Best nugget of advice from going from 1 - 2 kids (especially regarding sleep!)

[SushiGinger]

A bit nervous about a 2.5 year age gap. What’s your top tips, best advice, any wise words about going from 1-2. I’m more nervous than I was for 0-1. 🤣

Especially how you manage newborn sleep with a toddler who wakes up sometimes overnight and almost always at 6am or earlier 😂

Not mine from my DM " the baby doesn't care". So most of your energy should go on making sure the disruption to the toddler is minimised. As long as the baby is clean and fed they will be ok. If your toddler goes to nursery keep that going at least for some hours. On sleep - a couple of nights a week go to bed at the toddler's bed time.

We had this age gap. Luckily our toddler mostly didn't/doesn't wake up, but anyway what we do is one parent does baby wake-ups and the other one does toddler wake-ups. Also the older one has a gro-clock which luckily he fully believes in as an external authority and does not try to get up before Olly Owl. You start closer to the actual morning wake time and then try and push it back a bit gradually till it's a more reasonable time.

Other things: we read some nice story books about siblings. 'There's going to be a baby' by John Burningham and Helen Oxenbury is lovely, and also includes some ambivalence about the new baby. I don't like the ones that are all about being a big sibling as a 'job' and 'helping mummy' etc. And we made sure DS1 still got designated one on one time with each parent.

You each take one. You have to divide and conquer. In terms of sleep, we split the nights. Dh would get dd to sleep while I did a feed. Then handed baby to him and went straight to bed. He’d bring him to me about 10/11pm for a feed and then I’d go back to sleep. We’d switch off when he next woke 12/1am and then Dh would sleep and I would be on baby duty. We did that the first 4-5 weeks. Then transitioned ds to sleeping next to me the whole night. Lots of snacks and screen time is fine for your older one. It won’t last forever and it won’t rot their brains to watch 6 hours of Peppa pig if that’s what needs to happen for a bit.

I have a 22 month age gap, we used to feed the baby while I read to the toddler then I would sit and hold her hand while she went to sleep while holding the baby or with her in the carrier. During the night I would still let the toddler into my bed in order to get the most sleep. My husband was away a lot so if yours is around definitely utilise him. Would your toddler sleep later if he’s allowed in your bed in the morning? Or I guess the other option is everyone goes to bed early to cope with the early rise.