was on 'high alert' the whole time as I thought every sound would eventually erupt into crying and therefore sleep was pointless as I'd have to get up again, and became very ill from the sleep deprivation. After 2 months we put her in another room (we live in a very small house) which was close to ours.

I KNOW the SIDS guidelines advise against this, but I was about to go completely mad from no sleep at all. I was not able to sleep at all while she was sleeping.

Anyway last night I decided to read an article on SIDS and it says the chances of SID increase 50% of you do not sleep in the same room as your baby. Cue me dragging the cot back into our bedroom in the middle of the night and being awake all night as a result.

I am trying to weigh up the pros and cons of this. We put her to bed on her back in a pod where she is completely surrounded and fixed in, so to speak. She wears an adjustable swaddle which keeps her startle reflex from waking her. She is EBF. Neither of us smoke. The only risk of SIDS is that she is in another room.

What sort of things could happen/the reason why it goes up 50% when your baby sleeps away from you? WWYD?

I sympathise massively. We put our daughter in her own room at 6 weeks but our monitor had a sensor breathing mat that we turned on every time we popped her in her cot and it gave us some comfort that she was safer. Perhaps you could invest in one of those?

I didn't even know those existed! Where so I get one from?

One theory as to why sleeping in a separate room increases the risk, is that hearing you breathing and moving about stops the baby falling into too deep a sleep. If they are in a quiet room on their own they may fall into too deep a sleep and "forget" to breathe. It's just a theory though, no one knows exactly what causes SIDS.

The risk of SIDS is quite small now, especially if you eliminate the big risk factors like smoking, low birth weight, stomach sleeping, not breastfeeding. 50% increase on a small risk is still a small risk.

I wore earplugs to drown out background noise but still heard them when they cried

We have this and it monitors sound and breathing, and a warning noise sounds if baby's breathing slows down too much (meant to rouse the baby) then an alarm goes off if it can't pick anything up: www.amazon.co.uk/Angelcare-AC401-Movement-Sound-Monitor/dp/B0013FW5G8

I used the angelcare monitor after going through exactly what you described above with every grunt and move! Ds wa 2 weeks old when I got it and the relief was immense. Meant I could get a good nights sleep. He stayed in the room with us but it stopped me being on high alert at every noise.

You need to remember that the risk of SIDS is tiny. Even increasing it by 50% only makes it a bit less tiny. But still tiny.

Ultimately, it's a good idea to look at why the recommendations are in place. There has been no definitive causal link proved between sleeping in the same room and reduced incidence - the two things just correlate. Various theories have been put forward for this (baby regulating breathing by yours for example) but none have been proved. So there could be a reason - or it could just be coincidence. It's up to you to decide how you feel about the guidelines and research behind them, and make your own decisions.

I put my dd in her own room at 12 weeks because we were all disturbing each other and no one was getting any sleep. That was the right decision for us, it may not be the right decision for others.

We have the movement monitor too.

A friend of mine moved her v premature baby into another room at 11 weeks due to horrendous grunting.

I asked a mw if i used the breathing monitor but was in a different room would it be ok and she pointed out that if you're asleep you're not going to know if she stops breathing - regardless of whether she's right next to you, so the monitor is fine.

Ours is angelcare too

another advocate of movement monitors here, ours is the tony tfm575. It works fantastically well which gives me great piece(peace?) of mind and is usually a little cheaper than the angelcare - just as effective but not as novel to look at.

oops, I meant Tomy not tony

I was so concerned about SIDS with both my children. However it got to the point with both where even me creeping quietly into the room to go to bed was waking them up at night. At that point, they went to their own rooms with just a sound monitor. I got comfortable with the fact that like you, I was doing everything else right from a SIDS perspective and this one risk was one I could take. DS was about 4.5 months, DD was 3 months. The first nights with each were petrifying but after I did it, we all got more sleep!

Much higher risk if you are so sleep deprived that you aren't able to look after dd for example falling asleep on sofa with her. Get an angelcare monitor if it would reassure you but definitely move her back next door x

Babies in hospital have movement monitors. Nurses certainly don't sleep next to them!

I discussed this very issue with my GP. Her advice was that although it is thought to increase SIDS risk, it's not as important as other factors (smoking, etc). After discussing it I moved my LO out at 3.5 months. Do not regret it at all.