Ladies who moved while pg or with LO, come in please

CFH79

I need tips!  We are in contract to sell our house (YAY!) but now we only have until May 1 to find a new place and get out of our old one. 

Any tips on how to move with a LO?  Obviously, I'm going to be calling for all hands on deck, with regards to family and help...but anything else?  Or what would you have family do/help with?

TIA!

cupcakes710

I had my mom take care of LO while I helped carry boxes.  I fed her when I got home but also gave my mom a bottle and pumped while DH and friend moved furniture.  GL moving suuuuuuuuucks!

CFH79

cupcakes710:

I had my mom take care of LO while I helped carry boxes.  I fed her when I got home but also gave my mom a bottle and pumped while DH and friend moved furniture.  GL moving suuuuuuuuucks!

Yep.  Thanks for the advice.  Yeah I hate moving, but I moved into this house (DH's childhood home) knowing we weren't staying--too far from my work, I've been doing a 2 hour round trip commute for almost 2 years now.

That being said...do you know how much shiit piles up in a house when you live there for 34 years?!?!?!  He's got his stuff, his mom's, his sisters, his brothers...it's all got to go and we get to go through it all!  Yay us...

lulu8109

I just moved over the past two weekends and it SUCKED and I'm still not unpacked.  Luckily I'm still on maternity leave, but tomorrow's my last day.  We had my mom stay with us the week before we moved into our new place.  She watched LO while I packed up our old apt.  Packing up the old apt was a disaster.  I only got about half done while my mom was here (I still had to nurse LO).  I was really organized about it though.  I labeled each box with:  what floor of the new house it went to, which room it went to, and what was in it.  That helped A LOT.  But I only did it for about half our stuff.  The rest of our stuff was just thrown into boxes at random at the last minute.  We had several friends and family help us move and help watch LO.

My recommendations:  Start early!  I only started packing the week before we started the move.  Have someone take care of LO while you pack and on moving day. Label your boxes carefully.

kat81

hire movers. hire them to pack stuff, too. they do it by the box, so have them pack the fragile/hard-to-pack stuff and do the books yourself. we moved while I was pregnant.

I know this is expensive, but probably not more so than hiring a sitter and doing it yourself. the movers were SO FAST when they came. If you can get a free sitter like your mom that's different...my mom is too busy to sit so her advice would be to hire the movers.

EvelynHawaii

Label all the boxes with the room they will be unpacked in and bring them to that room immediately. It was so much easier to unpack when all my "kitchen" boxes were in the kitchen, all the "dining room" boxes were in the dining room, etc.

mchupie

We just moved this past weekend.  We had 8 people help us, which was so helpful.  I wore DD in the Moby most of the day and was able to help out a little bit.

Unpacking, on the other hand, is a bit difficult with a baby who doesn't ever want to nap

abovewedding

We moved on my due date. The packing was tough because I was so tired but my mom helped and we were pretty ruthless with throwing things away and not taking what we didn't use.

The day of the move, I slept at my moms house and my DH, brother and friends moved all our stuff. I had a girlfriend help unpack and I labeled everything anally. Although that didn't matter lol, I don't think they read any boxes. 

But if you're moving with a LO, I would still see if you can't stay at soemones house and look after LO while everyone helps you move. Yeah, its your stuff, but you're exhausted and have to be up all night. So i'd let others help you and do it. 

OH! One thing I did do that they payed attention to is measure and lay out a floor plan for furniture placement. They knew where everything was giong and what wall couches and tables were to be against. It would have been a pain in the butt to have to move furniture around after and navigate around boxes. 

CFH79

This is great advice, thank you all!

I am already back at work,but our sitter only charges $75/week, so I'll probably take at least one week's vacation and pack during the day while she's with the sitter (DH's cousin, so she gets plenty of lovin'--hey that rhymes!). 

I'm definitely going to  have to get my mom down for at least a long weekend.  I hope my BFF can take off to help unpack.  She helped unpack from a couple moves ago and it was SO much better than my mom's help.  My BFF just *knew* where to put things like dishes, glasses, etc.  My mom is left handed so it seemed like everything was backwards when she was trying to help. 

We're going to lose about 500 sqft of space plus a basement and a large garage--our new home will probably not have any of this.  So I'm really stressing about where to put everything!

lilmgirl

We moved from Iowa to Idaho and we had about two weeks to do it.  H put in his notice and fortunately had PTO saved up so the last week he stayed home and packed.  We enlisted the help of our IL's and they came down about 3 days before we had to move.

Since I work from home, MIL was the babysitter for those couple of days and packed up last minute items while he took naps.  I could solely focus on work; H and FIL packed up the trailer.

We went through ABF (we packed, they hauled).  H and his dad drove our two vehicles and dogs; MIL and I flew with Kamikaze. Our trailer arrived a week after we did.  We also had friends in the area so we were able to stay with them until our stuff arrived and we could move into our rental home.

I will say my stress level jumped dramatically, even though I thought I could handle it but one day, BAM it hit me and I had a major meltdown.  There was nothing I could do to control it.  I don't know if I would have handled it any better had I just not have a baby.

Best of luck to you and congratulations on selling!!

chickaboo1974

We are going to be moving, hopefully sooner rather than later.  I am starting the declutter process next week.  Although the house we put an offer on this morning is 1000 sq ft bigger than our current home- my DH has lived here 15 years and has a ton of junk.  We are also fortunate that we don't have to sell our current house until we move into a new one (we have no mortgage on current home) so no big rush to move in a weekend.

We are going to move the small stuff ourselves- clothes, books, electronics, kitchen stuff. But the larger stuff we are going to hire movers- I am not up for asking family or friends to potentially get hurt lifting my heavy furniture- leave it to the pros.

bosha711

We moved when I was about 7 months pregnant. I packed clothes, all the kitchen stuff, and other smaller things. I cleaned. I didn't do much lifting, but made small trips bringing stuff to the cars. We had friends & family help us move everything except furniture. We had a moving company for the furniture. As far as moving in, I did pretty much the same in reverse. I also painted. I did a lot more than I should have probably in terms of getting our new house ready for the baby. Ah well.

We had family help us paint, clean & move furniture.

CFH79

The problem with movers is that we live so far out, we're paying for 2 hours of their time when all they are doing is travelling to/from our current house.  It seems like a waste.  But we have a deep freeze (no idea where that's going to go in a house without a basement or garage) and a compressed air tank that are both HUGELY heavy.  I have thought about hiring movers for the bigger stuff like that...

jocass

We started our move cross country 3 weeks before LO was due in hopes we would make it. Well, he decided to come DURING the move. Since he was early, he was very sleepy and therefore slept the WHOLE remaining 2 day trip. But if he was born december 2010 and you're moving next month? Definitely call in the help from family. My mom finished the drive with us, and then practically unpacked our whole house. We got here Jan 2, and if it weren't for her our house would STILL be in boxes.

 

If you're comfortable having someone else unpack everything for you and whatnot, do that. If not, have someone watch LO all day while you do the work. I think that your best bet is to just have some definitive role with some taking care of LO while the other does the work.