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?

Top floor flat dweller here with 1 and 4 year old.
I honestly think it depends how much YOU want a garden. Living in a top floor flat is fine with a baby and we are very happy.
We do have parking right outside our flat though and I leave the buggy in there. I also don't have as many stairs as you.
Shopping wise, DH does the food shopping mostly. The only annoying thing I have always found is when the baby falls asleep in the buggy you can't just leave it sleeping in the garden or push it into the hallway. But I just used to try to time my trips out to make sure that didn't happen (easier with one child) or carry the sleeping baby in if possible. There's things I love about our flat:
We go out loads!! We are always exploring new places and parks because when weather is nice we have to get out rather than relax in the garden
My bathroom is on the same floor as living room and DS bedroom. Makes life so much easier after a bath as I just pop his nappy on and he wanders into the living room while I tidy up.
No garden upkeep
No spiders

We will move in a year or so as we want DC3 but being in a flat with a family isn't the doom and gloom lots of Brits will have you believe!

If your flat is a good size then I think you’re overthinking it. They’re only in pushchair for 2-3 years, if they will tolerate them (mine didn’t - used sling then she walked). Unless you’re out there in the garden playing with them, they won’t want to play in the garden, so the idea of opening the back door and kicking them out to play is just a dream. Online food shopping is the way forward with a baby - walking round doing a full shop while a baby screams is a nightmare.

I’d base it on whether your flat is likely to be better over the long term (schools, proximity to work and clubs and parks, likely appreciation) than a house. If I could afford a house on my street, I would as I worry we disturb the neighbours and a house would be bigger and I love loads of space. However, no way would I swap our flat to move further out to a place with no period features and crap schools as friends have done, bigger or not.

Move. My baby is 3 and I’m still struggling with depression caused by moving when he was a baby. I missed out on so much that I should have enjoyed.

I'd move. If you have a c-section you could get trapped inside the flat for months as you won't be able to carry the buggy or shopping into or out of the flat until you have healed.

Everybody's situation and experience of this is different. In our top floor apartment we had no parking space, just on street permitted parking. I could usually park on our street but sometimes 50-250 yards away. At the weekend sometimes I had to park 5-10 minutes walk away

We had no lift and steps from the pavement to the front door. Nowhere to store a pram in the hallway. We then had four flights of stairs up to our apartment

It was advertised as a two bed but in reality it was a one bed with a storage room, probably okay for a new born at a push but I don't even think the door would have closed once a cot was in there. The lounge was also very small. The setup worked well for a young couple but not if you add a baby. Bringing the weekly shop in was hard, usually resulted in parking in the road with the hazard lights on then multiple trips to the car and up and down the four flights then parking the car 150 yds away if you're lucky

We have DD2 now and have been in our house ten years. Once they start walking there's no stopping them. Our apartment would have been like a prison for DD. We have a garden albeit small but she loves to get out and play on her slide. HTH

We live in a ground floor apartment and I couldn't imagine how you would get a baby or a toddler, shopping etc up 55 stairs on a daily basis! There is also taking the rubbish out to the bins whilst either taking the baby or leaving the baby, going down to pick up post. Everything would need planning and be a production.

Babies do not stay small for long. By the time my DS was three months old I couldn't pick him up in the sling, he weighted a ton! The strollers you need for babies are not light weight either.

You have the money to move and whilst it is stressful it will be less stressful than you and a baby in a top floor flat.

Currently living in a second floor flat with a seven month old and I would say if you can afford to move, do it. For me there are two major impacts - firstly, I can and do lug baby and stuff up and down the stairs multiple times a day (often requires two trips in each direction) but it's knackering so it definitely impacts on how much I go out - sometimes when we've got a couple of hours before bedtime and she's fussy I think it would be nice to take her out to the playground or similar but if I've already been out a couple of times that day I just don't have it in me. Secondly, while I obviously think it's nonsense that people in flats shouldn't have babies (some people on here..!?!?!?) I have found that awareness of neighbors is making it harder to deal with her sleep at night - ie. I want to be giving her more opportunities to fuss a bit and potentially get back to sleep when she wakes but I do find myself pouncing pretty quickly to make the noise stop when it's the middle of the night, as I'm aware of bedrooms all around, and I'm fairly sure sleep would be easier by now if I wasn't stressing about that. It's basically fine but if you have the opportunity to move first then I definitely would. Also, as someone currently trying to go through the house purchase process with a baby, I can say with confidence that you'd be bonkers not to do it now if you think it's likely in the next few years. It is SO much harder to do this with baby in tow and I'm sure that would be the case through the toddler years and beyond. Only you are in a position to judge if your husband actually doesn't want kids, as PP have suggested. But also consider the possibility that he hasn't really understood all the little ways in which being in a house will make life so much easier - we wouldn't have before we actually had one

Are you married to my DH? 🤣 Luckily I dont need to move. But mine is exactly the same. Things have to be at crisis point for him to deal with anything so getting him to move here was still hard, even with that. And no, nothing changes, which is why 3 years later I'm still looking at an unplastered hall (some stuff has been done though). With me now on the job of finally sorting it out. I've found you just need to deal with it slowly. Start by looking for new houses and what you could have. Show him. Even drive and look from outside so he can see the area is nice etc. Then look at what you'd get for yours (going on others selling), and suggest getting the estate agents in to give quotes. Before you know it, it'll have happened. Mine just seems to panic if I go in all guns blazing (which is my style unfortunately) and its never well received. I want to do everything I've just told you in a day/week. Where as he needs to do it over a year. 🙄

There is also taking the rubbish out to the bins whilst either taking the baby or leaving the baby, going down to pick up post

Oh I had forgot about that! Taking the bins out was a nightmare as it meant either leaving the children alone in the flat or carrying them and rubbish down (not exactly easy) I use to stick it outside the flat door for them I was going out so I could then take it down at the same time and got told I couldn’t do that either 🙄 honestly was hell, I had 48 steps and had to do that daily even after a csection. Would never go back to a flat again.

