Same room, own surface
Put the cot in your room. Not in the stylish nursery you painted at 30 weeks. In the room where you sleep.
Raising Children separates two ideas men often mash together. Room-sharing means the baby is on their own safe surface, in the same room as you. Cot, portacot, bassinet, baby box, pepi-pod, the safe ones.
Co-sleeping means the baby is on the same surface as a person. The risk reduction they talk about is the first arrangement, not a baby tucked into the doona because everyone finally slept.
The figure is the one worth remembering when someone offers you the spare room. Sharing a room, separate surfaces, for the first year or at least the first six months, has been shown to halve the risk of sudden unexpected death in infancy, including SIDS and fatal sleep accidents.
Half. That is not a vibe. The explanation they give is mechanical.
The reflexes that protect the airway work better close to you. Swallowing, stirring, waking if breathing gets hard or the airway blocks. You are a noisy, warm mammal nearby.
That is the safety feature. A camera in the next room is not the same feature.
There are ordinary gains too. You hear the wake sooner. Night breastfeeding is less of a hike.
You learn the sounds that mean hunger versus the sounds that mean a grunt in active sleep. Bonding gets mentioned because you are there, not because you performed it.
None of this cancels the surface rules. Back. Firm, flat, level.
Clear of pillows and toys. Face uncovered. Smoke-free.
Being two metres away does not make a soft nest safe. Set the cot up properly or the room-share does not count as the thing in the article.
Practicalities you can do this week. The cot beside the bed, not against a curtain cord. A lamp you can switch without waking the street.
Your water and her water where you can reach them. Agree which of you stands up first. The baby does not need both of you vertical for every snuffle.
If your housing makes a full year in one room hard, the page still says at least six months as the shorter version of the same advice. Do the months you can, on a proper surface, before you exile the baby to a quiet room because you want your bed back. Quiet is not the safety feature. You are.
Grandparents who want the baby overnight need the same setup explained without an argument about tradition. Separate surface. Same room as an adult.
On the back. If they cannot do that, the baby comes home.
Source: Raising Children Network