Pre-schooler and baby sharing a room at night / moving baby to crib?

[EdnaMarie]

FYI, I'm asking for support for my choices. Our choices. Our needs. I am aware of the benefits of co-sleeping but bref, I do not function and cannot implement GD when I am sleep deprived. Neither do my kids. Neither does my husband. Co-sleeping, for many more reasons than that, is not a viable option for us.

What I want is to help my two daughters sleep in the same room. After much coaxing, bribing, cajoling, and begging, my pre-schooler is now sleeping with only one or two wakes, through the night, in her own bed, in her own room, adjacent to our room.

I want the baby, who now wakes about every hour with possibly a long sleep in the middle of the night, to sleep in a crib there.

I don't know what her sleep is like in the middle of the night because I'm always too tired to function and so I unknowingly bring her into our bed in my sleep and then nurse her in my sleep.

However, this affects the quality of my sleep, and thereby, all of our lives.

I believe that transferring her to a crib in a separate room will reduce wakings as well as improve the quality of my sleep, in the long term.

Your thoughts?

Can a pre-schooler and baby share a room at night?
Can I transfer my baby in a gentle way? Has it been done?
What happened in your situation?

Thanks!

[Bellabaz]

subbing. Have a 3 year olad and 4 month old. this will be our situation when babe goes out of our bed.

[EdnaMarie]

Darn, I saw the reply and thought I had an answer. So you are exactly five months behind us in age terms.

[onyxravnos]

how old is baby? preschoolers are not aware of where their body parts are, my ds1 (almost three) and ds2 (almost 1 month) sleep in bed with me but when they are next to each other i frequently have to push ds1 off the baby (he'll swing his legs over him or roll partway on him)
now a 1/2 - 2 yr old with a three yr old? SURE ! works great! babies.... not so much.

Have you tried a co-sleeper? if baby is in a whole other room you will have to get up for night feedings anyway. or what about a crib for baby in your room?

[LionessMom]

just thinking. having the baby in the sibliings room might actually help the older one feel more comfortable. they wont be alone. they will be together. so it would help them being together. the bed and crib could be close enought they could hear each other sleep but not loudly. these are just thoughts as i havent had your exact experience. however when my DSD and her sister were little and we had both, they slept better when in the same room but not same bed. but they were 13 mo apart. i would start by getting baby used to sleeping in her own bed. do a bedtime routine so babe knows it is bedtime, find out how babe likes to sleep the best, and get there first. see if you can get babe to sleep for 6 hr straight. i know you arent supposed to let infants sleep on their bellies but that is how mine sleeps and will sleep in her side carred crib for at least 6 hr straight every night until about 4:30am. DD1 wasnt the same but i am sure that i just didnt figure it out with her unti she was older. i would experiment, but def start a routine. even infants like it. your older one might too.

[_betsy_]

We have a 3 yo (turned in Sept.) and a just-turned 1-year-old sharing a room. DD1 is in a twin bed with a rail, and sleeps quite well once she actually goes to sleep. DD2 is in a crib. I have a baby monitor on ever night, even though I am literally only about 10 steps away from the baby. I go into their room to nurse her in the glider in the middle of the night. Some nights she's up every 45 minutes or every 1.5 hours, other nights she's up only twice. It's a crap shoot. Sometimes I bring her to bed with us because I'm too cold or too physically worn out or it's been too many wake ups or whatever.

We have a white noise machine, room darkening shades and a night light in there. The girls both sleep better with the sound machine on, we're in a condo with people upstairs and on both sides, and the people upstairs keep very strange hours and have two small, active dogs.

They're doing well together. The 3 yo doesn't even stir when the baby wakes, or when I enter the room. It's like she just knows/trusts that we'll take care of the baby, and she doesn't need to wake up for her. I'm the same way with DH's alarm going off everyday, I can totally sleep through that every single day.

I started by putting baby in the crib for naps around 4 months (previous to that she was in a bassinet in our room, right next to my side of the bed). By 6-7 months, I was putting baby in for nighttime, too.

HTH!

[claras_mom]

We were doing a hybrid for awhile, then had some work done in the house which has taken longer than expected to finish. Which is to say that dd1 (5 yo) is on record as saying that she will be perfectly happy to sleep in her room and not in our room when her sister can sleep in there too. For awhile, we'd put dd2 (9 mo) to bed in the crib for her first sleep shift, which fell at about the same time dd1 was going down. Then after she woke up, dd2 would be in the family bed until morning.

So yes, I think it's possible for the two to share. They are, after all, sleeping in the same room *now*; dd2 is in the bed, while dd1 is generally on a twin mattress on the floor. I just don't know how long it will take for the full transition to work.

[Bellabaz]

Originally Posted by EdnaMarie

Darn, I saw the reply and thought I had an answer. So you are exactly five months behind us in age terms.

Sorry to disappoint you =). And yep we are just behind you with the age thing. We didn't co-sleep with dd1 for very long because, like you, none of us slept well. Its working out good so far for dd2 but neither I nor dh wants to co-sleep forever. Ideally when she is night weaned or maybe only waking once then we would like to move her in the room with her sister. But considering she still wakes 3 or 4 times a night its gonna be awhile.

