I am expecting my second child in April 2014. My daughter is four and a half years old and has never been a good sleeper. To this day, she might wake occasionally at night and she hates being upstairs by herself when I put her to bed and watch T.V. downstairs.
The bedrooms in our house are weird as it is a very old house. My room with my husband is joined with Alyssa's. They call these rooms railroad rooms. We moved to this house three years ago with the goal of dormering in the future. The only carpet we have is in Alyssa's room. If I need to get up to use the bathroom (we only have one downstairs), I swear I creak a floorboard and Alyssa will wake up. For this reason, I plan on putting her sibling in the one bedroom downstairs. I don't want a baby waking Alyssa every few hours or if I need to get up for bottles frequently.
How do I prepare Alyssa to get used to being upstairs alone when the baby comes? My husband works nights so I will be caring for the baby. I plan on blowing up an air mattress and sleeping near the baby until she/he sleeps through the night. Not the ideal situation but I fear a baby waking Alyssa.
Another reason for keeping the baby downstairs is that my main help with the baby is my mother. She will only be able to help once in awhile but she despises my stairs as they are steep. So I want to make it easier on her.
I realize I made a lot of mistakes with Alyssa's sleep patterns and now she is just used to waking easily and so early (up by 6 on weekends but we get up that early for work/daycare). Is there anything I can do now to prepare her a little for Mommy not being upstairs with her for awhile? Thank you!
Thank you everyone for your advice. I'll try to explain my expanded cape. It has three bedrooms. Two are upstairs as railroad rooms. A door separates my room from Alyssa's. The upstairs is basically attic; poorly insulated as it is freezing in the winter (I use a space heater in Alyssa's room) and hot as you know what in the summer. There is one very small bedroom downstairs that is currently Alyssa's playroom. I also keep Alyssa's clothes in that bedroom because she doesn't have a closet in her room.
I do not anticipate my mother coming over daily to help me. She takes care of my niece full-time. I think there is no reason for Alyssa to share her bedroom with the baby since she has been an only child for so long. My room is so hard to move around in because our furniture takes up most of the space. I could put a cradle in the room but again fear the baby waking Alyssa. I won't even bother to go into detail about our 65 pound dog sleeping in our bedroom too!
I thought about moving Alyssa to the small downstairs bedroom and keeping the baby upstairs. I think the downstairs room is warmer for a baby though. It's a catch-22 in my house but we'll make it work. BTW, I really don't want to sleep on an air mattress downstairs but I guess it beats sleeping on a couch. My husband was home at night when we had Alyssa but he will not be home this time most nights. Thanks again.
Sounds like you need a sound conditioner for her room. We have used the Marcpac Sleepmate 980 with both of the kids. My son is 7 and has outgrown it- now he has a air purifier that makes a pleasant whirring sound. My daughter is a horribly light sleeper, and the marpac helps with house noises. Sounds like a fan without the wind.
Hope this helps.
I am a very light sleeper and require white noise in my room when I sleep. I have a fan running every night no matter the season so I can hear the white noise. In the winter, I just turn it around and have the wind blow toward the wall instead of on me. My 4 year old daughter sleeps with a fan as well. I do the same thing for her. What if you tried that, then kept the baby in your room so you are on the same floor as your daughter, AND in a decent bed?
Put baby in your room. Get some white noise. If you have an iPad there are apps for this. Your daughter will adjust.
I'm a little confused about how your house is set up, but I understand your dilemma. I have a three year old and a baby. I thought my older son's sleep problems were my fault, so I tried to do things differently with the baby, and it turns out, he's an even worse sleeper. My doctor claims its genetic, so be prepared! Now, what should you do? It is a big adjustment having a new sibling. Can Alyssa sleep on a cot near you if she gets lonely in the night? Can she navigate your steep stairs at night? My older son can sleep through crying but then wake up when it's quiet to look for me. The baby might not wake your daughter up, as long as she is near you. So you might be able to have them share a room or be near each other. If she absolutely has to be on her own, try getting her a special doll or stuffed animal and build it up as her nighttime companion. And definitely the white noise machine. They are $50-60 on amazon. Would a cheap carpet help with creaking? I hate creaking floors, and they are so hard to fix.
At 4 and a half your daughter is old enough to understand a heck of a lot about what will be happening. Tell her straight up. Talk to her about the sleeping arrangements. Maybe she'll even have a great idea? My 4 yr old would LOVE to plan anything related to a new baby sibling (poor kid will never get one though, lol).
My 19m old woke up every time my new baby did...even though he had slept in his own room upstairs his whole short life, and was a great sleeper too. The baby in the master bedroom downstairs was a new noise at night and he woke every time. There was nothing I could have done to prevent it. At first I went into his room and checked on him when I could hear him wake up, but it quickly became obvious that it wasn't necessary. He would wake up, move around a bit, didn't cry, and settled back to sleep. He napped a little more during the day to make up for it. He was too young to really understand any explanation. After a few weeks he slept through again.
Tell your daughter that babies wake up in the night, she'll probably hear it and wake up too, it's normal, she can stay in bed and you'll check on her when you are done feeding/changing the baby and everyone can go back to sleep. It might sound simplistic, but it the bigger deal you make of it, the bigger deal it will be. Maybe your daughter can make suggestions for things that will make it easier for her to stay in bed and go back to sleep. A new toy to hug (maybe it will be a present to her from the baby), a new nightlight, soft music she can turn on, new sheets, new pajamas, a special big sister cup on the night stand for that last drink of water.
If you want to experiment with different sleeping arrangements before the baby is born, go ahead, just include your daughter in making the plans. My son went through a stage of not wanting to go to bed knowing my husband and I were still up downstairs. He agreed to stay in bed quietly if one of us would go kiss him every 15 minutes. We put a clock in his room and would tell him where the hands would point the next time we'd come up. He was usually awake for only 1 or 2 extra kisses and that phase was fairly short lived. You could start practicing that with her now. Help her own the role of big sister and start a few of the "responsibilities" that will come with it.
You could reward her for every night she stays in bed without issue. A row of stickers to get an ice cream, a penny/nickle/dime/etc until she has $1 for a trip to the dollar store, etc.
Oh honestly if you are going to be downstairs with the baby that's just going to increase your daughter's anxiety and possible resentment.
Why can't the baby be in your room, at least for the first few months? I mean it's not like your mother is going to be the one waking up and feeding her. Your mom can stay downstairs well rested and help out all day long. I always had extra diapers and wipes in the living room so I didn't need to go up and down all day, can't you do that too? The "help" is only once in a while, you need to put your daughter's feelings over your mom's, your daughter's needs should be the priority.
And how is she going to feel when mom, baby and grandma are ALL together and she's on another floor, all alone?
Try to look at it from her perspective.
ETA: I get that your daughter is a light sleeper but that baby will wake her up not matter where she is in the house, babies are loud!
Some of the best advice we got when expecting was not to tiptoe around a sleeping newborn. Run the tv, the vacuum cleaner, fire alarm, blender and anything else that you have which is noisy to condition them to sleep through it. We live in NYC in an apartment building, fire trucks the post office early morning trash pick up and the railroad behind our building and still our boy sleeps through.
Good luck with your expected arrival and figuring out your sleeping arrangements
Can you put your older daughter in your room and you and your husband in hers? I have 3 kids and my older two (ages 5 and 3) adjusted fine to a noisy baby. And my 3 year old is a light sleeper. That being said, your daughter is 4 1/2 and needs to develop her own coping mechanisms for falling back to sleep on her own when she wakes up. Baby or no baby, that is a skill she needs. Give her some credit too, she may do better than you think.
