If baby stays in same room as you to sleep until 6 months how do you do a bedtime routine?!

[nomorespaghetti]

I know the safe sleeping guidelines say that baby should stay in the same room as you for sleep and naps until they are 6 months old, but how does that work practically when you want to start doing a bedtime routine and putting baby to bed in their/your bedroom in the evening?

My DS (5 weeks) hates being downstairs with us in the evening, he can't settle due to talking/tv noise/lights. I want to put him down in his crib (in our bedroom) at 7ish, same time as his older sister goes to bed, after doing bedtime with both of them. But that goes against safe sleep guidance, as he'll be sleeping for 3ish hours before we go up (of course we'd check on him/use a monitor). Am i overthinking this, should i just put him down upstairs and go have dinner?My DD was definitely sleeping upstairs in the evenings by about 3 months, with a monitor on.

I suppose I'm asking - is the safe sleep guidance to always have them with you till 6 months really realistic... do people actually do that?

At seven when my 3 year old goes to bed my husband takes her and I take our now 6 month old to our room. I co sleep and once he's asleep I read, do my hair, watch stuff on iPad etc etc but I don't leave him alone. Soon I'm going to bring his sisters old cot bed into our room, and then I will go downstairs once he's asleep. Pretty restrictive but it's worked for us!

I kept DS2 downstairs with me/us till 6 months plus, but he was fairly ok with the downstairs environment. I'd have lower lighting and tv on very quiet, or me watching something on the tablet. He'd often sleep on me after a feed anyway.

I didn't do any kind of bedtime routine until he was much older.

The safe sleep guidance is there to give you advice, not rules. If you have minimised all other risks then do what you want to do.

I fretted and fretted about this when DS started constantly waking up screaming every time we made a noise when he was downstairs in the evening (which was about 8 weeks - weirdly, he could sleep through noise much better in the day). I asked the health visitor whether he had to stay up with us or us all go to bed at 8 and she actually laughed, and said 'there's advice and then there's real life'! So he goes to bed with the monitor on (he's four months now). Every other parent I know in real life does this too - but I do worry a lot about it and check on him (in person - I have half an hour on the video monitor for most of the evening) about every hour. I will be so glad when he gets to six months and it's officially sanctioned!

Ds stays with us, he doesn't tend to go down for the night before 9 anyway. Otherwise we take crib into living room (same floor) and he falls asleep then we carry it through when we're ready for bed

Both of ours just slept on us or fed until I went up to bed until 6 months. We started a bedtime routine after they went in their own room.

My DS used to stay downstairs with us but at 12 weeks wanted to sleep at 7 and would only go down in the cot. We ended up putting him down with a monitor that had a movement sensor in the cot in our room and we would go up to bed at 10ish. I was also constantly up and down to check he was ok.

DS is nearly 8 weeks. It takes a lot to get him to nap so frankly we tend to do bedtimes about 90 mins after he wakes up from his last nap. We arent leaving him by himself yet - that goes against SIDs advice. Its also a matter of wanting to go to bed myself. But it can take us 3 hrs to get him to sleep from bath, feed and bed.
Im sure we are doing it wrong but right now I don't know any other way of doing it.

From about three months, we put DD down in her crib upstairs at about 7.

Takes about an hour to get her settled, and she's a crap sleeper so I go to bed between 9 and 10, so she's not alone for much more than an hour. Not in line with safe sleep guidelines, but getting to watch an hour of TV in the evening keeps me sane.

Besides, it took quite a while for her to settle in the crib (like I said, crap sleeper), so for a few weeks I wasn't really able to leave her. One memorable Friday night, I was having a lie in on the Saturday morning and ended up being in our bedroom from 7pm to 11am. Probably still only got a few hours sleep!

I think you have to either follow the safe sleep guidelines or start a proper bedtime routine. I don't get how you can do both.

You can do both by starting a bed time routine from 6 months upwards.

We started doing a bedtime routine at about 3 months. Would do bath, story etc then come downstairs to feed him and he’d sleep in my arms until we went to bed at 10/11. By 4.5 months he was being woken downstairs so I basically went to bed with him at 7. DH would bring my dinner up to me and i’d read/watch tv once baby was asleep. I really enjoyed this quiet time tbh and was in no rush to end it! We didn’t have a baby monitor until he turned 6 months. It’s the physical presence of a person in the room that reduces likelihood of sids, not being watched on a monitor, though there were other aspects of the guidance we didn’t follow (coslept for first 5 months) - it’s up to you to weigh up the risks and do what you feel comfortable with and what works.

Thanks all. It's good to know I'm not the only one with this dilemma. I think we'll start a bedtime routine and putting him in his own cot upstairs at around 3 months, if we can hold out that long, as that's what we did with DD. I'm such a rule follower i hate going against guidance but I need a bit of evening time for my sanity. DH doesn't get home till about 6:30, so we don't tend to cook until DD is in bed. Have HV appointment in a couple of weeks so I'll be interested to hear what she says.

