Anyone else doing a shared nursery/kids room?

sweetsunnyc · November 2012

Baby is going to be sharing a room with our 4 year old daughter until we are in the position to buy a bigger home. While the room looks totally adorable, I do have concerns about sleeping. I am worried that baby will be waking up her big sister or the other way around all night and no one will be getting any sleep-. Just wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions or if any one has successfully had their kids in the same room together.

LittleFish1 · November 2012

Friend with 2 kids has her kids sharing a room now, but then 2 came along, she was in with parents until she was sleeping through the night ... was probably the first 9 months. Then transitioned her from the basinet to the crib.

mama2many · November 2012

Obviously, with a family our size, room sharing is a given. All of our kids have shared rooms with each successive new baby. We keep baby in our bed/room until they are somewhere around 4-6 mo (waking only 1 or 2x - or for one of them, through the night).

I find that as long as I don't leave the baby to howl for 20 or 30 minutes (cry-it-out), the older kids rarely wake. If they do, I just shush them, or pat them briefly and they usually go right back to sleep. I sleep fairly lightly, and will usually wake up within a few minutes of baby crying - go get baby - leave older ones to sleep. If I can manage to change/feed/settle baby back down, I'll put them back in their room. If not, I just bring them to bed with us for the rest of the night.

jquirke9881 · November 2012

We plan on keeping the twins in our room until they are STTN. Then they will share a room with our 2 year old.

eli_belle · November 2012

I don't have personal experience with this since I'm a FTM, but growing up I shared a room with both of my younger sisters since the time they were about 6 months old. I was 4 with my first sibling moved in and 8 with my second and I don't have any memories of being kept awake by crying baby. I do remember learning that I needed to be quiet and not wake the baby, but seriously it wasn't a big deal. After you wake a sleeping baby a couple of times (and have to deal with the crying) you learn to be quiet!

StefandTodd · November 2012

Our boys will share for the long haul (i.e. no plans to ever buy another home), but we co-sleep and bedshare for a long time, so sleep isn't (and totally is, at the same time) something I'm that worried about at this point (i.e. don't really have any advice).

laura1 · November 2012

mama2many:
Obviously, with a family our size, room sharing is a given. All of our kids have shared rooms with each successive new baby. We keep baby in our bed/room until they are somewhere around 4-6 mo (waking only 1 or 2x - or for one of them, through the night).
I find that as long as I don't leave the baby to howl for 20 or 30 minutes (cry-it-out), the older kids rarely wake. If they do, I just shush them, or pat them briefly and they usually go right back to sleep. I sleep fairly lightly, and will usually wake up within a few minutes of baby crying - go get baby - leave older ones to sleep. If I can manage to change/feed/settle baby back down, I'll put them back in their room. If not, I just bring them to bed with us for the rest of the night.

This is the same for us - when DD was born, we were living in a 2-br apt in the city, so we kept her with us until she was almost 6 months, and basically STTN. She and DS did great together - DS still occasionally woke up overnight, especially when teething, and neither of them woke the other up very often. When we moved, we actually kept them together for almost 9 more months. They loved sharing a room. We only moved DD out when we were moving DS into his big boy bed.

We have a 4-br now, but one bedroom is on the first floor. So this new one will be sharing a room with either DS or DD (depending on if it is a boy or girl). We will do the same thing - keep the newbie with us until he/she is close to STTN, then move. Eventually, when the kids get bigger, someone could move to the guest room downstairs, but I am not sure when that will happen!

Amaryllis619 · November 2012

we're planning on having the girls share a room. DD2 will probably be in the PNP in our room until she's STTN and then transfer to the crib in the girls room... probably around 4-6 months depending.

GigiFairy · November 2012

DS is 3 and a half and they will be sharing rooms. We plan to keep baby in a cosleeper at night in our room until she wakes up less often at night. Regardless, he usually wakes up around 3 and moves to our bed.

dandlelyon · November 2012

Although this isn't totally the same, we separated our twins from around 6 months to 12 months because they were waking each other in the night and no one was sleeping. We have since put them back in the same room and they sleep great. The comfort each other. I suspect that would be true for many siblings regardless of the ages.

mama2many · November 2012

dandlelyon:
Although this isn't totally the same, we separated our twins from around 6 months to 12 months because they were waking each other in the night and no one was sleeping. We have since put them back in the same room and they sleep great. The comfort each other. I suspect that would be true for many siblings regardless of the ages.

I find the comfort aspect to be true too. My kids will often switch rooms to be closer to some siblings than others. Some mornings it looks like a pile of puppies in a bedroom (actually, all the time right now because we are remodeling and all kids are on all mattresses in one room) Our 14yo is the only one with his own room, but we will wake up fairly often to find one or two of the younger ones sleeping with him - especially the two youngest. Our 2yo idolizes him, so will ask to "seep wif" brother pretty often.

sweetsunnyc · November 2012

Thank you for the great advice everyone! We are going to go ahead and set up a bassinet in our room for the time being until little one is sleeping through the night.

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Anyone else doing a shared nursery/kids room?

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