Room Sharing - How do you handle mornings?

magpiemama · August 2013

Mobile: Room Sharing - How do you handle mornings?

Background: We live in a one bedroom condo. We do not bed share but we sort of room share. We have a small crib on wheels. DS goes down in his crib at night in our bedroom and we hang out in the rest of the condo. When we go to bed we roll him out into the main living space and when DH gets up for work in the morning he rolls him back into our room. This has worked very well for us up until this point.

Problem: Now that DS is becoming more aware of his surroundings we are struggling with the morning transition back to the bedroom. He is now waking up and staying up at 5:30 (way to early for mama!!). I am also concerned because I know he would choose to sleep longer if not disturbed. We plan on trying to keep him in our room for the next few nights to see how it works. We plan to have everything ready for the morning out of the room (DH clothes etc.) and then "sneak" in when we go to bed.

Question: For those of you that room/bed share does your LO wake up when you or your SO gets up in the morning? What do you do about an alarm clock? Any other suggestions to help us out!? I would really like to make this work.

Sorry this ended up being so long. If you made it this far - thank you!!

Emerald27 · August 2013

We bedshare with DS. My alarm goes off at 5:30am so that I can temp (we are TTC) and take my Synthroid (has to be taken well before breakfast), and DH's alarm goes off at 6:30am. He then quietly gets up to go take a shower, and he nudges me. If I'm nice, I get up and make us breakfast. DS sleeps soundly through all of this. I realize that this might not be the norm. Lol

We do creep around very quietly while we get dressed, etc., in the morning. And our alarms are on our iPhones and set pretty low. We also have a fan running which hums a bit and makes the shower and alarms less noticable.

You could try blackout curtains in your room, a fan or white noise machine, and just trying to be as quiet as possible.

Good luck!

magpiemama · August 2013

A fan is a great idea! I had not thought of that. Thanks!

PipSqueak0313 · August 2013

One thing I have noticed with my kids is that we never creeped or tried to keep the noise levels down. They got used to sleeping through the noises made by others going to bed or getting up. The only reason my alarm disturbs ds2 is because I have to move to turn it off while he is nursing or sleeping on my chest. Noise level is the only area that I have made the baby adjust to us rather than us adjust to him.

Emerald27 · August 2013

PipSqueak0313 said:
One thing I have noticed with my kids is that we never creeped or tried to keep the noise levels down. They got used to sleeping through the noises made by others going to bed or getting up. The only reason my alarm disturbs ds2 is because I have to move to turn it off while he is nursing or sleeping on my chest. Noise level is the only area that I have made the baby adjust to us rather than us adjust to him.

I wish we had done this! If there's noise when DS falls asleep, then it doesn't bother him, but if it's been quiet (like overnight) new noises will wake him. I'm so guilty of the "shhhh...the baby's sleeping!!!" thing. :P

APendola · August 2013

We cosleep. I wake up first and my alarm clock doesn't wake DD up usually. Sometimes she wakes up because she is cuddling with me and she wakes up when I move. Usually DH will just cuddle with her and she'll settle back to sleep. I take about 45 minutes to get ready and then I head back in the room to wake up DD and DH. I nurse her, change her and then put her in the playpen. I usually have to finish a few things and then I'm out the door and DH takes her to the dayhome.

musicalmama5 · August 2013

We are lucky in that neither DH nor I has to get up early. So we wake up when DS wakes up. But, if I were in your position, I would just keep him in the room, try to be quiet, use some white noise or a fan... There are white noise apps on your phone or you can get an actual sound machine. We use a sound machine for DS's room while he naps because we live in a shotgun apartment (all the rooms are lined up and you have to walk through each room to get to the next, no privacy whatsoever).

PhieryBFly · August 2013

We kicked dad out and I wake up when she does! :-)

limetango · August 2013

DD is in her own room now, but for the first year she was in our room. Our house is old and lots of our floor boards squeak loudly (something we never noticed until we had a baby who needed to be rocked to sleep!) so we got a white noise machine. DD was always on my side of the bed so she never heard DH's alarm go off. He always had everything he needed out in the hallway, so once he learned where all the floor squeaks were, he could get out no problem and she never woke up.