Three Tips For Moving Your Baby To Their Room

The time has come! Time to move N into his own room! For six months he has been in with us but he is just growing too big for the Next2Me cot now, we disturb him when we go to bed, and quite frankly his squirming around in the cot is really disturbing us!

When I say he is growing too big for the Next2Me we just feel that the fact he seems to be able to reach both sides of the cot at the same time and likes scratching his hands down both sides very noisily in the middle of the night suggests he is reaching the limit of it. Also he is frequently turning himself around 180 degrees in the cot, which is very impressive given that he is much longer than the cot is wide. This concerns us so we are hoping that as he won’t have anything to push off in the night he won’t turn around as much. In fact he managed to turn himself around twice in one night recently. He’s a very energetic boy!

Before I get into it though I thought I’d share this website from Gro that I use on an almost daily basis to see what I should put N in each night.

The Plan

We’ve been away last week (see here for more details) which is nicely when he pretty much gets to six months on our return. As such we felt that as he was sleeping in a different bed anyway for that week it made good sense to return home and put him in his own room so he doesn’t get used to the Next2Me again.

However, it’s not as simple as that for us, that’s certainly where the plan ends but not where it begins at all. We have known for quite a while that we were going away in this particular week and that it tied in nicely with him being nearly six months old. As such, we planned that in the week before we go away we would start his nap times in his big boy bed (well, a normal sized cot!), amongst other ideas we had as shown below.

How’s It Going?

His nap times went really well in his room. When he gets tired he is pretty good at sleeping almost anywhere (including in church!). As such, as long as the white noise in his room (mainly Ollie the Owl) is consistent and we put up a black out blind like in our room then we figured he would hopefully be able to sleep ok for his naps, which he did.

Our theory behind this was that we should try and change the fewest things at once that we can. We had to change the room and we had to change the bed, but other than that we wanted the sound to be the same and the lighting to be the same, and we were successful in that.

In terms of his sleep overnight it has started amazingly well. I’m writing this now knowing full well I’m tempting fate here but the first three nights have gone really well and he has slept through. He has gone from 7pm to 7:30am at which point i have to get him up! I can almost feel the eyes boring into me as you read this!

Don’t worry, I’m prepared for this to go belly up, and I expect it will at some point. Just got to wait and see!

My Tips For You

Don’t Change Much At Once

As I have said above, I think changing one thing at once, where possible, is the way to go.

As humans we are almost programmed to like things to be consistent, to not change. We are almost averse to change in many respects as adapting and changing to the new norm is more difficult than staying with the old way of doing things. I suspect this is a consideration when making such a change for babies too. It’s very possible that they get used to the status quo, to hearing you breathe next to them, to knowing you’re right there. As such, change can be tough.

Therefore I would suggest changing the fewest things possible at once. Changing the room is a big step. Perhaps if you are not sure how well it will go then move the cot they were using to their room (if it’s not already the same cot). We thought he would be alright in his big cot as he had naps in there first. Try to keep the lighting the same, the sounds the same etc etc. I personally think this is a great help.

Lay The Ground Work

For a week before we thought he would go in his room we were putting him down for naps in his new room. This was so that:

He got used to the new room (and we made sure the lighting etc was the same)
The bed started to smell like him and also smell familiar
For any initial issues we could deal with them in the light of day rather than the middle of the night

This did take a bit of effort shifting around his nap gear like monitor and Ollie the Owl every day, but we thought it would be worth it.

Bedtime Consistency

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that for me consistency is really important when it comes to a bedtime routine. We started a routine with N really early, within a few weeks of him being born. Our bath times have always gone really well and he loves it which is a great start to bedtime (my tips for giving a newborn a bath are here and tips for bath time fun are here). Our theory was that although he clearly would not get used to it straight away the moment he could start to get used to it, he would.

Bath, bottle, bed.

Every day wherever possible, and I really think he understands it, or at least is used to it. It’s also at the same time each day too so he doesn’t get overly tired before bed.

Our Next Steps

So what do we need to do now?

Certainly we don’t think we have it cracked or anything like that. Of course there will be bad nights, we fully expect this. There will be times his routine goes out the window etc etc. However:

Keep it going – we want to keep being consistent in what we do
Remove the blackout blind – We have a blackout blind literally attached to the window, plus a pull down black out blind and curtains. Surprisingly it’s still not pitch black. However, I think it’s important he get’s used to sleeping in non-blackout conditions. One change at once though…!
Remove the fan – we sleep with a fan on to keep us cool and drown out any other noise. I don’t want N getting used to that for his life but again, change one thing at once so we will remove his fan when he is settled for a bit longer

Finally, good luck to us all in these fun times of moving our babies to their own room. Do you have any tips? Anything that worked well for you?