Two month old sleeping in their own room?

[khalisey]

Hi all,

Mum to two month old son who absolutely loves to fidget in his sleep. My partner can usually sleep through it - however I'm such a light sleeper I barely get any shut eye once I've gotten up with LO in the night for a feed as he tends to do most of his fidgeting then (it's not wind/reflux or colic as we have no problem settling him at night for the first part of his sleep). So we are attempting him in his own room for the first time tonight. I bought a baby monitor and his room is right next to ours... however I'm a little worried because of the whole sleeping in the same room as you for the first six months things/SIDS gets brought up a lot 😕
Basically I'm just after reassurance that I'm doing the right thing 😅

Advice does change, we were told cosleeping reduces sids when mine were small and I always coslept far too long however my cousin though had hers in their own rooms straight from hospital. Read all the evidence and make an informed decision. Unfortunately I know two people who have lost babies to sids, one was sleeping beside her in a cot (at 6 weeks) the other was 11 months old so in their own room. We don't actually know the cause so advice is from population studies remember before people get to hysterical here

I feel your pain, two of mine were such noisy, fidgety sleepers that I couldn’t sleep through it at all.
However as DH could sleep through it I just left them in our room with him and I went in another room to sleep. I’d come in when they needed feeding (BF), then go back to the other room.

The risk of SIDS in a healthy baby is very low.

If they are near you it is slightly statistically lower BUT if they just stopped breathing you wouldn't necessarily wake up anyway.

If you are sleep deprived you aren't as good a parent as you would be if you slept well.

I am way out of date. My kids are early 40s. DS1 was in own room after 1 week, DD1 at 2 days old. I couldn't sleep with them next to me. We were also told back then that sleeping on their tummy was safer.

The majority of people in their 40s slept in their own room fairly soon after birth and on their tummies and even then SIDS was rare.

There clearly is a risk but it is low. Only you can decide

I’m not sure I understand - if the noise from his fidgeting is keeping you awake, surely having a monitor on so you can hear his fidgeting in the next room should also keep you awake?
So what’s the point in taking the risk?

I’d rather be kept awake until I was on the verge of death than risk my baby dying from SIDS. Sorry OP, the guidelines are there for a reason. On your own head be it.

I’m not sure I understand - if the noise from his fidgeting is keeping you awake, surely having a monitor on so you can hear his fidgeting in the next room should also keep you awake?

I thought this too. This is another reason I decamped to another room and left mine with DH in our room. I could still hear the noise through a monitor.

@JoJoSM2 I'm not sure how helpful it is to say that there's scaremongering. Fine if you want to say you weighed up the risks personally and decided to put your child in their own room because you considered the risk low enough for you to take that chance. The reason the SIDS rate is as low as it is now is because a large percentage of people follow the current advice. Which isn't limited to, but does include them being in the same room until 6 months.

And as for people saying my children all survived. Well we didn't have seatbelts in a lot of cars when I was a kid and yet here I am. Would you put your child in a car without a seatbelt now?
What about my great aunt who smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish and lived to nearly 100?
This anecdotal 'evidence' really grinds my gears. The stats are that lots more babies died from SIDS when I was a child. I didn't die. Doesn't mean what my mum did was as safe as it could've been.

@Ooohtini

SIDS is by definition an unexpected death of an infant. As science moves on, more can be explained in 2019 than 30 years ago so fewer deaths will be classed as SIDS. The advice given is based on correlations found in large cohorts but actual causal links aren't understood (hence 'unexplained'). In addition, there are many confounding variables. High risk factors include being a boy, having a young mother who smoked in pregnancy, low birthweight/premature birth and so on (a long list). There's also research into gene mutations that contribute to SIDS. So it's a very complex issue.

What gets filtered down to mums-to-be is very different. I experienced scaremongering in my pregnancy and it did leave me completely paranoid when DS was born.

And yes, the OP can read up on things and make her own judgement.

Why on earth are you asking when you know - because you've said yourself - you're going against recommendations? No, I'm not going to reassure you, because the recommendations exist for a reason.

If your partner can sleep through the baby's fidgeting then you could sleep elsewhere and leave baby in the room with your partner.

Or just get some ear plugs!!!

Could you swaddle your baby? Get a groswaddle and use the online tool to work out what to dress LO in. I'd do this, then earplugs, then move to a different room yourself before moving a 2-month old into a separate room. Two months is soooo little still!

Two months is still very young and personally I would never move my child into their own room before 6 months. DS sleeps in a crib attached to our bed and for the first 3 months he was a noisy sleeper, lots of grunting and shuffling and as he got older he would bang his legs down onto the mattress. He kept waking me up and I now wear one earplug. It stops me from him waking me up numerous times a night but I can still hear him.

We moved ours at 4 months due to the opposite problem - she was being disturbed by us. I’m a VERY light sleeper so we used very loud white noise from early on (though now DD won’t sleep without it 🤦🏻‍♀️)