Moving a child out of your room can be a difficult task. In my short time as a parent, I’ve learned the number one thing I’m hesitant to mess with is sleep. After months and months of little to no sleep, its easy to not “rock the boat” even though that might be what is really best for everyone.
The CDC recommends keeping your baby in your room (but not your bed) for a minimum of six months, ideally you should keep your baby in your room for the first year of life. That’s all good and well, but like most of the parenting “they say” rules, a whole year of room sharing wasn’t going to work for us.
We decided to move our daughter shortly after she turned six months old. I knew she was ready by the following reasons:
- She was sleeping through the night. The nights of waking every few hours for a feeding were behind us so I knew I wouldn’t be taking the long trek across the house multiple times a night
- She was going to bed every night between 7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. While my husband and I find ourselves going to bed pretty early these days, we aren’t going to bed THAT early. Every night as we tiptoed into our bedroom we would make her stir. It was miserable. We didn’t turn on lights, we didn’t speak, I even crawled in my bed as quietly as possible. Don’t even get me started on needing to go to the bathroom.
- We were waking her up and disturbing her sleep. At night our best efforts would cause her to stir and grunt, our worst would cause her to wake completely screaming and crying. Night wasn’t our only problem though. In the mornings when my husband got up to get ready for work, he would always wake her. It didn’t matter if he turned off the alarm before it went off. It didn’t matter if he opened the bathroom door slowly. She always woke up.
It became obvious to me that we needed to make a change. The benefits of keeping her with us all night were being outweighed by the lack of sleep and happiness on everyone’s part. It took me a few weeks to convince my husband. He was really nervous about not having her close by. Luckily we own the Owlet Monitor. For those who are unaware, the Owlet monitors the Heart Rate and Oxygen Level of your baby, alerting you to when either get out of a certain range. While the owlet doesn’t prevent SIDS, it does give us the peace of mind that our baby is being monitored through out the night. He finally agreed that we were all miserable sharing a room and we decided to make the move.
These are the steps we took:
- Start with naps. This will take some time. Start with your child’s “best” nap of the day (the one where they are the easiest to put down). The naps will be short to begin with. Your child will wake up in a new area and probably won’t go back to sleep. Every 2-3 days add another nap until your child is taking all of their naps in their room. I had my child napping in her room for roughly a month before we tried overnight.
- Prepare to lose some sleep. If you have a long weekend coming up, that’s a great time to make the transition. If not, consider taking a day or two off of work so you can get some rest during the day.
- We put an air mattress in the nursery and one of us slept in there with her for the first 3 nights. Odds are you child will need plenty of comforting in the beginning so you’ll want to be close by. The first night we completely gave in on anything she wanted. We picked her up, rocked her, whatever it took to comfort her and make her feel secure. As the nights went on, we implemented more and more strict sleep training techniques.
- On night 4, we officially left her room and started true sleep training. For the next couple of nights, I spent an average of 2-3 hours awake going back and forth comforting and leaving. Sleep training doesn’t mean you have to let your child cry endlessly. For example, I never let my child cry for more than 3 minute intervals without going in to soothe. It crushed my heart to hear her upset and 3 minutes has never seemed so long. However, now that we are past it (for the most part), I’m glad I stuck to the plan and taught her to self soothe.
One week after we started putting her to bed in her own room the long nights ended and now we are all sleeping better. Some nights, I still have to make a quick visit but for the most part everyone is getting a full nights rest and my husband and I have our room back. If your child is six months or older and your itching for your own space, then I suggest giving it a try. If after a week or two you still find yourself up all night, simply move them back and try again next month. Some of you may end up keeping your baby with you for the recommended year, some of you may end up keeping them until they decide to leave on their own. The important thing is making sure your entire family gets the sleep they need and they deserve.
