2.5 y.o. still sleeps with us; new baby due in a couple of months

[MnMtm]

I have been trying to figure out some ideas of how to deal with our situation. DS still sleeps in bed with DH and I. He sleeps between us, but usually way more on my side of the bed. This has worked out great so far because I sleep through all of DS's wild sleeping, and when I do wake up to being kicked, I can get back to sleep pretty quickly. However, with a new baby coming. I don't think that actually having DS in the bed with us is going to work anymore. He is way too wild for me to feel at all safe with him next to a newborn, even with a co-sleeper bed thing we have, but I know that neither DH or DS would sleep well with DS over on DH's side of the bed. When DS is wild, it makes DH wake, up and he's pretty noisy when he wakes up, and then he tries to reposition DS which ends up with both of them awake, and me having to get DS back to sleep. I don't think I could handle having to wake-up several times a night with a newborn, and with my toddler. However, I worry about transitioning DS to a completely different room, and how he'll adjust to that because he loves to sleep with us.

Has anyone had luck with sharing a room, but not a bed? How did the transition go?

[Niranut]

When my second was born, my first was 16mo and he was a wild sleeper and all over me all the time.  DH & I were really at a loss as to how things would work out when baby #2 arrived.  And it went surprisingly smooth-- we made sure to give DS lots of attention whenever possible during the day and help him to understand as best he could that the baby needed to nurse a lot and when that happened he could have some special time with daddy.  This special time with daddy also applied to nighttime nursing sessions, so if the baby was up DS was all over his dad. 

It doesn't sound like sending your oldest over to his daddy is a good option, but you may be surprised what ends up working out for you.  If you want to try transitioning him to another bed (either next to yours or on the floor or something), it may be helpful to start that as soon as possible.  It may or may not work, and if it does work out now, he may decide he needs to be back in bed with you when the baby comes...  Or just giving him lots of notice that you will need to spend time taking care of the baby at night and he needs to stay on the opposite side.

One other thing that worked for us was to get a doll for DS a little before the baby was born.  We showed him how to hold it like a baby and be careful with it like a baby, and at night we put it in bed on one side and then DS was on the other side.  And the couple times he did fully wake, I showed him the doll and reminded him that he needed to stay on his side at night.  So maybe something to try.

Then we went on to have #3 a year after #2 and there were 5 of us in a queen for a while-- not recommended :)