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FUTUREMISSOB3
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Nightmare & Anxiety Generator
FUTUREMISSOB3
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My husband and I have been married for a year and a half and we are expecting this coming March. We both have one child each from our previous relationships.
I have a 10 year old daughter who lives with us, and he has a 6 year old son, who lives with his mom about 600 miles away.
We put an offer in on our house before we knew we were preggo and now that we have purchased in and moved in, we now have an issue with the kids and their bedrooms.
Baby on board is a little girl. My husband and his family think that it's a good idea that baby shares a room with the 10 year old girl who lives with us full time (visits her dad every other weekend), because they are both girls and that room is the biggest of the bedrooms (excluding ours).
My step son's room is quite a bit smaller and would be difficult to place two children in (with all the furniture and toys etc). Had this baby been a boy, we were going to flip my step son and daughters rooms around and have the two boys in the same room. But since it's a girl, the thought process is to put both the girls in there.
My husband wants to build a room in the basement in a room that is not ideal to put any child in. There isn't an "Egress window" or a way to put one in this room. There is also a drain in the corner of that room that we would have to work around. The room is also kind of narrow and it is not really ideal for us to have any of the kids living in the basement portion of the house when we sleep all the way upstairs.
My daughter doesn't want to share a room with the baby, nor does she want to sleep in the basement. My daughter and step son used to share a room when we lived in our apartment before we moved to our house, and my daughter suggested that she would rather share a room with her brother again rather then the other options.
My husband and his family think that this decision is best left up to the 6 year old boy who visits rarely now that he is in Kindergarten in another state. They tell me that any sort of room move would be like making him feel like a guest of visitor in his own house. I can see what they mean but I don't necessarily agree that this is the only way to look at it.
I have a hard time feeling good about my 10 year old (soon to be 11!) and a newborn in the same room, while another room in the house is left unused.
This has generated a lot of fights between my husband and I. It's created animosity between me and my family and me and his family. To the point that I don't get very good sleep and have wierd reoccuring nightmares. Whether or not they are directly related to hormones or the anxiety that this issue is causing, I am getting horrible sleep and it affects me during the day and I fear that it isn't good for the baby either.
I love my husband and don't want to fight with him. I love my daughter and don't want her to move to the basement. And I love my step son, but I don't think that this is the kind of matter that he should have a vote in because of his age and lack of ability to reason and because he's a child and we are the parents and this should be something that my husband and I rule on.
Very, very frusterated!
Any advice or words of wisdom are greatly appreciated!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Nightmare & Anxiety Generator
What is the custody agreement with his son, how often is he there? This will help me give opinions to a solution but his is Fing ridiculous.
Personally, I would put LO in the 3rd bedroom that is currently SS's room. The few times that SS comes to visit he can either share a room with DD in the 2nd bedroom or he can sleep in the 3rd bedroom and LO can go into your room.
I think it's ridiculous to have your DD's share a room 24/7 and the 3rd bedroom be left unoccupied 95% of the time.
I don't think anyone should be in the basement - it's just not safe. I would either (a) put the baby in the smaller room and the older kids can share the larger room or (b) put your DD in the smaller room and the baby and SS can share the larger room or (c) keep baby in your room for a year then figure it out.
Yeah, it isn't ideal for a 6 year old boy and 10 year old girl to share but really there's no ideal situation here. My vote would be that the baby get her own room because she may be waking at night for quite a while. If the older kids end up sharing I would make it a point to separate their spaces so they can each have privacy when they need it (maybe a curtain so each kid can pull it shut to get privacy around their beds?).
Could you potentially remodel part of the house? For example, make a safe and legal bedroom in a different part of the basement, split the larger bedroom in 2, reconfigure the walls for the bedrooms to make 4 bedrooms instead of 3, close in a dining room / office / den to be a bedroom, etc. I think that would be the best bet but it may be expensive.
I would put the baby and SS in the larger room and DD in the smaller room. It is absurd to have a 10 year old sharing with an infant when the 2nd bedroom will be empty most of the time. The 10 year old does not get the larger room if she's not sharing.
1) Basement becomes the recroom. ALL TOYS go down there. You can even make it uber-organized with lidded boxes so the toys are easily cleaned up and allow for each kid to keep his/her toys seperate from their siblings.
Heck you can even create indifidual spaces with inexpensive room dividers (pinterest has tons of ideas, from using bookshelfs or shutters to cordon off "spaces").
2) the Baby sleeps in YOUR ROOM with YOU until she is sleeping through the night. It is not fair that the children who have no say in getting a sibling get woken up at night, be it the one who lives there all of the time or the one who only comes every now and again.
3) The two girls share the bigger bedroom. With only their clothes and furniture in the room, the only use it will get is SLEEP. No one will be upset that they have to share that.
