Top floor flat / new baby

[broodybumps]

DH and I are both desperate to start a family but our current living circumstances are putting me off.

We are in the very fortunate position that due to inheritance we were able to pay off our mortgage and cars. Aside from a credit card bill that gets paid monthly, we have no debt. We are in the perfect position to sell our top floor flat and move into a house but DH doesn't see anything wrong with a top floor flat with a shared garden that neighbours dogs use to wee! (No shame to the neighbours, it's a shared garden after all)

Am I being unreasonable by thinking my DH is being really selfish? He hates change, he hates the upheaval of redecorating a room let alone a house move but I think it's totally unacceptable to expect me to take a pram, shopping, BABY and all the other bits and bobs up 55 stairs just to get to my front door every time I leave the house! This on top of sleepless nights, potential PP difficulties etc gives me nightmares.

We both have good jobs and would only take a mortgage of approx £100K which we can easily afford on my wage alone let alone DH who earns 3X as I do! (DH is a Lawyer and I am a Theatre Nurse)

I just want to add, I am in no way shaming any parents who live in a flat - Christ my own parents lived in one as did DH. I am just making the point that as our financial situation allows it, why wouldn't we want to have a family home with a little garden that we can enjoy with our DC when the time comes?

We used to rent a top floor apartment in a Victorian terraced house with no lift. Lived there 18 months

We now own a house and now have a child. I can confidently say that No, I would not have had a child whilst living in a top floor apartment with no lift

Going up and down all those stairs with a new born and all the associated bits and bobs would have been a killer. There wasn't anywhere to store a pram on the ground floor, I guess we could have used the car but sometimes that was parked a long way away due to limited town centre parking

Safety wise, carrying a child up and down that many flights of stairs will be difficult and tiring. I remember when DD was a few months old and the amount of stuff we used to take with us. Lugging it all up and down the stairs would have been a nightmare

I don’t think anyone’s saying you shouldn’t have a baby in a top floor flat but it is surprising that the impact on your neighbours hadn’t even crossed your mind. Living above/below/beside screaming babies and children is annoying. I’d rather my upstairs neighbour didn’t have a baby (hypothetically) but of course there’s nothing I could do to stop them nor do I think they should refrain from procreating because they live in a flat

Hey, ours is also a city centre Victorian property with terrible parking and on the 3rd floor. It's difficult at the best of times to cart shopping up the stairs.

Your DP sounds exactly - and I mean exactly - like my dad.

If you have that baby there you will never move.

If he refuses to move I would consider finding a new partner.

I have a baby and toddler in a top floor flat. I keep the buggy in the car boot and use a sling to carry the baby. Being all on one floor is a bloody life saver (I did ds1 first year in a house. It was shit). Toddlers can explore so much more freely in a flat in my experience as you don't have to worry about the stairs.
I wouldn't have it any other way. Dh and I have just inherited and we are holding on to it until dd is 3yrs to buy somewhere as that's when the kids will make the most use of a garden etc. Until then, a garden is just something else to upkeep when we are pushed for time as it is

Oh and there is no lift. I bung everything I need to take anywhere in a rucksack so I still have both my hands free for ds1.

he just hates any kind of upheaval.

He'll hate having a baby then.

@tulippa when I say upheaval, I mean in terms of moving, decorating, DIY etc.

@broodybumps

Hey, ours is also a city centre Victorian property with terrible parking and on the 3rd floor. It's difficult at the best of times to cart shopping up the stairs.

Have you posted about this before? Is it his flat, originally? And is he older than you? This is ringing lots of bells.

Whose inheritance was it?

If it was your thread I’m thinking of, then you got quite a bit advice about your partner.

@Lknocsqq11 I don't know what you're talking about? I haven't posted re: this before.

Inheritance is from my grandad and we used it to pay off the mortgage - I wanted to. The flat is in both our names and we both paid an equal share overall.

@TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams

There are practical issues. Most places will not allow a pram to be left in a hallway, which means lugging it up the stairs with baby/toddler inside. It's not really an option to unload the baby, leave it unattended while going back for a pram, shopping etc. If you don't have a car you will also have a car seat to put somewhere. Same problem to get the thing up the stairs with a child inside. It is back-breaking.

As you say, it's doable if you have to. But if you have a choice why would you. Of course you could live in a penthouse palace with a lift in which case you could probably manage fine.

This is exactly what I had to do for the first year of my DD1's life. 25 years later now and I still recall it clearly. It was hell.

My advice is don't do it if there is any possibility of avoiding it. We managed to move to a house when our DD was a year old and it was such a relief. We never looked back.

Honestly, if DH or anyone else had told me we would be staying in the flat they would have been told that they could stay if they wanted to but that DD and I would be moving.

If he can't handle decorating a bedroom and hates change, DO NOT have a baby with this man. Really really do not. You will be parenting alone whilst constantly trying to manage his bad reaction to the inevitable chaos a small baby/young child entails.

