Do i have to go to bed at 7pm??

[Blu3Bell]

Baby is turning 3 months soon, so I want to get in a good sleep routine. I know this means an earlier bedtime rather than 10/11pm which is what we do now.

My question is, if im putting baby to bed at 7pm ish and NHS guidelines state baby has to be in the same room as an adult for all day and nighttime sleep, does that mean I'm expected to be tucked up in bed at 7pm too for the foreseeable future? I can't see any wayy around it but surely not everyone is doing this?

Any advice/ideas appreciated x

And some babies just never ‘get used to noise’.
Its not your great parenting skills, its a baby that can fall asleep with noise around them.

Ive know a baby would stay up until 1.00am if her parents had people over/were up watching TV. That baby is now a 20yo who is still a night owl.
Mine needed darkness and silence. And no overstimulation or missing the window by 15 mins. Otherwise they were a nightmare. As an adult, they still have a very light sleep, struggle to fall asleep in the evening etc…

Nature has ALOT to say on what babies will be able to handle. More than parenting.

We did the bath, feed routine at 7pm ish then they slept in the moses basket downstairs with us until we went to bed then we carried it up. Once they outgrew the moses basket they had their own little corner of the sofa and we carried them up. Same during the day but I pottered as they napped. Blessed with 2 fantastic sleepers. Wonder if the background noise had anything to do with it 🤔.
Both breastfed but never really cluster fed. They just fed like they would have out of a bottle? Nice long feed and that was them done for a few hours. I changed them at each feed for minimal disturbance!

My 4 month old sleeps downstairs until we go to bed, he’s outgrown his Moses basket so we lay him on the sofa (obviously constantly supervised) I’ll probably put him down upstairs when he’s 6 months with a monitor but this works at the moment!!

We also kept DS with us until we went to bed, usually in the mosses basket or on my boob!

Expecting DS 2 shortly and plan to do the same.

Yes this is what I did until she was 6 months old. I just read a book, went on my phone, watched tv on my iPad whilst she slept. It was actually really nice!

If the point of sleeping in the same room as you is for them to regulate through hearing breathing, this is cancelled out by all the noise surely? We had ours in a separate room and checked in on them regularly. No different from having them in a moses basket in the same room, you check on them with similar frequency.

All this hysteria about SIDS when the most important proven factor is back sleeping. Mine would not have tolerated moving once asleep for the night (think two hours of screaming) and you're not allowed to move a moses basket with the baby inside anyway.

OP, you don't need to go to bed when baby does. Once they're past three months or so, just pop them in their cot and check regularly.

Your baby is 3 months old - I honestly wouldn't be worrying about "routine" at this stage. We had the pram carrycot (it was a sleep safe one, equivalent to a moses basket) for the babies to sleep downstairs in the living room (light and tv on) and we simply transferred them around a feed/dream feed between 9pm and midnight, when we wanted to go upstairs to bed. I would strongly recommend avoiding the necessity of a pitch black, quiet room for your baby to sleep. Ours continue to be heavy sleepers in all conditions (including when I screamed and crashed around their room, being chased by a spider one night) and don't require long, complex wind down routines to get them to sleep as they can do it themselves (2 and 5).

Ok👍
maybe some children are like yours, OP will need to try it and see. There are also plenty of parents who pander and make a rod for their own back that their little darlings will only sleep in perfect conditions and then wonder why their life is so difficult when they travel etc

Reading this, I am so pleased I had my babies years ago. All of this hyperbole and scaremongering on a vanishingly small chance of SIDS.
I am sorry, but the baby-led nonsense that is advised - and only advised, as a pp said, it's not the law - sounds like a recipe for PND to me.
It's funny how MNetters were happy to ignore guidelines when it came to co-sleeping (before it changed) yet are so vehement on keeping their baby with them at all times.
I am from a more pragmatic generation, when we were happy to say we needed a break from our babies.

I personally kept mine with me until I went to bed. I chose to follow the lullaby trust guidelines.

It's up to each individual parent to decide what they do but to call other parents 'nuts' and other things for deciding to follow these guidelines isn't great is it? People are just trying to do their best.

In the 80s before the guidelines came out approx. 1500 babies died from SIDS a year in the UK, now it's about 200.

It was always been rare but anything that reduces the risk of a baby dying is a good thing surely?