I think taking away the boy's bedroom would be making him like a guest in his home. It's his father's home and he deserved a room as much as your daughter. He isn't there as often because his parents don't live close together. That's not his fault and I don't think he should be punished for it. He'll likely never want to visit at all if you take away his room especially if you replace it with a room for the baby. Your child already sees this child's father more than he does. Why make him even less part of the family by leaving him with no where to have a his own. I especially disagree with the suggestion that each of your children get a room while his child only gets a place to sleep while he's there. I honestly think he should be living closer to his son.
I think this would have been better sorted out before the baby was on the way. I agree with the other posters who think the baby should stay with you for a while. I don't know who moved away but I think it's awful when parents don't live close enough to their children to actively take part in their life regularly.
EDIT You mention that your stepson should have no say as he is a child but you also mention your daughter doesn't want to share a room with a baby (understandable) or sleep in the basement. Why would you give your own child a say? She is also just a child. She is your child but still just a child.
EDIT I wanted to add, it might seem like wasted space to have a room for your stepson but it could make such a difference for him when he is there that it would be worth it. It would be awful for him to feel like an outsider, like a guest in his father's home.
Take the larger bedroom and split it in half. Decorate one side for the baby and one side for your SS (this can be done - look at b/g twin nursery ideas). I would say while SS is visiting, and until your baby STTN, baby needs to sleep in your room. I totally recommend the Fisher Price Rock N Play for that, lol.
I know some people say turn the basement into a rec room and have no toys in bedrooms, but your older daughter is going to be a teenager soon, and really, they don't have toys to play with as much as they want to be left alone.
He used to come for two weeks and then go to his mom for three and then come back, but that was before school started in August. Since August, he came back in October for 4-5 days, and will be back for a week during Christmas and another week in March around Spring Break. There isn't an agreement in place for 2013, per the state he lives in, we have until April to make our schedules and 'bid' for our visitation times.
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My husband doesn't want him sharing a room with either of the girls.
I am uncomfortable putting any of the kids in the basement due to the inability for them to get out in case of an emergency since there isn't an 'egress window' in the room to be converted and no other rooms that can be made into a bedroom and a window placed.
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We plan on putting the baby with us for at least 6 months in our room. It's going to be crowded but it will work. That's what the plan is so far.
I know I will have more time to sort all of this out as time goes on.
We have talked about moving the kids toys down to that room after it is finnished and make it a play room, but it still leaves the sleeping space as an issue.
It's to the point that I avoid talking about it with him at all costs because the fights will start, and then we walk around each other like gun slingers waiting for the next fight to start up. He's not good at dropping what is bothering him and moving on. Like it will still have him in a tizzy a day or two after the disagreement.
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Unfort. the house sits on a small lot and we cannot really add on to any part of the house. It was built in 1948 and it doesn't feel like an older house, it has some of the characteristics of one. The biggest room (currently my daughters) currently fits her bed, dresser and nightstand. You can put the other bed on the other side of the room but we'd have to take her dresser out and there wouldn't be room for his (window placement makes this kind of difficult) We would really need to bunk the bunk beds again. And then it would all fit again.
We could get new dressers ($$$) but being that he's rarely here, he doesn't wear 90% of the clothes in his dresser now, it probably isn't worth it in the end.
The dinning room used to be a porch on the back of the house that the previous owner finnished onto the house. There isn't any way to make that into a room. There isn't a den or office
In the long run, we may keep the baby in our room for 6 mo to a year, and potentially look into moving into a new house again. IF the market agrees with it, and the FHA rate is comparable to what our rate is now (3%-3.5%).
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This this this. Except I would put the baby in the room with you and DH when SS comes. This way both girls have their own room, but SS has a space when he does visit. Also, tell your inlaws to butt out, this is not their business or their place to give opinions.
Is dividing the bigger bedroom an option? Or perhaps dividing the master and you moving into the bigger-small room?
(Again, not ideal since you may be hurting the resale value, but if you can put it in you can probably take it out too?)
In that case I'd do bunk beds in the larger room and have your SS and DD share it. The baby gets the smaller room.
When it comes to "I don't think MY child should have to share a room" well, that works both ways. Neither of you want your older children to have to share. Tough. You have a smaller, older house. They all need to sleep somewhere and neither of them should have to deal with a baby waking up all night. It's kind of the lesser of two evils. They all deserve to have a dedicated personal bed but that doesn't mean their own room.
It sucks and I can imagine the arguing is not fun. Maybe show your H this post? At least the answers are honest and from strangers who aren't as biased as family.
I feel the same way you do about this. I have considered showing this to him, but I am mixed on how he will take my talking to 'strangers' about it.
(I'd rather share problems here then on say, Facebook, where I know everyone and they now know my personal problems at home.... *uncomfortable*)