Where should my newborn sleep?

We asked if she could sleep on her side

We did ask. Twice, actually — once as a straight question and once with what we thought was a clever addition: what if one of us is watching her?

The answer we got back was fair, and it stuck with us. Watching isn't the safeguard it feels like, because sleep is precisely the time nobody is watching. You look at your phone. You doze off yourself. The whole point of the rule is that it has to hold when you're not there.

So we put her on her back. Every time. It's the one thing in this entire first month we never had a debate about twice.

We did tilt the cot

This was the hard one. When milk came out of Ari’s nose one night, and again when she spat up in her sleep, gravity felt like the obvious answer.

Our cot had adjustable height settings, so we raised one end. Honestly, the fact that it could tilt made us assume that was partly what the feature was for. At two in the morning, with milk coming out of your baby’s nose, it felt like perfectly logical exhausted-parent problem-solving.

We later learned that the general safe-sleep guidance is still to keep the mattress firm and completely flat, even with reflux. A small baby can slide down an incline and end up in a worse position than the one you were trying to prevent. So yes, we tilted ours. Knowing what we know now, we would keep it flat unless Ari’s doctor or nurse had given us a specific reason and plan to do otherwise.

What our cot actually had in it

Almost nothing. That still looked wrong to us for about a week. It seemed cold, as though we had forgotten something.

A Love to Dream swaddle solved most of that feeling for us. This is not sponsored; it is simply the one we used, and it worked brilliantly for Ari. There was no loose blanket to wriggle under, nothing to kick off, and one less thing to think about at three in the morning. Once she showed signs of rolling, the arms-in swaddle had to go.

Ari slept in her own cot in her room, and Mama slept on the single bed beside her. We also had an intercom for the times we were outside the room and used white noise, which worked wonders for settling her.

The one that catches people out

Falling asleep on a sofa holding her. It's not a decision anyone makes — it happens at the end of a night feed when you sit down for a second.

We got into the habit of feeding somewhere we could put her down safely afterwards, rather than somewhere comfortable enough to lose an hour in. Not because we were disciplined. Because we knew exactly how tired we were.