New baby moving to older childs room - any tips?

[Snugs]

Any ideas on settling a new baby into an old siblings bedroom? My sons are 4 yrs and 10 weeks. The baby is currently in a crib which he is rapidly outgrowing and his full size cot won't fit in our room. The 4 yr old still tends to wake at least once a night, but will usually settle himself back to sleep but I'm worried that putting the baby in his room will disrupt him too much and cause chaos.

Sorry if you've all already had this discussion but I'm new to Mumsnet and don't have time to go through all the old conversations!

Hi Snugs, I'd only put the baby with your older child if he is sleeping through the night.

If he's not sleeping through, why not put him in a travel cot or in his pram at night if it's big enough?

Snugs -i am in exactly the same boat-altho' my eldest son is slightly younger-3- my daughter is nearly 5 months weighing 19 pounds in a crib -she can rock it so hard i don't know what to do with her as oliver would wake up if she went in with him-rhiannon -the travel cot idea is a good one-thanks!

Snugs - we put our daughter in with our son when she started sleeping a reasonable amount of the night. I think she was about 5 months and he was 3 and a half. Despite worrying about her waking him in the night, in practice (amazingly) he slept through virtually everything. Our main problem to date (she's now 21 months) has been a phase when she was waking at 5 am and waking him when he had had almost enough sleep so wouldn't go back to sleep. This is now over, they love sharing a room, but it does often take a while for the giggling, bouncing on beds etc to stop once we've left them for the night! (We have resigned ourselves to working on the principal that, as long as they remain upstairs in their room, we'll leave them to it.)

We put our two in together when my daughter was about five months and her brother just over two. Initially we were up at every sound so that she wouldn't wake him and this led to about eight months of terribly disturbed sleep as she got used to the attention. When we got as far as taking it in turns to sleep on the sofa so she could come in with the other parent at midnight every night we got strict, put her in her travel cot downstairs for a week, did 'controlled crying' (do you know, she never got beyond 15 mins!) and then put them back together and haven't worried about waking each other since. There are occasional hiccoughs, but generally they don't wake each other. Mornings can sometimes be a problem, but if they, or we, are getting too grotty, we put the travel cot up again for a weekend, go to bed early and re-establish a slightly later start time for the children. It works well. They are now 18months and just over three.

By the way, the giggling and general rioting before sleep is an issue sometimes, but we go along with the theory that as long as they are in the right room we'll put up with it - and it has got better with time.

Good luck!

Thanks for the tips everyone.

Rhiannon - sleeping through the night - whats that?! If my eldest is anything to go by, I could have a long wait! The pram idea is great (in fact thats what we did on holiday) but I can't get it over the stair gate!