Logistics when LO is sleeping in your room

vinerie · February 2016

I can't figure out what the best scenario is for the first few months, when LO will be in our room.

He wakes up needing to be fed or changed: Do I or my DH do this in the bedroom? If so, do we put a changing table in our room and nursing chair? (This will all fit, btw.) Or when LO wakes up, is it best to do the feeding/changing in another room? The wrinkle here is the master in our house is on the ground floor; all the other rooms are upstairs. So my options as I see them are:

1) put crib, nursing chair and changing table in master bedroom, do changes and feedings right there with some sort of dim light
2) Walk upstairs to nursery, do changes/feelings up there, walk back downstairs to put him back in his crib (which will temporarily start out in our master)
3) put nursing chair in living room, put changing table in hallway, and when he wakes up, leave bedroom, but have everything downstairs so we are not walking up and down the stairs all the time.

What system do you all anticipate having? STMs: What worked for you?

KelleAlward · February 2016

Nurse and change diapers on your king size bed! Have baby sleep nearby and keep a few dim night lights so you can see.

Vivian0809 · February 2016

I can't even explain that kind of exhaustion, there's no way I could physically get up and to another room. Baby is so small, we just changed on our bed if we needed to.
i kept my babies next to my bed in the Rock and play to sleep.

vinerie · February 2016

We definitely will have our crib in the master. But is it better to let the person who is not getting up sleep? Changing on the bed seems like it would be disruptive. Or is the other person too exhausted to care?

RMLandy · February 2016

My goal was always to stimulate the baby as little as possible during night feeding changings. Walking all way to his room would've 1) made me exhausted 2) made him wide awake and take him forever to go back to sleep. I would always change first, then feed/rock and back to bed all in our room. My husband slept right through it. When I went back to work and my husband started helping with the night feedings, we moved LO into his room.

kbrands7 · February 2016

Definitely don't do stairs if you have the option not to. I think whether you stay in the room or not depends on how your H sleeps and your alertness. If a dim light and some movement won't bother him, keep everything in the room; generally, with less dramatic changes, a baby will go back to sleep faster. If this will turn into a three-awake scenario every waking, try to do the rocking/changing in the livingroom.

When DS was in our room, I still used the chair/changing table in the nursery often-- but they were only 6 steps away. If I felt alert enough to not accidentally fall asleep bf (it's a thing...bf will make you tired in addition to the night wakings) then I'd just sit in bed to nurse and change there if it was just a pee diaper. If I knew I was extra tired, I'd get moving to the other room because the walking would wake me up more. DH slept through everything whether I was in the room or out of the bedroom.

araecasey · February 2016

You will soon learn: dads have magical sleeping powers. He'll be okay whatever you decide is best for baby and the person getting up with baby.

mello13 · February 2016

We put the pack n play in our room for DS to sleep rather than a crib for a few reasons. First, it just made sense to not have to disassemble/reassemble the crib when it came time to transition. This also meant he could nap in the crib in his nursery in later weeks. Also, the PNP had side pockets to stash diapers and wipes for MOTN changes.

We changed his diaper on the PNP mattress (it was the elevated insert, not the bottom you're used to seeing or a bassinet addition as I had read frightening reviews on those). This way if he had a diaper disaster we could just whip off the PNP sheet and put on a new one. All the supplies were in the side storage pocket, including spare onsies.

I fed and burped him in our bed before putting him back in the PNP. We were a bottle fed family so during the time DH was off work (2 weeks) we took turns every other feeding so that each of us were able to sleep a few hours at a time. Initially we both woke up every time DS did (which was fine because I was in a lot of pain and moving very slowly, so DH would change him while I got ready to feed etc) but after a while exhaustion kicks in and a rustling diaper was not enough to keep either of us up!

My advice to you is to do whatever necessary to keep from leaving the room. Not only will it stimulate baby, but it will be painful and sometimes physically too much on such sleep deprivation. Change baby's diaper in the crib, nurse in bed, keep diapers on a nearby dresser or shelf, the closer the better!

gemini2005 · February 2016

I think you should keep things easy and have the crib in your room. I always nursed right in bed with the tv on since it can take a while at first. Also, it helped to keep me awake. I had the PNP and RNP close to the bed so diaper changing was easy. I bed-shared with baby #2 at times so DH just moved to the couch.

vinerie · February 2016

Great advice...thank you! I'm thinking of getting a second changing station for downstairs so I don't have to walk upstairs for every change. Something simple (we got a nice dresser/changing table for the nursery already.)

speaking of nursery, something tells me we will hardly use it at first. Makes me wonder why I prioritized it so much in my planning!

kami09 · February 2016

I did all in the room too. I changed on the little changing thing on the pnp, sat up in bed with my Netflix and headphones (found a 30 min show I hadn't seen yet. It was the perfect amt of time per feed and it made waking up a little less terrible)...then transferred right back to pnp.

@araecasey is right...men and their ability to sleep. they suck! haha

missnc77 · February 2016

Can I piggy back a changing question on this thread?

