Following SIDS guidelines - is it really possible to have the baby always sleep in the same room as you?

[LisaSimpsonsbff]

Sorry for the long post - anxious and somewhat sleepy mother of a newborn here...

DS is only 4 weeks, so some of this is thinking ahead - I know he's too little to have sleep routines yet! I know that the SIDS guidelines are that he always sleeps in the same room as us in a cot or a moses basket, for both naps and nighttime sleep. But this is already getting impractical, and will surely get more so? He isn't always sleeping in his moses basket - he's asleep next to me on the sofa right now. Surely this is ok because I'm sat right next to him? I know that us both being asleep on the sofa is dangerous, and wouldn't do that - but during the day with me wide awake feels very different. He also sleeps on me/DH and in his sling, which also isn't in accordance with the guidelines but is surely fine? While we can move his moses basket around, he sometimes refuses to settle in it, and also I can see that he's only going to fit comfortably in it for a few more weeks (he's a long baby). I was planning to put his cot in our room for night time, but obviously it doesn't move around the house with us. Does that mean he (and I) should be in our bedroom for every single nap from then on?

Perhaps more significantly, does this mean that he can't have a bedtime routine that's different from ours until six months? I've read things saying by three months we should be putting him to bed in a dark, quiet room at 7 or 8 pm - but are we (I, realistically - he's breastfed) then supposed to sit in the dark?! At the moment he just hangs around with us, either napping in his moses basket or being held, etc., just like during the day, until we go to bed at 10.30/11 - but I've seen lots of advice saying that he'll develop terrible sleep habits if we keep this up much longer? Similarly, I've seen people talk about putting the baby down for naps in a dark room from a few months old - but surely I can't be expected to spend big chunks of my day as well as my evening in the dark?!

So, what do people actually do? Do you:

a) stick to the guidelines, put baby to sleep in a cot and sit in your bedroom (potentially in the dark) yourself for hours and hours a day?
b) stick to the guidelines about them being with you but not about them always being in a cot to sleep - and hope that baby is ok sleeping in bright, not particularly quiet spaces until six months and ignore all the people telling you you'll produce a terrible sleeper that way?
c) stick to the guidelines about them sleeping in a cot but not about them being with you, and put them down by themselves for naps/in the evenings (presumably with a monitor?)
d) some other option I haven't thought of?

Hello, congratulations on your lovely squishy newborn

I really strongly believe in not worrying too much and doing what suits you and your baby. My baby was enormous and only lasted 5 weeks in his Moses basket so I can definitely tell you what we did - whether or not that works for you is a different question.

As long as you’re awake, it’s fine for him to be asleep on the sofa next to you, ditto being on you and in the sling. Some babies will only sleep in a sling so don’t worry about that, it’s great for them as they’re close to you and it’s great for you as you’ve got 2 hands free and can move about, for example to fill your hands with a cup of tea and a biscuit.

In the politest way possible, it is absolute bullshit that you can create bad sleep habits at this age. You have the 4 month sleep regression looming so I wouldn’t bother at all about routines or whatever. My DS did exactly what yours is doing, hung round with us downstairs until he was big enough to be upstairs. We kept the overhead light off and the TV reasonably low but otherwise carried on as we normally would. When he outgrew his Moses basket I set up a travel cot with a bassinet level which worked really well. Naps were in the pram or in the travel cot, depending on how much he felt like resisting sleep.

Please don’t worry too much about routines and sleep habits, it all sounds a bit overwhelming when you’re already exhausted and I found that when I stopped worrying about it everything sort of resolved itself naturally. Sounds like you’re doing fab

Hi! I think I recognise your username? From the pregnancy loss boards or ttc boards I’m not sure?

I had all the same thoughts when my DS was born so we’ve sort of just gone with what feels right and have been guided a lot by him. We haven’t followed all of the guidelines and have gone with our gut, many people will disagree with what we’ve done but that’s that.

DS napped in his Moses/on us/in a sling for the first 3 months. I fed him to sleep upstairs at night and he went down anywhere between 9 and 11, when he would naturally just finish his mammoth feed and fall asleep. He mostly slept in our bed but would occasionally go down in his next to me crib.

