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Sleep

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Original poster

When did you move your baby out of your bedroom?

78 replies

MrsPurr · 28/01/2010 09:41

My 11-wk-old DS is very looooong (99.6th centile for height). He's the length of the average 4-month-old. He's about to grow out of his Moses basket. I am not sure his cot is going to fit in our bedroom. I am wondering whether I can transfer him to his room (next door to ours) with a baby monitor. Unsurprisingly, given that's the current NHS advice, the HV has advised me not to move him out of our room before 6 months.

Can anyone point me to any research about why babies have to stay in the parents' bedroom for 6 months? Surely it's not just so we can hear him -- we could do that just as well with a baby monitor.

Has anyone moved their baby out before 6 months?

OP posts:

Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

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woodyandbuzz · 28/01/2010 19:17

You can buy proper mattresses for travel cots. You have to make sure you get the size right though as there are regulations about how many cm there can be between the cot and the mattress.

ifeelitall · 28/01/2010 19:22

Advice here (Austria) is to keep them in parents' room for a year, so that's what we did with ds1 (till 14 months, actually) and what we're doing with ds2 (he's 11 mo right now).

I can't believe anyone's bedroom is smaller than ours! Ours is literally just about wider than our bed, and about 3 feet longer - we have nothing in it apart from our bed and the cot.

74slackbladder · 28/01/2010 19:27

didnt know the advice was 6months. ds1 slept in our room for about 8 wks. amazingly once he moved into his own room he slept a lot better and so did we (obviously). he was only just down the landing and we'd leave doors open so we could hear him. i think we were disturbing him and vice versa when he was in with us.
don't know if i will even last 8 weeks with dc2.
if you felt strongly enough and moses basket is too small, you could try a crib instead. someone lent us one for ds1, he was quite long too, so it was better than moses basket, but also smaller than full size cot or cot bed.

missismac · 28/01/2010 19:36

It's not just to do with the breathing - it's to with risk factors. The research done by FSID shows that having the baby sleeping in a room away from you before 6 months dramatically increases the risk of cot death. It's not ridiculous ggirl. It's down to how much risk you want to take with your baby. I'll hazard a guess that the risk decreases exponentially, I would imagine that the risk in moving a 20wk old baby into it's own room would be less than that of moving a 6 wk old baby.

I've just had this conversation with my brother. He & his wife have got their little 2 wk old baby in it's own room. Am biting tongue really hard.

Ineedsomesleep · 28/01/2010 19:40

DS was about 15 months and DD was 13 months.

Personally, I wouldn't move a baby out of our room before 6 months. Perhaps I am over anxious, but if something dreadful happened I would never forgive myself.

Have you had a look at the fsids website?

Rhian82 · 28/01/2010 19:58

We didn't get a Moses basket, never really occurred to us to do anything other than put his cot in our room from day one. And we had a very small bedroom - we had to move our underwear drawers into the living room to fit it in.

We didn't really have a choice about rooms as we lived in a one-bed flat until DS was one, but I wouldn't have dreamed of moving him out until he was six months, I was terrified of cot death and the advice is pretty clear. It actually didn't really occur to me that anyone would - I was a bit horrified when I talked to friends who had the same thing of 'Moses basket in their room, cot in different room, move baby when they outgrow it'.

We moved to a two-bed place just before DS's first birthday and he got his own room then. Timing wise that worked well for all of us I think.

blijemuts · 28/01/2010 20:08

Both DC's slept in a cot in their own room,right next door to ours ,with doors open from the day we came home from hospital.
Ds slept through from 9 wks,Dd from 6 wks.
No 'forcing' of any kind involved,they just did it.I do realise we where pretty lucky.Ds is now 9yrs,Dd12yrs and are still very good sleepers wherever they are.

Booyhoo · 28/01/2010 20:15

wow, i didnt realise that people did it beofre 6 months either.

i remember my cousin moved her dd2 at 6 weeks and i thought she had PND!! not meaning to offend anyone that has moved their baby before 6 months. i just thought she was having trouble bonding with her baby.

hellymelly · 28/01/2010 20:16

Both mine still with us (2 and just 5).DD2 conceived on sofa.

flowerybeanbag · 28/01/2010 20:19

booyhoo I can assure you I am very much bonded with both my DSs

blijemuts · 28/01/2010 20:21

No trouble bonding here at all.To be honest we weren't given that advice 12yrs ago so just did what I thought was right.Best thing to do is listen to advice,see whats right for you and your family and decide accordingly.Nothing wrong with a bit of tweeking and using your own initiative with a dollup of commom sense.

helpYOUiWILL · 28/01/2010 20:22

Was going to type about getting a travel cot but see it was already advised!! There are many different sized ones out there but i got one with a bassinet that sits within the cot so the baby is still raised up. It was from mothercare.