Our house has 4 levels because we live on a hill. Top floor is bedrooms, third is kitchen/dining, second is den and laundry, bottom is a walk out finished basement. I've been thinking about buying just a basic changing table to keep in the den, but there's not a lot of space outside of our other furniture. I had a friend suggest one for downstairs so you don't have to run upstairs all the time (in our case two floors from the den). I'm curious what others do? Downstairs changing table? Throw a blanket on the floor?

cortney626 · February 2016

I think keeping everything in the master room sounds practical if your husband can sleep through it. I'm going to formula feed so I'll take the LO out of the room. My husband us a light sleeper. I did this with DD#1. She was a quick eater and fell asleep fast. Hope LO is like her sister!

I have a spin off question: DH has to have the tv on before bed while he falls asleep. If the LO is in our room for the first month or so, do you think it's fine that the tv is on? During the first few weeks they sleep all hours and fall asleep with different sounds but I don't want to create a habit of having to fall asleep with something on.

ayeshaohara · February 2016

missnc77 said:

Can I piggy back a changing question on this thread?

Our house has 4 levels because we live on a hill. Top floor is bedrooms, third is kitchen/dining, second is den and laundry, bottom is a walk out finished basement. I've been thinking about buying just a basic changing table to keep in the den, but there's not a lot of space outside of our other furniture. I had a friend suggest one for downstairs so you don't have to run upstairs all the time (in our case two floors from the den). I'm curious what others do? Downstairs changing table? Throw a blanket on the floor?

FTM but have 2 friends who've recently had kids who both do it differently. One with twins has one of those change mats that you'd see in your diaper bag...puts it on the floor or coffee table and changes there. My other uses one of those mats on top of a dresser like piece of furniture in her living room.

I think I'll do the same. No set spot to change. They just have their stash of diapers in one spot downstairs and don't seem to have any issues. I personally wouldn't invest in another change table. Find a place that will work and either use a mat or nursery style change pad and leave it there. That makes the most sense to me anyway

oh oh I should also add, lots of people change on the couch or floor too that I've seen. I hate getting up and down off the floor as I'm really tall but it's certainly still an option!

kbrands7 · February 2016

@cortney626 DH does/did this too-- he liked to fall asleep with a show on the ipad. At first, it wasn't a problem but by a month in or so, it started to be clearly distracting and would wake DS or keep him in lighter sleep. We compromised by changing to music to fall asleep to since the light seemed to be what bothered DS most (the light sometimes bothered me too tbh) and the sound is what DH needed.

helleebellee · February 2016

Do it all in your room at the beginning, then adjust from there.

osmama456 · February 2016

With my first I used a bassinet in our room for sleeping, but then took him to his own room for changing/feeding. HOWEVER, all our bedrooms are on the 2nd floor, and very close together, like 2 steps out the door, 2 steps into other room. Not a big walk, and certainly not up/down stairs.

I'd just plan on doing it all in your room, you'll figure it out as you go!

I use the pack n play w/ bassinet in the living room (1st floor) for a changing or nap area.

BlueJuice · February 2016

We had the changing table set up in the nursery just down the hall, and H did walk down there to change diapers in the middle of the night before bringing the baby back to nurse. If you have the room to have a station set up in your master bedroom, though, I'd just do that, with the stairs in between and everything. Bonus: it'll be convenient to have a downstairs changing station the rest of the time (like during the day!), because climbing upstairs twelve times a day to change diapers is something nobody has time for. We ended up with a mini changing station set up in our living room (basically just a stash of supplies in the below-coffee-table storage and a mat on the floor), and it got more use than the upstairs one did for awhile.

ckcshumphrey · February 2016

In the beginning I would change diaper on bed and then nurse him back to sleep. I soon stopped wit the diaper changes, unless they were poop, and just nursed my baby back to sleep. He slept right next to the bed in a rock and play until he was 3 or 4 months at which point I moved him to his own room and crib. Luckily I never had to deal with him not falling right back to sleep with nursing so it wasn't as disruptive to my hubby as it could have

katxattack1212 · February 2016

We were all over our small house the first few weeks. Bassinet in our room, changing in her room, feeding on the couch... it all works out. Trial and error!
But for those with multiple stories, I'd have a changing set up on the floors you frequent the most! Even if it's a mat and a basket of supplies!

swflJD · February 2016

From the beginning, we are planning for LO to sleep in his crib a couple of rooms away with a video/audio monitor, but we'll see how that goes. If that doesn't work, our backup plan is to put a Pack 'N Play in our master bedroom until he starts sleeping through the night. This is a helpful thread because I hadn't really considered how we would deal with nighttime changings if he's not in the nursery where his changing table is located (thanks @mello13 for your insight!). MH is a hard sleeper, so I'm sure a little bit of light or noise won't bother him, but I have to sleep in complete dark and silence. Hopefully, I'll be too exhausted to wake up when it's his turn!

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