When he got to about 2 and a half/almost 3 months we started a nap and bedtime routine. Nap times - not in a dark room but had white noise playing. I didn’t want him to only ever nap in the dark as we go out quite often. He’ll also nap in the buggy or car if we’re out. Bedtime - bath, massage, book, feed, bed in a dark room with white noise, starting around 6.30pm and being asleep between 7 and 8pm. For both naps and bedtime at this point, we started leaving him in our room in his crib with the monitor on. He gets the best, least disturbed sleep this way and will sleep for a good 4 hours through the evening while DP and I are downstairs. He’s not an amazing sleeper - he wakes 3 or 4 times a night and is now 4 months and he only naps for 30 minutes at a time but I’m pretty sure this is just him and not anything to do with not putting him down for naps in a dark room!

You’ve got to do what feels right for you. The guidelines are there for a reason. But they’re guidelines, not rules. You’re his mum and you make the decision based on what feels right for you

We had baby with us for naps/sleep until at least 6m, possibly later I think. Once the Moses basket was too small we had a travel cot in the sitting room for naps. We've got noisy neighbours and dark nights are only there part of the year so DD sleeping with tv/lights on has worked well for us. I found she would do one long stretch of sleep per night and it suited us for it to be starting when we went to bed - so got 11-5 rather than 7-3!

Not conventional but worked for us!

Yes I wouldn't worry. We had DS downstairs with us until we went to bed for the first few months. Then came the dreaded sleep regression and to be honest I didn't care where he slept as long as he went to sleep. Didn't get past that til 6.5 months at which point you can introduce more of a routine and put them in their own room (if you want to).

Until 6 months DD used to nap in her bouncey chair in the lounge (once she got too big for the Moses basket) as it lay back flat and it worked for us.
I planned to follow the advice until 6 months but at 4 months it became obvious that DD was trying to fall asleep at about 8pm but couldn’t due to the light and noise in the lounge; she would get really distressed and grotty so I started putting her to bed at 7.30 and checking on her a lot, probably every 10-15 mins at first. My health visitor seemed to think that was fine and it worked for us.

Congratulations on your baby. I can well remember those early, exhausting and confusing days.

Many, many people decide to go against the guidelines and get baby into a routine. In the vast majority of cases, everything works just great. However the guidelines are there for a reason so I think the best you can do is read about how the guidelines came about, and then decide whether you are prepared to take the risk and accept the very slight risk.

For me, I wasn’t, and our baby went up to bed when we did and napped close by during the day. She was a very much wanted baby and I took risks to have her, so didn’t want to take risks once she arrived. She is a great sleeper now so it has not stored up problems for later on.

But my personality is about following guidelines and abiding by rules. Others trust their instinct or are guided by others. You just have to find your own way.

I always kept mine with me, they both napped downstairs and I didn't sit and watch them but I was in and out. I didn't do a bedtime routine until after 6 months, they just slept/ fed on me until I went to bed. That was my choice though, I was always overly anxious about SIDS (probably too anxious) so I would find a way that's best for you.

A baby sleeping on the sofa next to you, in a sling etc while you are awake and supervising is absolutely fine. DD2 only napped in the sling for the first 6 months of her life!
With regards to night times/routines etc, well then it’s up to you really to assess the risk and make an informed decision. We started putting ours to bed at 7pm upstairs in our room then coming back down ourselves at around 4 months... we don’t smoke, they were BF etc so our overall SIDS risk was low. Obviously we had the door open and monitor on, and I was usually in bed for 9pm anyway.

I prioritised the SIDS guidelines about them always sleeping in a room with you until 6 months so we just made that work. They napped a lot in a sling, in the pram or in a toddlepod on the sofa. We didn't bother with any kind of routine until after 6 months

Depending on what I was doing and what mood they were in DC napped in the pram carry cot/ in a sling on me/in their baby nest downstairs until around 5 months old.

I wasn't always in the same room as them all the time as that would be madness and the kitchen/ bathroom etc would be filthy if I didn't use nap times to clean up.

Somewhere between 5-6 months DC started to have very defined nap times and was disturbed by me moving around downstairs so they went upstairs into their cot with a video monitor so I could see/hear if they woke up.

Around the same time we started a very loose bedtime routine and DC started to be put into their cot to sleep at around 7pm. Before that they just stayed downstairs with us until we went to bed.

Don't over think it and do whatever feels right for your circumstances. It's important to take account of SIDS guidelines but it's obviously unrealistic to spend 6mths forever in the same room as a sleeping child due to the absolutely tiny SIDS risk. People have shit to do!

