Ask a STM+ (August)

etnyah

First time mom with questions about pregnancy, birth, newborn phase and beyond?

Second time mom with questions about how to deal with pregnancy symptoms while caring for your older child, and transitioning from one to two children? 

Third, fourth, or more, time mom with questions about how to handle more children than you have hands? 

Ask away!

ladyofarlington

I’ll ask a TTM+ - how do you handle morning routines and bedtime routines with two kids? Any tips or tricks to make it easier - especially if you solo parent a lot (DH travels a ton for work). 

nsk489

Any of you STM+ have your children share a room? My son will be 22 (almost 23) months when this April baby is born and we would like them to share a room (bc otherwise their rooms would be on different floors of the house). With my son, we had him sleep in the nursery from the very beginning and he never slept in our room. He's 14 months now and a GREAT sleeper for naps and bedtime--I can put him down awake and he goes right to sleep, and sleeps about 11-12 hours straight through with no wake ups. I'm assuming this April baby will need to sleep in my room in the beginning bc of all the night wake ups he/she will have, so not sure when we will transition them to the same room. Just wondering if anyone has any tips or advice on how to go about it 😊

abbsters-2

@ladyofarlington I have two kids. For morning and evening routines when my younger kid was really little, I staggered the routines and kept them short. So, I'd  put the baby to bed 6:10-6:30, and then the older one 6:30-7. If my husband wasn't there, I'd sometimes let the older one watch a TV show to keep him out of trouble! Or, I'd babywear the baby (which helped SO much with keeping up with two kids), while putting the older one to bed. 

@nsk489 Mine do, but only started once the younger one was reliably sleeping through the night. Our younger kid slept in our room for a while, and then into a different room until he wasn't waking up anymore. The older one was actually pretty excited to have the younger move into his room, so it wasn't too bad of a transition. I hope you find a good solution!

ladyofarlington

Thanks for your insight @abbsters-2! They’ll likely be a bit more gap in bedtimes since my DD will be around 4.5 when baby arrives (🙏🤞🙏) and I’m hopeful I’ll eventually be able to get baby down smoothly before DD goes to bed or do some baby wearing in the super early days if the baby is awake longer than DD. I’m open to ALL the tips haha.