We had a bedtime routine from day 1 really with both dc's, we were never 'big light on' in the living room anyway, always just telly on for light and a lamp in the kitchen. With dc1 as soon as the cord was off and we could bath her I'd take her in the bath with me, DH would get her out and dress her while I washed myself and showered if my hair needed washing then was fed and put in moses basket swaddled from 7/8ish. Telly turned down, basket on rocker facing away from it and fed/ cuddled as and when she woke but put back in swaddle and basket and rocked. Moses brought into bedroom when we went to bed but co slept for any other wakenings.
With our second the same but he had a high rocker with vibrate that he loved, he liked to have a daytime nap in there but he was swaddled at night- same again, fed and put into rocker and transferred at bedtime. They knew it was nighttime because it was dark and they were wrapped and patted/ rocked unless they needed feeding or a cuddle. I never swaddled either unless it was bedtime and they slept in the pram or on me in the daytime.

Both of my dc were downstairs with us until they were 6 months when we started a routine and they went to their cots upstairs alone. Ds was content to sleep in his moses in the corner of the room from 12 weeks (in my arms up to 12 weeks). Dd needed to be held to stay asleep so between us we held her in the evenings until 6 months.

I’m obviously not the best example as it’s not following guidelines.. but we have just started (attempting) to put DD who is 4 months to bed around 7 in her cot which is in her room. We have a baby monitor with a camera and night mode. I’m a light sleeper so if she makes a noise on it I will go to her. We occasionally co sleep too as she is having a regression. I’d still usually put her upstairs with the baby monitor though, as she won’t settle anymore if there is noise/ lights.

It’s great having our evenings back and she seems comfortable in her cot as she outgrew the snuzpod pretty quickly.

We put our little girl in her bed at 8 ish when she was sleeping in our room and then we went downstairs with the monitor. We had a sensor pad to put under her crib mattress so that if she stopped moving an alarm would go off so we always knew she was okay. Kept my worrying head at ease!

Il probably be slated but our baby has been going up to bed in our room since she was 5 weeks old, now 16 weeks. We were planning on waiting but she decided it for us and after a week and a half of screaming all evening until we went up to bed we thought sod it, she's happier up there so we'll give it a go! From day one of putting her upstairs it was a massive improvement for us all. She'll nap in the day with tv/noise etc but of an evening she hated it! Literally as soon as you started walking up the stairs with her she stopped crying, and that's no exaggeration!

She has a baby monitor, I go up every 20 mins or so and check her, if she stirs we go straight up and get her back to sleep (no CC) and she has an amazing bedtime routine of bath at 5.30pm, bed at 6pm, bottle if she wants it, but generally she's asleep within 5 minutes and gets up once in the night for a feed and sleeps until 5-6am.
I was worried that I was going against the rules, but I spoke to the health visitor who said to be honest we're probably making our lives easier for when she's older and if it's working then go for it! I constantly get comments on how awake I look for having a new baby. And she's so much happier in herself, she just likes the peace and quiet of her bed.

Go with your gut, co sleeping goes agains the rules but plenty of people do it so if your baby wants to go to bed and you make sure you do it in the safest way possible then I'd say go for it!

What I would worry with this guideline is if I had a second baby who could only sleep in a quiet dark room. You'd have to choose between letting baby sleep alone with a monitor, keeping baby awake and overtired so you can look after the sibling or sitting in with the sleeping baby and leaving sibling to their own devices.

We nearly lost our baby when he was young - only the fact I was right there and able to notice he looked different and sense something was off saved him, so I would just like to urge you to please think through whether or not this is worth it to you. Is a routine so important? The guidelines are a pain in the arse but they saved my baby’s life. It’s only a few more months - it’s not going to kill you to read, or go on your laptop for an hour or two if you want to put the baby down. They are so tiny and so vulnerable now.

Fenella I don't want to dismiss your experience, which sounds awful and I'm so glad your DS was ok - but surely by that logic parents should sleep in shifts? After all, it's only a few months and it won't kill them?

@LisaSimpsonsbff I've often wondered what the difference is to someone being asleep, unfortunately nobody can watch a baby 24 hours a day so in all honestly I can't see the difference if you check frequently and have a monitor..

Thanks for all the replies on this. I've just posted on the other thread that's going on on this topic. To be honest I'm glad to know I'm not the only one wondering this! I just don't understand how some people say they never ever leave their baby sleeping... how do they get anything done? Especially with older dc. Some of the things i leave DS alone to get done, e.g. making a cup of tea or lunch, are not urgent and are soley for my benefit, but other things, e.g. wiping DDs bum, stopping her from breaking something (or herself) are urgent and necessary.

I haven't read the studies around staying in the same room, i am an academic but don't have journal access (or much time, tbh) at the moment. I was interested in the theory that they hear you breathing and regulate their breathing, as my DD was profoundly deaf from birth, so presumably she wouldn't have been able to regulate her breathing off us if this theory is correct. If I'd known about the reasoning behind staying in the same room when she was a baby it may have pushed me over the edge re my new mum anxiety, so I'm glad I wasn't aware of the theory!

Fenella that must have been awful and I'm glad your ds is ok.