So I am interested to hear what other in this situation have done. Plus our girls will be sharing a room for the next couple years due to our living situation so there is the whole not waking up dd1 factor added in there.

[EdnaMarie]

Thanks to everyone who replied and Bellabaz, HTH!

As for the children disturbing one another- there is no question that they cannot co-sleep together. There is some rivalry felt by DD1, and she thrashes at night, and oh, so many other things.

Baby presently sleeps in her own crib in our room, but! I think my husband and I wake her up tossing and turning. Possibly even my presence wakes her. No matter how quiet I am, she could be sleeping for two hours or five, and when I go to lie down, she wakes up within ten minutes.

I will start the baby with naps in the crib in her own room and go from there. Thanks again, everyone.

[fastyfeet]

I'm really curious about this as well. DD is 9 mos old and DS will be three in March. He currently sleeps in his own room, waking maybe once a night a couple of times a week. He sleeps soundly. DD is in bed with us. She wakes easily and frequently, about every 2 hours on average, and often wakes up crying loudly. I think DS could sleep through her wakings and am tempted to room them together but don't think DD could sleep through his.

What I really can't figure out is how to deal with the different bedtimes. DS has lights out at 8:00 and asleep by 8:30. DD is lights out by 7:00 and asleep by 7:30. She is totally stimulated by anything and everything, and DS is super energetic. I can't imagine getting her to sleep in their shared room and having her continue to sleep while DS does his bedtime routine. How do you do this? Anyone else figure this piece out?

[fastyfeet]

Just re-read my post and wanted to say that I'm not trying to hijack your thread! It's just got me excited about sleeping better and having the kids in their own room. OP, I'm like you with the crap sleep and need to be a better mama. I can't believe how hard sleep deprivation can be! I'm excited to hear others' responses. Thanks for posting this.

[EdnaMarie]

Hijack away! Your question is a good one. Mine both go down at the same time, which is a challenge in itself.

[claras_mom]

when I was putting dd2 down in her crib for the first part of the night, which is in the same room (ultimately) as dd1's bed, it was actually a really good means of settling dd1. The baby's asleep, the lights are dim, I quietly read a book with her and stay with her until she's asleep.

Current reality: dd1 and dd2 can't be in the same room together at bedtime, because one of them--and it varies--will be lively enough to rev the other one up. So long as the baby isn't hungry, dh takes her and walks her to sleep; I do the read and snuggle with big girl on a twin mattress next to our bed. That particular routine would probably work even if they were sleeping in their room. They have approximately the same bedtime--9 ish. The baby sometimes has an early-evening nap.

[devon]

Back when we had just 2 boys, we put my just turned 3yo and 9 month old in the same room for bedtime (not for naps). They went down at the same time. The 9 month old LOVED being in with his big brother so when we tried different bedtimes (with the 9 month old going down first) he just dozed until brother came in and then woke up and started playing. So, we adjusted bedtimes

They both love it. At the time, the 9 month old was in the crib and the 3yo was in a toddler bed. I was still nursing the 9 month old 2-3 times a night and it didn't wake up the 3 yo.

They are now almost 3 and 5 and still love sharing a room. sometimes things get crazy with their silliness, but it is sweet. Half the time, the 5 yo joins the 3yo in bed in the morning. They are now asking when their little brother (who is now 9 months old) gets to join them

[jillmamma]

I moved DD into DS's room when she was like 6 or 7 months old and waking maybe 2-3 times a night, and he was 3 and slept all night. I did the whole bedtime routine thing for them together...both in the bath at the same time, then pj's and teeth brushing, read books, and as I was tandem nursing, would lay on DS's twin on my back and nurse both together for a few minutes, then kiss DS good night (him latched off) and just nurse baby till she was asleep, and transfer her to crib. I've adjusted as the kiddos have gotten closer to weaning and now just nurse DD a few nights a week for a few seconds at a time before bed (they are now 7 and 4 and still in the same room for now). We will probably be readjusting rooms again after the baby comes and is sleeping better; it would be tough to fit 3 in the same room. So I get to do it all over again in a few months from now...we plan on giving DS his own room and putting the 2 girls in together (girls room and boys room).

I know too that my mom put my sister in with me almost right away (6 weeksish?), so we would have been 13.5 months and 1.5 months in the same room (2 cribs), and she said I really had no problems adjusting and both of us would sleep through the others' night wakings.

So yes, it is doable, and for us, it has worked out well. I feel my kids are pretty close now in part due to tandem nursing and sharing a room. Plus, since they go to bed at the same time anyway, for me it is easier to just to the whole routine in one room and not have to go back and forth. Good luck to you!

[EdnaMarie]

Thanks again for the additional stories.

I'm still putting the pre-schooler to sleep alone, because she is soooo hard to get to bed. She just draws everything out, and anyway... yeah. I'd love to do them together but the baby nurses to sleep unless her sister is there, in which case, she just stays awake. So right now, DH puts DD1 to bed and I nurse the baby to sleep in a separate room, then transfer her.

So far, baby has slept about seven hours each night in her crib, with wakings, and then as usual I just can't make it, and she falls asleep with us for the last nursing or so, around two a.m.

But we're working on it. We'll get there, God willing!