Should I get them to share a room in future?

[Yellowcar107]

Context: we have a DD who is turning 3 in January. I am pregnant with a girl due December 2nd.

We live in a 3 bed house but 3rd bedroom is tiny, can barely fit a bed and wardrobe in it. We currently have been using it as a study as my DH and I work from home a lot.

My DD room is reasonably sized like our room. Would have enough room for both girls in DD room.

We would keep new baby in our room while they are a baby and move them into with DD or put them in the spare room.

We can always move our study stuff downstairs so that isn't a problem.

Just wanted some views on sharing a room with siblings vs having own rooms. The new child will not have much room in their room compared to DD. DD can play with her toys in her room and in the other room that would be impossible.

Any ideas what would be the best action to take further down the line?

Thanks

I'd put them in together.

My DDs shared a room until they were 10. We then extended to give them their own rooms .... lasted a week on their own and ended up back in together.

Exactly three years between my two and they have loved sharing a room, Will think about separate rooms the older they get though.

Our friends with an almost identical age gap/situation as you have their two girls sharing and kept the spare room for home office space. Their two get in together some nights, it's lovely. Presumably you have space for them to play downstairs too so I wouldn't worry too much on that issue, just make sure you have a lot of toy storage!

Put them together whilst they’re young. When they grow up one of them may choose to go in the smaller room themselves.

DD2 and DS2 still share a room. They're 11 and 7. It's not ideal, but we rent privately and are on the council housing list as the rent's gone up again but housing benefit won't pay any more. DH has to give me £10 less a week now, and because DS2's just gone into KS2, I now have to find £18 a week out of that.

It's not really a problem, nobody's in the room when DD2 gets dressed, in fact DS2 only uses it to sleep in.

Chances are they will love to share but wait until the baby is old enough to cope with a three year old who doesn't know her own strength- my DD loves her brother so much she tries to get into the cot to cuddle him whenever she can. (She's tall enough to climb and treats him like a doll). Maybe give her a year in your room rather than the normal six months? That would make the night waking easier on your eldest as well.

My girls shared for a year in a house described identically to yours op. There's 3y10m between them. We then bought a much bigger 4bed detached and both girls are lucky to have king sized rooms each. It definitely worked at the time but we didn't want it long term .

I have 3 years between my dc. DS is the oldest and dd moved into his room when she was nearly 1. It worked really well for a long time and they both loved sharing.

Only separated them when DS was about 9 as thought he needed space from his sister!

As yours are both girls they should be fine sharing for a long time.

Put them together as long as it works, split them later if you need to. I am keen on little ones sharing though - we had a 4 bed and we still put ours in together when they were little. I think it helps them get along.

Further down the line, I've seen children split much later and the older one goes into the small room as they have no need to play on the floor anymore. They're quite happy with that as they get a newly decorated room and privacy, whereas if they stay in the bigger room with the toys it's more "babyish" and they'd need to let their younger siblings in to access toys. You'll figure it out as you go though