Can my children sleep in the same room?

[cheesebubble]

My DS1 will be 2 years and 3 months when DS2 arrives.

We do have a 3 bedroom house but it's a town house, so the spare room and the living room are on one floor and then the small bedroom and master bedroom is upstairs. We do want to move eventually but with 2 sets of nursery fees, maternity etc coming our way, we simply cannot afford it quite yet - more likely in 2023. We're in London.

I like the idea of having the downstairs spare room as a play room/ spare bedroom with a sofa in it as this creates an open space for the two of them to rummage around and the older DS1 gets, the more toys we have (I do swap them etc but I can't see it getting much better when number 2 arrives).

After all this backstory, have you had success putting both your children in one room at such a young age? It works with the space, the health visitor advised me to put DS1 in a normal bed once he turns 2 but as long as he's happy in the cot, I will delay the transition slightly x

Of course they can share. Plenty of people don't have 1 bedroom per person.
Ds1 was 2.2 when ds2 arrived. They shared a room from 2.8 and 6 months old until last summer when they were 15 and 13.

They can share, but if you end up with a shit sleeper in DS2 you may find it's a bit of a nightmare, as your little one will wake the big one up every time.

DD was in her own room from 5m, but woke every 2 hours til we sleep trained at 10m, would have been an absolute disaster with a toddler in there too.

Surely they'll wake each other up?

Won’t the baby be in with you to begin with?

We had two sharing, had to get one to sleep first before we’d attempt the other. It was ok though.

Of course! Many of us only have 2 bed houses. Mine are 2 years apart and shared until they were 3&5 through necessity then when we moved they asked to stay sharing, it's only when we moved and they were 8&10 they chose to have separate rooms

Yes, DS2 will be in our room until he is 6 months and depending on wake ups, we might keep him with us longer.

That's why I'm asking: has this worked for anyone? If it didn't work at all, we could obviously move DS1 downstairs but would like them to share first to have the other spare room as a play room/ play area between living room and spare room.

My mum had 5 kids in a 3 bed so we all had to share with someone. At one point there was 3 in one room (before one of my brothers moved out).

My boys have shared a room since the first lock down - our spare room needed to become an office for husband to wfh. So youngest will have been 7 months and oldest 21 months.

They’ve got on absolute fine with it, the youngest sleeps through the oldests random singing and general pratting (we’ve just moved him to a bed instead of cot at 28 months). The only difficulty I’ve found is nap times, I follow quite a strict routine so was able to tweak both so they’d nap at the same time but I understand that’s not for everyone and it could be a bit of a pain having to put one down half way through the others nap

We had the exact same age gap, and DC2 went Into room with DC1 around 7 months. It worked really well, though eldest is not a great sleeper she got used to any baby noises and didn't wake up, or only rarely.

My older 2 DC shared until they were about 10. 18 months apart . I think it is soothing to have someone else breathing in the room. It is entirely normal to share rooms.

They can share but, depending on the children, it can be utter hell.

Our girls are 14 months apart. Dd2 slept in our room until 9 months-ish, then they shared. They're 14 and 13 now and still share
(Dd1 was and is a shit sleeper, dd2 could sleep through a Metallica gig)