That aside - we were in s ground floor flat when we had DD1, stayed for 8mths the moved cities so we could afford a house. We started looking concertedly about 2 weeks into her life because, even on the ground floor, living in that kind of proximity to others whose behaviour you can't control when you have a baby is AWFUL. People make me laugh worrying about the impact of the baby on OP's neighbours - our neighbours were so noisy and thoughtless they were constantly waking our baby up! Someone buggered the communal entrance to the block and I got stuck on the doorstep for 4 hours on a freezing February day with a tiny baby waiting for the council to send a locksmith. Couldn't ever take baby into the communal garden in the daytime as older kids from several blocks around were constantly kicking footballs dangerously hard all over it.

Seriously. If your DH won't buck up and agree to a move do not consider having a child with him!!

Ok, must have been a different thread. That woman’s partner was atrocious and controlling. Yours just sounds stubborn.

It would be extremely selfish of him to force you to have to lug a newborn baby in a car seat plus pram up three floors, because he can’t be arsed to move. You may well have stitches, either in your nethers or your tummy, depending on your birth, so that, plus baby, car seat, and pram is unbelievably impractical.

He needs to think beyond his own wants and comforts, especially if he wants to become a father.

Have the baby and then move. As long as you have pram storage it's fine for the first few years. I did it no problem. Make sure he carries the shopping up.

A newborn baby is upheaval at its most extreme though. To me it felt like someone had picked up my life and shaken it so much I couldn't recognise it. It took ages for things to get back to some semblance of normality and even then they were very different.
I'm saying this with kindness. I'm not trying to be negative for the sake of it. DIY has an end date. Children don't.

move.

top floor flat dweller. (only 26 stairs though to ours though.)

We lived in a top floor flat for the best part of a year with a baby. It was fine. We bought a lightweight foldable pram...you just unclip the bassinet and carry the baby in it (similar to carrying them in a Moses basket). The pram frame stayed on the ground floor, folded down.
DH did all the shopping so I didn't have to worry about that.
I used a backpack as a nappy changing bag. You just adapt. I grew up in a flat myself so to me it was no big deal.

massive upheaval with a baby, I think you're burying your head in the sand, if he can't cope with moving he certainly won't cope with a baby arriving.

Going up and down stairs possibly multiple times a day with a buggy, car seat shopping will be a nightmare. If you go out, baby, buggy, shopping figure out the logistics of getting everything up there.

I know some people have to cope but most wouldn't choose to.

Quite honestly sounds to me like he doesn't really want to be a parent. That's what you may need to address

Your claim that this is not the case is not supported by his actions. Words are cheap. Actions are what counts.

While many families cope ok in high flats with babies and no lift it's far from ideal for obvious reasons and if financially and practically moving is possible it's ridiculous not to do so and to do it before you get pregnant too. I lived in a high flat while pregnant - no choice in the matter - and it was no picnic!

If he doesn't like change and is selfish he'd make a shit parent anyway.

I feel incredibly lucky that my husband is generally easy going and we agree on most important things, because this would be a deal breaker for me.

I think you need to honestly tell him that you won’t be having a baby until you’re in a house or at least a ground floor flat, for reasons of a) ease during pregnancy and early childhood, b) consideration for neighbours (even if this isn’t an actual issue - it wouldn’t be for me), c) privacy and cleanliness of outdoor spaces, d) as a previous poster says, DIY has an end date - babies don’t.

Of course in general it’s fine to have a baby in any floor of a flat - but you have the means to make it easier so it makes sense to do it!

I couldn’t have managed that full stop for months after baby was born. Borrow a pram, and a 6 kg weight. Do your shopping, leave him with pram weight and shopping at bottom of stairs, say remember baby has to be carried carefully or in pram, and pretend you physically just had a baby. Leave him to it. When he gets to the top say I’m not doing that.

We used to live on the first floor of an apartment block, I think it was around 10 steps to get to the apartment.

We moved to a new house with a garden. One step to get into the house.

You need to move before you have a baby. No way in hell would I have lumped DS, the shopping and the frigging pram up 55 steps. Not a chance in hell. You need a nice house, where you can walk straight in and out.

Your DH needs to step-up and stop being selfish.

Do what time is not suggests.

Also, bear in mind you'll have to leave the baby unsupervised whilst you fly back down the 55 steps and back up again with all the bags. Then back down again for the pram.

*Don't met your DH con you into believing that you'll have your kid in a sling and it'll be easy. You won't. And before you know it, they'll be in toddler mode and will refuse to climb the stairs. And then they'll be too heavy /bonkers to wrangle up the steps!

No way would I have done that, especially not with DS2, c section.
Move first, then start trying to conceive. He needs to know that is the only way round.

Start looking at houses by yourself & drop the nice ones into conversation.
Tell him you’re moving.