How essential are blackout curtains?

[Bumblingonby]

I keep reading that rooms need to be pitch black for babies to nap and sleep properly but if youre in the UK this poses 2 problems:

1. we are told to be in the same room for all naps and sleeps to 6 months for safety. Obviously that can't be in a blacked out room!

1. British houses have no ac, so in summer it's necessary to have fans on AND windows wide open with nothing blicking airflow for night temperatures to be comfortable (at least at our house!) so blackout curtains would be rendered a bit useless.

I have a 4 month old and looming to foster good sleep habits. Does anyone have experience or advice on this?

Thanks!

I put my babies down to nap in their room.

light and noise to effect toddlers more than babies and I would pull the blind down and keep the window open until I went to bed. If it was tapping I just push it against the frame with a couple of books or something.

The baby is advised to be in the same room as other people until the age of six months but there is no need for it to be upstairs in the dark. That is not medical advice. This isn't new advice and has been recommended for years now. Put the baby down in the Moses basket / carrycot and carry on your life moving them from room to room until your bed time when they can go down (Ha!) in their night time bed . You can , of course , choose to manage things differently.

I live in a warmer part of the UK, and I've never had a fan on all night in summer. Windows open maybe for a few of the hottest weeks.

We bought a travel blackout blind that sticks onto the window with suckers. After a while of diligently sticking it up every night (and intending to upgrade the curtains but not getting round to it), we hit that really hot period in the summer and really struggled as we couldn't have windows open as well as the blackout blind up! Long story short we tried a few nights without the blackout blind and with the windows open behind the closed thin curtains...and she suddenly slept a lot better overnight!! We've not used the blackout blind since, though we do still take it with us on holiday, just in case.

Every baby is different though, so I think it's a case of try different things and see - but yeah, I can confirm a completely dark room isn't a necessity for all babies to sleep.

Daytime my now 10 MO only really naps in her carrier, pushchair or carseat, so curtains are rather less relevant there for us haha.

Good luck!

Can't you? Why not- for safety reasons? Surely if there's a bar across or something it's fine? Better that than your poor kid bakes in their bed!

Yes, I feel like living in a london flat might not be doing us any favours in this regard..