…is that they will wake each other up in the middle of the night.
Claire had been sleeping 10-12 hours straight through the night since she was about 9 months old. And as you can imagine, all that changed when a screaming newborn came into the picture.
And while this issue wasn’t quite as bad during the second month of Aerin’s life, when she regularly slept 7-8 hours straight through the night, it has recently become more serious as Aerin seems to have hit her 4-month sleep regression a few weeks early — waking up practically every hour during the night for the past week.
Aerin has been sleeping in our room — in her bassinet, the swing, or on our bed — since we brought her home from the hospital. I know that once she outgrows the bassinet, we will move her into a crib. The question is, where will we put the crib when we do not have any extra bedrooms?
Option 1: Have the girls share Claire’s room. But this can only mean additional months of restless nights for poor Claire. (Because at least now, the sounds of Aerin crying is somewhat muffled by two closed doors and a white noise machine.)
Option 2: Put Aerin’s crib in our living room. But this means that we will lose access to our living room after she goes down for the night.
Option 3: Leave Aerin in our room and just move in a crib. But this somehow feels unfair to both girls — Claire for not being around her parents as much as her little sister, and Aerin for not having her own room.
What would you do in our situation?
When we purchased our 2-bedroom, 1067 sqft condo 4 years ago, we definitely did not have babies in mind. (At the time, I wasn’t sure if I even wanted kids.) We didn’t bother to check the school districts, and thought that we would always use the second bedroom as a guest room.
For these reasons, we know that we will be moving to a larger place in a more child-friendly neighborhood within the next few years. But for the moment, we have to make do with what we have.
I ask my mother how she did it when my sister and I were young. Back then, our entire family of four slept together on the floor of a tiny room.
“No one slept,” she answers.
ETA, 2/14/12: Many commenters are asking if we have a walk-in closet we can convert to a nursery. We do have a large closet in our bedroom, but it is not large enough for a crib. Additionally, our master bedroom is not very well-ventilated, so our closet would be even worse if we close the door. For this reason, we definitely do not want Aerin to sleep in there.
