Talk to me about moving with young children.

[smellsofelderberries]

DH and I have decided we are moving back to London next year from Sydney. DD will be 2.5, DC2 will be roughly 5 months old

How do you work logistics of 12 weeks without furniture/your stuff with 2 children that young? We are thinking we would ship our things, go and stay with some of my family here for 2 weeks then fly back to the U.K. where DH's work will house us for anywhere between 2-4 weeks before we move back into our home there. It's a long way off yet but things like moving DD into a toddler bed shortly, I'm wondering if we buy a cheap one which we then leave here and buy new when we move back so at least she would have a bed when we arrive...stuff like that. Any tips?!

DD is a pretty adaptable girl but does also get worried by a lot of change (initially) so any tips on how to build in the idea of the move eventually would also be grand.

We moved back from Sydney to the UK a few years ago. Our children would have been almost the exact same age yours will be.

We stayed with family for a few weeks at either end so were never 'camping' in an empty house like we did when we moved to Sydney. I also stayed with family and the DC for a couple of weeks while DH started work. I think in the end our things took about 8 weeks to arrive (no quarantine in the UK speeds it up, plus we had a full container).

I would definitely recommend moving your older child out of her cot before you go. We did this and it meant she was used to being in a 'normal' bed for the various hotel rooms etc we stayed in. We tried to limit the number of different beds for her but we often needed a hotel room before/after a flight. We bought a travel cot for our youngest so there was consistency for her throughout the trip. DD1 then got a new bed when we arrived in the UK and DD2 got her old cot.

We flew with Emirates and they give you 30kg of luggage allowance. That allowed us to take quite a lot of stuff on the plane with us (a few familiar toys etc).

To try and prepare DD1 for the move we purchased a couple of picture books about moving house. Couldn't find any about emigrating unfortunately.

Hope that helps. Good luck with it all.

We moved to the US with a 7 month old. We had a hotel booked for the first 2 nights then a lease on an apartment. We found a place through a friend and DH’s company paid our rent for the first 3 months rather than taking corporate housing as we wanted to get settled and to avoid another move. We did online shops with named day delivery to arrive on our first proper day; Ikea, Amazon, bed, bath and beyond etc. Our airline luggage consisted of 4 large suitcase but that was mostly our clothes. DH waited in an empty apartment with DD and whilst I went to the baby store and bought the travel cot etc. We ate out a lot and had a fairly minimalist set up until the rest our shipping arrived about 3 weeks after we did. It was sent ahead and we did what you are proposing and moved out of our house early and stayed our last two weeks before the move with family. We did initially have that camping vibe Needmorecaffeine describes but once the shipping did arrive we felt really settled. Good luck with it all!

We moved back to the UK from Aus when the kids were 2.5 and 14mths.

We shipped the house contents and had 2 weeks in an AirBnB while we finalised all the bits and bobs, then a 2 week holiday en route, then a month staying with family in the UK.

Like another poster, we flew with Emirates so had a sizeable luggage allowance, could take the pram etc.

We sold our Aus car seats before we left and ordered new online which we waiting on our arrival.

It was definitely stressful at the time, but looking back it was all suorisingly straight forward.

Our youngest was oblivious, but even at 2.5, it had a fairly big impact on our eldest. My advice would be get the involved and used to the idea - lots of books about moving etc. 2 years later ours still talks about our old house, points out containers etc etc