Where should the baby sleep?

The parents around the world, as well as the pediatricians are quite hesitating over the topic where is the best place for the baby to sleep – in a separate room, in its parent’s room or in the mommy and daddy’s bed.
Here are some advantages and disadvantages of each of these options:

Sleeping in the parents’ room

Advantages:

• The baby is close to its mother and the night feeding is much easier for her.
• The mother is able to constantly hear the baby and watch it throughout the night.
• If the baby wakes up for a reason, different than hunger, the mother will be close by and could calm it down just by swinging it without even going out of bed.
• From one point of view, the sleep of the mother is somehow better, because she doesn’t need to get up during the night.

Disadvantages:

• From another point of view, the sleep of the mother could worsen, because she will hear every noise from her baby. The babies tend to make any kind of sounds during their sleep, because sometimes they are even dreaming. Any kind of these noises could worry the mother and she could constantly check what her baby is doing in that moment.
• It is very possible that the baby sleep would become dependent on the mother’s presence and eventually become more unrestful.
• The baby will accustom to sleep in its parents room and when the time for a separate room comes, the transition process could be more difficult.

Sleeping in a separate room

Advantages:

• The baby learns to sleep independently.
• The parents’ sleep is calmer.
• The baby’s sleep is calmer, because nothing is bothering it.
• Nowadays, on the market could be found a big variety of baby monitors – baby phones, video phones with breathing and temperature sensors, etc. These devices provide good security for the parents that their baby is just fine.
• When the baby cries during the night, just one parent needs to get up.
• When the baby grows up, you don’t need to move it to another room. As we all know, the babies love the routine and the established regime and they hate the changes. Every change makes them insecure and could negatively affects them.

Disadvantages:

• Remote location from the parents’ bed.
• When the baby starts crying, one of the parents should get up and go to the baby’s room. This could disrupt the parent’s sleep.
• Parents should rely on a baby phone or a video phone to be calm that everything with the baby is OK.

Mixed variant

• The mother sleeps in the baby’s room for the first few month after coming back at home from the hospital. This way she is able to be close to her little one during the night and could answer any baby’s need at any time. In the first months after giving birth, the mother feels exhausted very often. Moving herself to the baby’s room, gets her some privacy with the new family member and her sleep is better. At the same time, the father is able to get a normal sleep and to be energized for the next working day, as well as for helping his wife and the rest of the kids in the family.
• When the baby starts sleeping throughout the whole night, the mother could move back to the parents’ bedroom. This way the parents are not making any change in the sleep routine of their baby – it is already used to be independent in a separate room. The transition is remarkably easy. After the mother moves back in the parents’ bedroom, the baby phones come handy. These could become one of the most useful electronic devices at home.