New Mummy Blog: Moving our child to her own bedroom

It was another big step in Honor’s transition from helpless newborn to little person this week as we moved her into her own room.

Current guidelines recommend babies sleep in their parents’ room for the first six months of their lives and we happily set up her moses basket next to our bed and liked that we had some official evidence to back up us not wanting to let her out of our sight.

But when she was 10 weeks old she graduated from her moses basket to cot, and it has been quite a squeeze ever since.

Being the typical paranoid new mother, I took great reassurance from hearing her small snuffles and snores periodically filter through the darkness, and so have taken comfort from having her within reaching distance of me at night.

But it has become more and more apparent in recent weeks that sharing our room with Honor is hindering all three of us from getting a decent night’s sleep.

Firstly, there’s the stumbling around in the dark that we do when we go to bed, several hours after Honor has gone down. No matter how quiet we try to be, we inevitably wake her.

This in itself is fine, as I like to feed her at this point in the night, in the hope that it will prevent her waking for a feed just after I’ve drifted off. And we’ve never had much success with the dream feed (where baby is given a night feed while they’re pretty much still fast asleep), so she may as well wake up at this time anyway.

It’s the getting her back to sleep that’s a challenge. She can see Mummy and Daddy in the room, therefore it can’t possibly be time to lie down and go to sleep. Instead, it must be party time.

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Eventually, we get her back to sleep. But every cough, shift of position or loo trip in the night runs the risk of waking her.

And when she wakes, she wants to be fed. Which I know is making a rod for my own back, and will never help her learn to self soothe and fall back to sleep on her own. But at 4am, I choose the path of least resistance, and the quickest route back to sleep for both of us.

At least one benefit of having her next to me is that I barely have to get out of bed for the night feeds. But now, the six-month mark has arrived and with it came the night in which Honor graduated to her own room.

Her cot was moved through, along with her bedtime toys and anything else I could think of to give her continuity and familiarity. Her nightlight was switched on, and we crept out, hoping that this might be the answer to all of us getting a good night’s sleep.

Of course it wasn’t. One of the drawbacks of not moving a child into their own room until six months, unlike our parents’ generation who moved us within a few days of coming home from the hospital, so I’m told, is that they’re obviously far more aware of their surroundings.

Honor woke in a strange room, without us nearby and promptly cried. The problem is that this happened no less than nine times in one night.

And each time the baby monitor screeched into action next to my ear, rather than reach across from my nice warm bed, I had to peel myself out from under the duvet, pad down the hall and into her room to comfort her.

Night two was marginally more successful, but it’s becoming painfully apparent now that the idea of us all getting a better night’s sleep was wishful thinking. It might be a different room but it’s the same pattern. So much for our coughs and snores waking her!