Do you have a Moses basket downstairs? Just turn off the lights in the living room and have your TV on quiet and do it that way, feed,.cuddles and settled in the Moses basket in the corner of your living room. We got into a great routine doing this, as we fed and changed when we went to bed around 10ish and then she would wake up again around 3 for another feed, meaning we were only waking up once in the night! She's a great sleeper now too.

I believe the vast majority of deaths were prevented when the back to sleep campaign came about.
As a pp said upthread, it's all about calculating risk. About 500 under-sevens died in car accidents in 2021, but there are never threads accusing parents of acting dangerously if they take their child out in a car.
What I am saying is, for me anyway, the tiny risk of SIDS would be far outweighed by actually having some time with my partner in the evening and setting down good sleep patterns for later on.
And there is absolutely no need for the drama on this subject every time it rears its head.

I'm with you. Mothers (and it's always mothers) having breakdowns over leaving their baby safely sleeping while they take a twenty minute shower or step out in the garden for half an hour, when their baby is perfect safe sleeping in a cot. Or having a four month old baby sleeping on the sofa, or co-sleeping, when that's far more dangerous than them being in a cot. We put both our babies upstairs to sleep while we had a couple of hours child-free time, as parents have done for generations. Safe sleep guidance is primarily about sleeping on their backs, on a flat enclosed surface with nothing else in the cot, checking in regularly. Sitting next to your baby constantly day and night in fear of them suddenly stopping breathing is another level of neurosis. I got flamed in another thread for suggesting it.

@Katypp part of that campaign was for babies to sleep next to the parents too though, so it's hard to know which part saved how many.

This was a direct result of the back to sleep campaign, not the advice to always be within breathing distance of your baby - this came in far later. I'd be interested to see when that advice came in, and whether it has any discernable impact on SIDS deaths.

According to the advice you do need to be in the same room, but you don't have to be asleep yourself - you may well actually like having the sleep(!), but you could eg: read, watch or internet on a tablet, do the online grocery order/online shopping, do something creative like drawing or writing your own memories of your childhood to tell them when they are older, etc etc

Sorry, but what?
Do young parents just accept nowadays that their lives as individuals are over and they are just parents from then on?
It would drive me crazy sitting in a dark room writing memories of my childhood. What I want to do of an evening is eat dinner withy my husband and have some adult time. It seems to have become a bit taboo to say that now though.

yes to all of this!

I didn't start bedtimes before they were 6 months - so less dangerous to leave them. Before that they were clingy in the evenings and didn't really settle before we went to bed. Also means can go out in the evening with small ones

I have had a look and this suggests that the advice to have the baby near you for night and day sleep came at the start of the campaign. Don't 100% know.

I'm not saying everyone should follow the guidelines, it's just feels really shit that people are ridiculing those who have chosen to follow guidelines (especially as the OP has said she is really anxious about SIDS)

Do young parents just accept nowadays that their lives as individuals are over and they are just parents from then on?
It would drive me crazy sitting in a dark room writing memories of my childhood. What I want to do of an evening is eat dinner withy my husband and have some adult time. It seems to have become a bit taboo to say that now though.

No one is saying anyone has to do anything. Personally I ate my dinner with my husband with a baby either asleep in a Moses basket next to me or feeding (which they'd be doing anyway regardless of bedtime). Some parents choose to put their babies to bed earlier, some don't. Surely it's fine to make that choice. It's only a couple of months so it's a bit dramatic to say their lives as individuals are over.

When both mine were little, we popped them in a moses basket in the room we were in. Until I felt confident, I then put them 'to bed' in their cot upstairs with monitor on.

Babies have to be in the same room as an adult for all daytime and nighttime sleeps?! News to me!! I have two. Touch wood, both of them have slept alone plenty and are fine.

Can't believe the Fear they are putting onto new parents! Pay it no mind.

But that's part of the issue. Why is she so anxious about SIDS? It goes without saying that all parents want what's best for their baby, but the hysteria and dogma is WAY, WAY out of proportion to the actual risk. And new parents are picking up on this and making a far bigger issue than it needs to be out of it, scared out of their minds for a tiny, tiny chance that something might go wrong.
Keep baby downstairs or not, it's up to each family, but to suggest not doing so is 'dangerous' which has been said many times on this thread, indicates the poster either enjoys scaremongering or is not capable of making their own decisions and is following guidelines - and they are only that - without engaging critical thought.