Co-sleeping 3 year old and another on the way

[Again]

We have been co-sleeping with our 3 year old. It's been in the back of our minds that he will have his own room at some stage, or a single bed in our room. We're going to be moving house in a month's time, so it might be a good time to put his name on a door and a bed in another room. It does make me feel as if he's being pushed out a little bit. He is very affectionate and does like to cuddle up saying 'mind me mum'.

I know I'm going to be shattered and have a baby feeding all night long. I am also concerned about the safety aspect of having a toddler there with a small baby.

I'd be interested to hear what others have done in our situation.

Congratulations!

DS1 had turned just three when I found out I was expecting DS2 and we were still co-sleeping. Like you I was worried about him and the baby in the bed together and DS1's sleep being disturbed but also mindful it was bad timing in a way and that he might feel pushed out by the new arrival, especially as we've always followed his lead and done things at his pace.

Luckily, we have a very big bedroom and ages before he'd spotted a mid-sleeper bed in a magazine and thought it was brilliant so we bought one of those and put it in our room next to the big bed. We also put a single bed in the bedroom next door to ours which was nominally his room anyway. I think it helped that he'd also recently started nursery and had been to play at a couple of houses where the boys obviously slept in their own beds and rooms. Pretty much all our friends co-sleep, so this was new and interesting to him!

We left it up to him to decide what he wanted to do and when it arrived he was keen to sleep in the mid-sleeper but definitely wanted it to stay in our room and he slept in his bed in our room for 4 months before his brother was born (I still lay in bed wth him until he drifted off and getting up and down the ladder with a bump was a bit of a challenge!) and for nearly a year afterwards. One night, unprompted, he asked to sleep in the bed in "his" room and despite me expecting him to last about 5 minutes he slept all night by himself! A week later we moved the mid-sleeper in there.