room sharing..how to go about it

[feekerry]

dd is 2.2 and sleeps pretty reliably 7-7 most nights. goes to bed without a fuss.
ds is 5m old. they are going to need to share a room prob for a yr or so till we finish the extension.
ds is in a cot in our room. kind of. as he mostly ends in with us as its less hassle.
i would like to get him out of out our room in next month or so as the cot is taking up loads of space and i want to get our evenings back.
i am struggling to see how sharing a room will work tho..... i would presumably have to settle baby first (anything up to an hour) before dd could go to bed then ds can be up a zillion times a night to feed (ebf) so i would have to sneak in and try feed him before he woke her. plus he is going thru that kicky/rolling over stage where he wakes himself all the time.
how did you make it work? or did you all have lovely babes that slept thru the night etc before you moved them...?

[Iggly]

Why can't you keep baby in your room and get evenings back?

Dd moved in with ds when she was still waking up. Ds quite quickly got used to her noises and would roll over and go back to sleep. He was about 3.5 and she about 1 when we moved them in together.

[Swoosg]

I would keep the baby in your room.

[OutragedFromLeeds]

Keep the baby in your room. If he sleeps in with you mostly then move the cot into her room so you've got some space back, but have him sleep with you.

If you can get him to settle fairly easily then I would put him in his cot to start and then when he wakes for the first time/you go to bed take him in with you. That way as he goes longer between feeds he'll spend longer and longer in his own bed, until you achieve the magical 7-7.

[feekerry]

ye i will have to at this rest. he just wriggles and kicks all night long so we end up getting zero sleep

[givemecaffeine21]

To put the other side across (although keeping baby with you does sound simpler!), my two are 11 months apart and shared from about 5 months until recently.. They are now in separate rooms as DD was being a monkey and hopping out of bed and disturbing DS who is a very light sleeper...although lobbing toys at my head would wake me up; tbh she's now cut her naps so this problem would be alleviated as the day sleeps were meaning she wouldn't settle at night.

What I did was have one of those nursing chairs in the room and would creep in, pick DS up and feed him (bottle fed) or hold him if he was crying and sit in the chair until he settled / dropped off on me.

You will be amazed by how quickly they tune out each other, my toddler was never disturbed by him and he has the loudest most piercing scream. I could go in and spend ages in there and she wouldn't wake. It took me a couple of weeks to achieve this though.

I always put them to bed at the same time but DS would just grab his comforter and start snoring and still does now, he drops off straight away, so this worked fine.

[poocatcherchampion]

we started practising from about 5mo and put dd2 in from 10pm ish until 4am ish. next step was from bedtime. it sometimes takes them a while to settle but we leave them to it.a few times at the start one was so tired they would cry and then the other would too so we would move dd2 into her cot in our room again. that hasn't happened for a month ish now.
finally about a month ago at 8mo we went cold turkey on night feeds (only gave up dream feed this week). this means we literally shut the door after dream feed and left them to it until half 7. someone is normally awake from half 6 but they harass each other and not us so I am fine with that.

they are now 9mo and just over 2.

it is working brilliantly.

[clabsyqueen]

I would say they are unlikely to room share without lots of hassle.
I'd keep the younger one in with you. My second is 10 months and sleeps in my room in a cot. I have my evenings but yes she is in bed with me by midnight. No big deal in the grand scheme.

[Bibbitybobbetyboo]

My DD and DS were born 20 months apart and started sharing a room when DS was about 6 months old. He too was a poor sleeper and I was really worried about him waking DD but amazingly she pretty much always slept through him waking - even when he was screaming his head off - and his sleeping became much better once he was in his own room - as did mine! When he was in our room I used to lie awake waiting for him to wake up as I knew it would be any time: once he was in with his sister I finally managed to relax and slowly regained my sanity. Give it a go, you can always put baby back in with you if it doesn't work. Good luck.