It is best that you leave your baby’s door closed at night. It gives them a darker and quieter room, allowing you to continue your evening in peace knowing you are less likely to wake them accidentally. If there’s a house fire then it can protect them from smoke and fire longer.
The noise reduction is a huge benefit, both from you and your baby. Having the door shut allows you to stay active without waking your baby, and your baby’s normal noises won’t unnecessarily distract you. You can relax and spend time alone, or with friends, to recharge from the stress of parenting duties.
The biggest drawback I see is the reduced visibility into your child’s room. When your baby is very young, the urge to continuously check on them is strong. When the door closed, it may feel like you are cut off from your baby and will miss something important. Thankfully there are many great baby monitors available to help you stay connected with your little one.
Here I want to share the reasons I found for why you should and shouldn’t leave a baby’s door closed. After reading my thoughts, if you have any additional concerns or questions I strongly encourage you to speak with your pediatrician. They can give you more insight into your specific situation.
Why should you leave your baby’s door closed?
Keeping your baby’s door shut when they are asleep is important to help ensure they have the opportunity to sleep without distractions. It also allows you to relax a little more, and helps protect them in case of fire.
- The room is quieter and less likely to wake them. While you are watching TV, doing chores, or enjoying time with friends you can relax more knowing you are less likely to wake them. While you should be careful to avoid really loud noises, it allows you to do what you want without waking your child.
- Keeps the room nice and dark. Unless light is coming in through the window, the room will be dark and therefore less distracting to your baby. Hopefully this will allow them to sleep more easily.
- You will hear less of your baby’s noises. While you don’t want to be completely disconnected from your baby, hearing all of their normal noises might be very distracting to you. You can still use a baby monitor to listen and be alerted when your baby needs your attention.
- Pets aren’t able to go into their room and wake them up. Our dogs loved to wander into our baby’s room to check on them and give kisses whenever our baby’s fingers were near the side. That was very nice of them, but they often disturbed him and caused him to wake up and cry.
- Helps keep smoke and fire out. In case of a fire in your home, having their door closed can help slow the spread of fire and smoke into their room. This can give you and firefighters more time to save them. By keeping the smoke out of the room, it also protects your baby’s lungs from smoke inhalation damage.
- Teach good sleeping habits. They can learn that when the door is shut and it’s dark, then it’s time to sleep. Babies like routines and predictable patterns. So giving them this pattern at night can bring them peace and comfort.
Why should you leave your baby’s door open?
While I’ve been saying all along that closing the door is generally best, there are reasons why you wouldn’t want to do that. Some of those reasons include:
- Reduced visibility into your baby’s room. When you are limited to the view provided by a baby monitor, you can miss problems in their room that you would see with the door open.
- Increased dependence on darkness. If your child expects the room to be very dark, and the door closed, when they sleep, they might be unable to sleep when this isn’t the case. Perhaps this means that when you travel, they won’t sleep well.
- Your baby monitor might fail you. Sometimes you forget to turn it on, the battery dies, or loses connection and you don’t realize it. This can lead you to miss your baby’s important crying.
Do babies sleep better in the dark?
Babies do sleep better in the dark. A dark room comforts your baby, reduces distractions from other objects in the room, and helps your baby’s body release melatonin which helps them relax. After so many months in their mother’s womb, they are more used to dark than light. So being in the dark is comforting.
You do though need to balance the desire to keep their room dark with your need for some light when moving in the room. It definitely will not help your baby if you trip on some toy or furniture and get hurt.
Sometimes your baby might cry and throw a fit when you close the door. This doesn’t necessarily mean they are afraid of the dark. They might instead be suffering from separation anxiety. You’ll need to deal with that separately to get a handle on it so you and your baby can spend the night in peace.
Do you need to be quiet while your baby is sleeping?
You don’t need to be quiet, but you should watch your noise level and not be too loud. Carry on with your usual activities, but consider avoiding power tools and not blasting that amazing action movie.
One simple check you can do is watching your baby monitor. If you see that the camera is picking up the noise you are making, then you’re probably being too loud.