If you have good jobs and are mortgage free, it is a strange choice to make to stay in a top floor flat with a small child. What exactly is your DH saving money for? Early retirement?
A garden will make a massive difference when you are banged up at home all day on maternity leave. Plus you will have somewhere to dry all of the washing which babies create.
There is a risk of misunderstanding the point about neighbours. It is not that no-one living above someone should have a baby. It is that your life will be x100 times easier if, when junior becomes mobile, you do not need to hiss at him to be quiet and stop that every time he invents a game involving jumping off a sofa, dancing wildly or throwing a ball around.

Get pregnant first. You don't know how long it nay take.
Then move
You can manage short term if needs be
And when dh has carted baby and equipment up and down a few time he may see sense

However
Big question mark over your dh levels of anxiety around newborn if he cannot cope with change
Has he tried CBT sessions?

@TedMullins

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

Agree with this.

I am in the same position, in a top floor flat, and while I'll definitely go ahead with the baby here, I am conscious of the neighbours, definitely. Also for myself as I don't want the stress of worrying that the baby is waking the neighbours or doing their heads in when I'm already stressing about the crying myself. At least in a house it's less likely to disturb anyone else.

@broodybumps 100% move house before you have a baby if you’re able to! I’m only on the first floor (2 flights of stairs) and we have an amazing 4 bed/2bath 2 storey flat with a back door with stairs off our balcony straight into our private garden so though we’d be absolutely fine with a baby 🤷🏻‍♀️ DH works offshore 3 weeks at a time so it’s just me and baby and honestly, the hassle off carting the pram and baby and shopping up the stairs is hellish! My baby is now rolling over and trying to crawl so I’m doing the panic run back downstairs for the pram while he’s dumped in the travel cot to keep him contained 😓 and the one thing I never thought of...my baby doesn’t sleep unless he’s in the pram or being held. I have friends that are the same and they go out a lovely walk to get baby to sleep then just wheel the pram into the garden at their back door or wheel it back into the house with no issue and baby stays asleep. I have to keep walking until he’s finished his FULL nap because I need to take him out the pram to get us back into the house and it wakes him up 😓

Our plan was to stay here until our first baby was almost ready to start school, hopefully have a second baby in that time too, then move as a family of 4 closer a different school. Baby 1 is only 5m old and I’ve told DH that we’re 100% not having another until we move!

Oh hell no, I'd definitely move before you have a baby, it'd be a nightmare, I have to make several trips carrying stuff in. You'd need to either leave your stuff at the bottom or your baby for instance in the car or in the cot alone whilst you carry stuff up. Both a security risk, especially the latter!
Plus walking up the stairs pregnant. I had serious spd/pgp for the last 3 months and it would take me 10 minutes to walk up/down my inside stairs which is about 12 steps nevermind 50, I had to use lifts/escalators everywhere else
If you can move I would and wouldn't even consinder having a baby in that flat? Why make things harder for yourselves?

[quote KM38]@broodybumps 100% move house before you have a baby if you’re able to! I’m only on the first floor (2 flights of stairs) and we have an amazing 4 bed/2bath 2 storey flat with a back door with stairs off our balcony straight into our private garden so though we’d be absolutely fine with a baby 🤷🏻‍♀️ DH works offshore 3 weeks at a time so it’s just me and baby and honestly, the hassle off carting the pram and baby and shopping up the stairs is hellish! My baby is now rolling over and trying to crawl so I’m doing the panic run back downstairs for the pram while he’s dumped in the travel cot to keep him contained 😓 and the one thing I never thought of...my baby doesn’t sleep unless he’s in the pram or being held. I have friends that are the same and they go out a lovely walk to get baby to sleep then just wheel the pram into the garden at their back door or wheel it back into the house with no issue and baby stays asleep. I have to keep walking until he’s finished his FULL nap because I need to take him out the pram to get us back into the house and it wakes him up 😓

Our plan was to stay here until our first baby was almost ready to start school, hopefully have a second baby in that time too, then move as a family of 4 closer a different school. Baby 1 is only 5m old and I’ve told DH that we’re 100% not having another until we move![/quote]
This bit about sleeping is a really good point. My baby sometimes falls asleep at the end of a pram walk , so I can just wheel her in and leave her in the kitcken.

@broodybumps we lived in our top floor (3rd floor) flat until our son was 8 weeks old. It was ok, but...

• I kept the pram in the car
• Shopping got delivered
• Husband took out all the bins
• Leaving the house felt like an epic mission, and I hardly did as it seemed like such a mountain to climb. I was knackered in those early weeks (obviously), and there was no lift in our building.
• Moving house with a baby was not easy - we paid for packing and removal, but we have still not unpacked a whole load of our stuff 7 months on.

Move house before you have a baby. It is SO much easier that way round, and we definitely would have if pandemic had allowed.

You can easily afford it, it would be an absolute dealbreaker for me to have a baby in a flat if I had such an accessible alternative.

no bloody way

move then have a baby

imagine lugging up shopping AND a baby?!