We picked up a crib for £20 and have it downstairs, she goes into it around 7/8pm and then when she has her next bottle, we go to bed and put her down in her next to me.. works for us x

I've never bothered with having them on the same room in the day. Plus I hate Moses baskets so would never ever have one. Dc slept in the crib then the cot from day one for all sleeps. We had a video monitor and checked on him regamuslr

Sorry posted too soon
Regularly. He slept in our room until 16 months by our choice. We only moved him then because I wanted to put him in a toddler bed.

I have an almost 5 month old and she has always slept with one of us in the room. We have a Moses basket and travel cot and move them around the house during the day and we have a fixed cot for night. We all go to bed at 9pm and we aren't too fussed about losing our evenings, we'll get them back once she's older. Once she's six months we'll try putting her in her room for night time sleeping but I don't see it going well!

Depends so much on the baby - I have 3 and my first slept happily in a Moses basket I carried around the flat, #2 was ok with noise and lights for the first few months so I had him nap in with me in the living room (or in the buggy / sling while I chased around ds1) but by 4 months he needed some quiet and darkness, so he would nap in his room with the monitor or in his buggy in the hallway with the hood down. #3 was a velcro baby who only liked to sleep on me, so did all his naps in the sling and went to bed on our shoulders while we did big kid bedtimes / watched TV for a long time! We've always had a cot upstairs set up for cosleeping so would relocate once we went up.
*Important though - I really really wouldn't let yours sleep on the sofa. Yes, you're awake now, but once it's a habit it's so easy to one day just be a bit more tired than usual and nod off, or have the doorbell ring and go and chat to a neighbour for a few minutes - and unfortunately a few minutes is all it takes. Sofas and rockers have a huge association with sids.
Congratulations on your newborn and have fun figuring it out!

Everyone has to make their own calls here. We put in own cot in dark room with monitor for naps from fairly early on. Not least because with slightly older children around downstairs it felt like the only way to get sleep to happen. From I guess six weeks or so we put down for bedtime at 7ish in our bedroom with monitor - not staying in the room until our own bedtime. We felt ok about all this as no other risk factors for SIDS.

Not “recommending” any of this - but perhaps useful to know that making your own compromises is a normal part of parenting, and you need to find a solution that works for your family and that YOU feel ok with.

Why do you think the guidelines say to be in the same room as your baby for first 6 months? It's because your presence will prevent / stop something from happening as you will be alerted by a cry / noise etc. The same level of alertness can be achieved with a video monitor. I am a super paranoid paramedic and I was putting my baby in another room with a video monitor for naps from r months. It is mounted over the cot. I can see her every move, hear every noise and can see her breathing etc. what the guidelines should day is make sure you're in a position to hear / see your baby whilst they sleep" or words to that effect

I thought being in the same room as another person breathing ‘helped’ the baby to remember to breathe?

@thingymaboob - it's what CoperCabana said, your presence helps them to breathe, and noise etc may have a preventative effect in rousing them slightly if they sinking too deep. The monitor helps with seeing if they've rolled into the edge or got tangled, but there's no necessary tell tale sign or sound with SIDs cases. If you are away from a younger age, the angelcare type with sensors underneath to alert you if they are too still are meant to be better.

That said, we also used a monitor and babies in another room from 4 months and do agree that you have to make your own choices.

This can be so over-thought that it seems like it's impossible. In fact so many aspects of being a parent come with advice that if you try to follow it all you get tied in knots! And from your descriptions it sounds like you're doing similar to how I worked it.

Naps - always on me when having milk or in sling or buggy. Up to about 6 months if we got home and they're asleep in buggy I'll take them out and give milk straight away and let them finish their sleep on me. Prefer not to leave alone, like to hold them. Once they're older I'll leave them wherever they are! Never bothered to try putting them into a cot for naps. Never worried about light/dark. In fact didn't really bother staying quiet much either.

Bedtime - 0-4/5/6 mths I kept them with me in my arms/having milk until I went to bed and they came with me. So fed them on the sofa whilst I watched tv etc. They usually would be asleep on me pretty much from 7-8pm only waking for milk or if I woke them somehow. I kept them warm, comforted and fed. I felt they were safer in my arms and I wouldn't worry at all about them as I would if they were lying alone in another room. I would just pass to partner for an arm stretch now and again. I also liked to feed as much as possible early on, made me feel better so the first few months not very much gets done in the evenings. Take them up to bed when I want to sleep and they'd be next to me but in a basket, cot next to bed whilst very small.

