How I Transitioned my Baby and Toddler to Share a Room

Having babies so close together can sometimes be a bit tricky. My second baby slept in my room until he was 7 months old. I planned to move him into my toddler's room earlier on but between getting sick, teething, us moving apartments, sleep training and other obstacles along the way, I couldn’t muster up the strength and determination to say, "tonight’s the night!" because I was so nervous as to what that would look like. Would my baby wake up my toddler, resulting in me being up with both of them in the middle of the night? Finally one day, I decided that's it, we’re doing it regardless of what’s going on. I wanted my bedroom back. For seven straight months my bedroom did not belong to me past 6:30pm. The lights were off, I had to be quiet, I couldn’t listen to music or read a book or hang out with my husband in our room. When we made the switch, it was so liberating to have our space back.

Here are a few things that worked successfully for me and enabled my family to have a very smooth transition with my baby and toddler sharing a room.

The first thing I did was put the idea out into the world but really, into my toddler’s world. My husband moved the baby’s crib into my toddler's room and we made a whole big deal about having two cribs in the room and my boys being able to talk and laugh together. For a few days we would put them both in their cribs after bath time with the lights on just so that they could simulate and experience what it would be like to be in the room together, each in their designated sleeping space. This excited my toddler very much and gave us hope that this would work. In my experience of being a mom, I’ve learned that everything with a toddler is letting them know what’s going to happen before it actually does. So talk talk talk, play it out, make it real, make it fun, and explain EVERYTHING because even if you think your toddler doesn’t understand in the moment, they are listening and will connect the information you are relaying to the situation when they experience it, and they will ultimately find comfort in it.

When I first started this transition, I would put my baby to sleep in the crib, and after 5-10 minutes when I knew he was fully asleep, I would bring my toddler to the room and start his bedtime routine. However, before that, I would prep him and explain to him each night that when we go inside the room, the baby will already be in there sleeping so my toddler and I practiced bringing his finger to his lips and saying “shhh the baby is sleeping.” I included him in each of these details to really make him part of all the changes that were taking place. After a few nights of this, I slowly transitioned into putting them to sleep at the same time or one right after the other (baby still awake) and whether they were “talking”, laughing or crying, they became used to each other’s presence in the room and would fall asleep together.

My biggest fear during this process was that my baby would wake up crying in the middle of the night which would then wake up my toddler. I have to tell you this happened twice, and never happened again. Those two times my toddler woke up, I never even had to intervene - he sat up, acknowledged that his baby brother was crying and laid back down in his crib and put himself back to sleep. Until this day, my toddler sleeps through my baby’s cries and vice versa. My boys go to sleep together and they wake up together. It was the greatest decision and I wouldn’t have it any other way!