Also think long term and if you plan on more children. I used the travel cot more with the second child because i put it in the lounge (with bassinet) so when ds2 needed a kip i could put him in there save running up and down stairs (time is even more precious with subsequent children!). I also put him in it if i was leaving the room so i knew he wasn't at risk of being sat on by my ds1

Booyhoo · 28/01/2010 20:25

i know flowery, i wasnt suggesting. i dont think that now. this was about 6 years ago before i was a mother myself. its just the only case i know of asomeone who did it and at the time that was the conclusion i drew from it. i know better now

TheBossofMe · 28/01/2010 20:26

MrsPurr - you have no idea how long it took us to figure out how to stop the monitors interfering with each other! I blame it on sleep deprivation....

BikeRunSki · 28/01/2010 20:29

9 weeks. We all slept a lot better.

Original poster

MrsPurr · 28/01/2010 21:23

Missimac -- what do you mean "It's not just to do with the breathing - it's to with risk factors. The research done by FSID shows that having the baby sleeping in a room away from you before 6 months dramatically increases the risk of cot death." What is the risk if not the breathing thing? What else could it be? That what baffles me. But then I suppose that's what baffles the whole of medical science at the moment given SIDS is such a mystery.

I know plenty of people who moved their children into their own rooms at 2 or 3 months, and said babies and parents slept better as a result. And of course Gina Ford recommends it from Day One.

I think the travel cot's probably the way forward... The stories of babies who slept better in their own room are mighty seductive though...

OP posts:

Original poster

MrsPurr · 28/01/2010 21:26

PS -- does everyone just have it off with each other in the same room as the baby then? But this is my first baby and I have always felt funny doing it in front of the cat so what do I know...

OP posts:

sallyjaygorce · 28/01/2010 21:29

19 months with DD1. Just liked her being there. 16 months with DS1 - to be in same room as DD1. 14 months with DD2 - now all three are in together and love it.

SazzlesA · 28/01/2010 21:30

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

jollydiane · 28/01/2010 21:49

DS went into his own room in his own cot from day 1.

We had a good baby monitor and I think everyone benefited.

LadyintheRadiator · 28/01/2010 22:11

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Galena · 28/01/2010 22:17

DD went into a travel cot with proper 'extra' mattress to make it a bit more comfortable as we couldn't fit the cotbed in our room. At 8mo she went into her own cot in her own room. Been in there a month and still has never slept through the night.

EightiesChick · 28/01/2010 22:28

7 months. DS was (is) a shorty so he still fitted into his Moses basket for most of that time. We then had him in a cot in the same room as us for about a month, till he got used to it, then moved him into his own room. I was quite sad to do it, but he was starting to sleep better by then and we thought he might do so even more without any of our clumping around to disturb him. I would do what is necessary to keep him with you till 6 months to avoid the risk, especially given that you don't seem to be saying that either of you is really disturbing the other (beyond usual baby levels, I mean!)

Don't know how you are feeding your DS, but I was breastfeeding and it made life lots easier to have him right next to the bed for the first months when he was waking several times a night. He is a very good sleeper now, going through from 7.30 - 7 with only the occasional waking in this time.

One thing I'd say is that we went on holiday when he was about 6 months and he did not take at all well to the travel cot. Hated being noticeably lowered over the side (our cot is a drop side one) and slept little except for when he was lying on me. So try the travel cot by all means and hopefully you'll be luckier than me, but for my DS, fresh out of a Moses basket, it didn't work well.

Ineedsomesleep · 29/01/2010 12:56

MrsPurr why not try the settee. A nice fire, a bottle of wine and away you go....

missismac · 29/01/2010 14:42

Mrs Purr (lovely name), I don't think they know what the other factors are. There's so much they still don't know about cot death. I assume they mean that if you have your baby in a separate room before 6 months, you will increase the risk of your baby dying from sids - but they can't tell you exactly why?

I guess they just looked at all the babies available to them who died of sids & tried to find common factors one of which was babies sleeping in a room separate from parents> I'm not a research person so don't really know what methodology was used to reach this conclusion?

Lots of people have commented that their babies sleep better in their own room, but I guess a few years ago when the 'back to sleep' campaign was brought in there were a similar number of people protesting that their babies slept so much better on their fronts. The cot death rate dropped dramatically after new Mums were advised to put babies on their back due to the conclusions of research done by FSID. This being so I'd be inclined to follow their most current advice about room sharing rather than ask my baby to run the risk. But I do recognise that, like everything else to do with parenting, it's a decision only the parents can take on behalf of themselves & their baby.

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