At a certain age (maybe 4-5-6 months ish) they are too distracted by being up and the tv/chat etc is disturbing. At this point I feed them in my bed til they're asleep then I'll come down. If they wake I may bring them down with me as they'd be sleepy enough to settle on me. But at this age I get rid of cot/basket and they're right next to me in bed.

A little older (maybe 8 mths) and I wouldn't bring back down at all, and re-settle in bed. Then I go up to bed and am with them all night, in my bed right next to me.

I have had 3 and all sleep pretty well over all. All the panic from relatives telling me I need to put them down etc didn't result in the clingy anxious babies they predicted. This is something that seems to come up between new mums now and their own mums. Our elder relatives keep trying to get us to put our babies down but to me I think we should hold them as much as possible. In arms or slings. They are so much more settled. Not spoiled.

So anyway, this is what worked for me in my house with the rest of my family. It may not work for everyone but, remember, expectations of this time in your life should be very, very low. Doesn't mean you should accept something if it's crap and not working, just means you should not feel like you've failed or are doing something wrong if it's crap and not working! All the best with your wee baby.

Mine is 6 months now, he went into his own room at about 5 Months when he got too big for his Moses basket. Before that he had two baskets, one in our room for sleep, and one downstairs for naps. At about 4 months we started putting him in his basket in our room to sleep at night, with the baby monitor on, just because the tv or the dogs messing about would wake him up if he was downstairs with us. We were finding though that he was being woken up when we went to bed so that and outgrowing the basket prompted the move to his own room.

During the day now he naps on the sofa, or in his cot, depending on where we are when he falls asleep. At night he has a routine developing, although it's not set in stone, it's starting to look like a proper routine, it's all been led by him and his needs though. At the moment he tends to need to go to bed about 8pm so I start the bed time routine about 7, 7.15 ish.

Like someone else said, it's best to try to understand the guidelines and the reasons for them before you decide what to do. As someone said above, the "same room" issue is coreleated with a lower risk of SIDS. But how exactly this causes a lower risk isn't clear, and it might be just a correlation. So I sometimes chose to use monitor to replicate the sight/sound issue of being in the same room and I felt that the additional "presence" element wasn't strongly enough backed by evidence of actually causing protection so at times I disregarded that in favour of having baby sleep (flat on back, no blankets, correct temperature, empty cot) in a dark quiet room. But obviously there would have been the awful "what ifs" should anything have happened.

I agree that it is very difficult practically to heed the safety guidance at every moment of the day and night for six months or more. I did stick to some firmly though - your example of sleeping on the sofa with you sitting awake alongside would not be comfortable for me. Babies can roll or move sooner than you think, sleeping on a soft surface can be risky and I know for me it would be hard to stay actively watching your baby at all times and a few silent moments might pass if the baby turned her head into the padding or something. I would choose the risk of unaccompanied nap in own cot in that scenario. But we all have varying contexts and choices.

Overall, please don't let it unduly stress you out. All any of us can do is our best. And that is our best in real life. Not in the ideal conditions. So read, understand, ask questions and then do your best without overly stressing.

Best wishes

Thank you for all the replies - really good to see what other people did, and reassuring to see how much variation there is. I'm glad there's not one magic solution that is obvious to everyone but me! I think we'll mostly carry on as we are - though I very much take on board about not letting the sofa become a habit - and see how it goes. I'm hoping it'll be easier when it gets cooler, as at the moment he's getting too hot when he lies on me, and far too hot in the sling, but he wants to be in contact with me, which can be tricky!

We bedshared (following safe bedsharing guidelines!) from birth with both DC’s at night.
They both had every nap in the sling until they were about 8/9 months old.
We found napping in the sling to be the most practical thing because I could just crack on with my day and take baby with me wherever I went. We also moved a rocking chair into the living room so I could get the baby settled to sleep in the sling while pottering about the house - usually I would put toddler dd down for a nap in her bed (she was 17mo when DS was born), then DS would almost always fall asleep in the sling while I pottered about the kitchen making myself some lunch. Then I’d take my lunch to the rocking chair and rock and munch and watch Netflix
When they both got a little older (around 8/9 months), we made the transition to them napping in their cots with a baby monitor on

Oh and if at a later date, you do want to try to encourage naps in a darkened room, but you don't feel comfortable leaving her in the cot completely alone, it's the perfect time to doze yourself, or listen to a podcast or audio book on your headphones in a chair. For me, getting my babies into a sleep routine was actually more liberating - it meant I knew exactly when they'd be in the best possible form and I could plan my day around that by having fixed nap times. Others hate a routine as constraining but I found it liberating.