Routine with Older Children/Siblings Sharing Bedrooms

[lindsayloo]

Hi all, Bit of a long post sorry!! I have been reading previous posts on routines and have a basic one with my 3 wk old - she feeds every 3 hours in day. At the moment in the day shes in the moses basket with us downstairs, then after the 10pm feed she is up to bed with us.

However think I might start keeping the moses upstairs, then want to introduce more routine at bedtime. With my first it was dead easy as our life revolved around him! But how do others of you do it with more than one child?

I have two dilemmas is - Bedtime routine - I can bath them together, but do I then put oldest to bed as that is reasonably straight forward, then should I feed Claudia and put her to bed?

The other question - do any of you have children that share a bedroom - eventually when Claudia is going through the night they will go in together.

When they are in together, wondering if I should put Claudia to bed first so she can settle/cry a bit then put eldest to bed? One problem is that if she doesn't have a feed until 7ish and takes 1/2 hour to feed/settle will make eldest late going to bed and I'm quite obsessed about us having a bit of an evening without kids

Or should I put eldest to bed first and then Claudia but if she has a bit of a cry in the room that could unsettle him.

Ahhhh - so much to think about!

Thanks in advance for any advice about either managing 2 or more kids/sharing bedrooms.

Lindsayxx

[firststeps]

Hi Lindsayloo, don't know how old your eldest is, but we have DS1 - 2.7 and DS2 7 months, they share a room and have done for the past 6 weeks. We bath them both together around 6pm, they both have their milk downstairs then we settle the baby to bed around 6.45pm, he usually takes around 10 minutes to fall asleep, then we read DS1 a few stories and he usually goes to bed between 7-7.15pm or as soon as the monitor has gone quiet!!!

Before they were sharing a room we did the nightime routine as above but settled DS2 in our room for the night from around 3-4 weeks old - like you we wanted a bit of an evening together and I was sometimes going to bed at 9pm in the early days!!

We have found that if one or the other does wake up during the night the other has never been disturbed - this was my main concern - in fact I was petrified about putting them in a room together but it has been the best thing we ever did - DS2 sleeps much better than he ever did in our room and they usually both sleep all night. HTH

[lindsayloo]

Thanks - has made me feel quite positive about them sharing! xx

[scattyspice]

Hi Linday.Mine are 4 and 3 and have shared since DD was about 6mnths. When DD was a baby DH would take DS to bed while I fed etc DD.
Now they go to bed at the same time, have the same story etc. Then I leave, they muck about (lots of giggles and whispering'shh, she's coming' then I go back in and sit on the bed til they drop off.
They love sharing and don't wake each other up at night.

[yomellamoHelly]

My 2 have shared from the off 3.2 yr gap. Bath together. Ds1 gets the TV and ds2 gets a bottle and a story. Then upstairs and ds2 is popped in his cot. Ds1 gets his story and that's it! (Ds2 usually mithers through this, bt ds1 has gotten used to it.)

[tasha22]

hiya mine are 3.10, 1.9 and 10months all boys and all share a room. they are all in bed for 7pm as im quite obsesed about getting some me time. bath time starts around 6 and is pretty much like a convere belt lol but id put ds3 bath first so hes out first and when other 2 are in playing id feed ds3 in bathroom while watching the kids then straight to bed and by the time i have other 2 out, dried dressed, ds3 is asleep. def possible. good luck.