Baby's own room

[annie]

Mummies, when do u all move your bb to their own rm? was the transition easy? where do they sleep in their own rm? im thinking of moving my girl to her own rm when we move to a new house (the present house has no additional rm) n by then she will be about 2.5yrs old. a bit worry about the transition and has been wondering if i need to buy new toddler/single bed or can simply let her continue to sleep in her cot... or simply buy a mattress... need ideas~! LOL

 

[diymummy]

My boy slept in his own room since birth. But judging from what my friends do, the transition depends highly on your child.

I think shifting her to her own room when the new house come will be easier than if it's in your current home. You can start preparing her now by telling her she is a big girl. It could also help by decorating her new room with things she like and asking her to be part of the decorating process. If you intend for her to sleep on a mattress, then you have to start training her to sleep on a mattress now. If nights are out to train, you can train during her naps.

My friend got his daughter to build her bed together, deco her room together. So the transition was pretty smooth. If there is a bed time routine, like reading a booking or singing or praying, you could do those so that she can recognise those to bedtime.

 

[PinkDiamonds]

Yah I think the transition will be easier if she is involved in the change. She will be very pleased to make her own decisions. You can even bring her out to buy a bed and let her choose one for herself.

Is ur girl sleeping through the night? If now she wakes up for milk then you may have a bit of trouble.

 

[hueychye79]

Isaac sleep in his own room since birth, so not sure the translation process how is it.

Sometimes he will sleep with us when the weather is sooooo hot and we will on the air-con.

 

[meiteoh]

I started when Eva was 1 mth old so there wasn't any issues about a transition. She cannot sleep in my room now with my HB or just me because she has equated my bed with anything and everything else but sleep. Dunno if I should be glad or what.

I do second what PDiamonds and diymummy suggested - involve her in the decision process - from deciding on paint colour to buying lights, the bed, furnishing and even curtains! After all, it's going to be HER room! For a toddler who has known nothing but the comfort of mummy's room, suddenly sleeping on her own can be frightening and a huge transition.

 

[annie]

hmm but then they are so young.. will they be able to choose? my girl so far dosent seem to have opinion on anything. whenever i ask her to choose something she will just take both or dun even choose them. or she take one n after a while throw away n want another. so i always end up choosing..

i dunno where i should let her sleep... if let her sleep in her cot, might be the safest since its 'enlcosed'. compare to mattress or bed but with a mattress i can sleep with her till she fall asleep then i escape like now (her cot is joined to my bed n the side which is joined to my bed is opened. like a toddler's bed. for a single bed, i worry she fall out of the bed. for a mattress i worry also she might not sleep n keep going to play with her toys in the midde of the night or watsoever..

she haven sleep through the night. she sleeps from 930am n wake up for first feed around 6am.. then wake up around 9-10am. i thought moving her to her own bedrm is a good way to train her to sleep through too.. anyway we will only be moving when she is 2.5yrs old so hopefully by then she will already have slept through...

My hubby keep saying newborn are too young to sleep alone in their bedrm.. n the fact tat i need to wake up so many times at night to feed her in her rm is tiring for me as well.. so.. your babies all sleep in cot in their own rms now? any bb already sleeping on mattress or single bed?

 

[diymummy]

Hi annie,

Learning to choose is a skill that children have to learn. My friend's kid at 2 yo already learns how to choose. Of course, being only 2yo, she will throw tantrum when she cna't get the best of both worlds. But my friends keep telling her that it is ok, choose the best.. blah blah, in the process it's building in values that can be used in later life.

For where to let her sleep, if she doesn't roll around much, mattress is fine. My boy sleeps in a cot and if I want to accompany him, I will put a mattress on the floor. He will sometimes sit up and peek to see if I'm still there. After he sleeps, I escape.

 

[annie]

lol tats cute. my girl now only 17.5mths.. she always likes to come to me n lie on my chest or shoulder or stick her head to any part of my body to fall asleep so i worry abit if i put her in cot alone she might not want... she used to sleep in cot alone till about 10mths old i joined her cot to my bed cos she keeps pulling up to a stand n cry tat time.. so she cannot sleep well at night..

btw, i see some kids bedrms online which has beautiful walls. my fren says those are wall papers. not paint. i wonder anyone knows where to buy? my girl love dogs lol. maybe put many dogs on her bedrm walls lol. i dun want to paint my walls.. prefer to do something easier to reverse lol. for wall papers, if i paste n remove, will the paint of the walls come off?

 

[diymummy]

lol tats cute. my girl now only 17.5mths.. she always likes to come to me n lie on my chest or shoulder or stick her head to any part of my body to fall asleep so i worry abit if i put her in cot alone she might not want... she used to sleep in cot alone till about 10mths old i joined her cot to my bed cos she keeps pulling up to a stand n cry that time.. so she cannot sleep well at night..

btw, i see some kids bedrms online which has beautiful walls. my friend says those are wall papers. not paint. i wonder anyone knows where to buy? my girl love dogs lol. maybe put many dogs on her bedrm walls lol. i dont want to paint my walls.. prefer to do something easier to reverse lol. for wall papers, if i paste n remove, will the paint of the walls come off?

Maybe you can train her to sleep in a toddler bed? It's like as though restart everything. Teaching her to sleep on her own. Because it is new, the transition should be easier. You can bring her to furniture shops like IKEA where they have those sample rooms and tell her big girls have rooms like that. They sleep on their own and no extra mattress for mummy or daddy.

Depends on the type of glue the wall paper uses. Alternatively you can use wall decals. Those can put on the wall and peel off and paste again without damaging the wall paint.

 

[annie]

wall decals? but its not the whole wall one right?

 

[diymummy]

wall decals? but its not the whole wall one right?

If wall decal won't be whole wall leee... But at least won't damage the wall. There're those that can be whole wall dee.. You go to singapore motherhood bulk purchase to check it out. Some times they have wall decals and the designs very nice, look like wall paper.

 

[thepinkdot]

my daughter's room in my parents' place is done up nicely with disney themed wall decals. doesn't hurt the paint on the wall.

as for bed.. she really need to start learning how to sleep on a bed.. you could lower the bed to the toddler bed height.. and if she falls out, just lay a mattress near it.. sooner or later, she will learn not to stick herself out and sleep within the bed.

my daughter has been sleeping in an adult size single bed w/o bed rails since 2+. but this is only because i've trained her to progress from the cot -> toddler bed -> single mattress -> bed in a very gradual stage.

i've not worried about her falling off the bed coz she hasn't and now that she's 4.. all the more i'm no longer worried.

 

[PinkDiamonds]

My girl slept with us for the first 5 months before we shifted her to her own room. It was easier for me to feed her in the beginning and when she was sleeping through the night, we shifted her to her own room. It wasn't easy because she wasn't used to sleeping alone. She would cry and cry and cry until someone came in. We tried patting her to sleep but realized it wasn't a long-term solution because she would need some1 to pat her to sleep every night. So in the end we just let her cry it out and eventually she got the idea.

She's coming to 1 yr old soon, and now she drinks a bottle of milk in bed and falls asleep. During nap times however, she is capable of falling asleep without relying on the bottle, so I think that will work for now.

Like meiteoh, my bed is now anything but sleep for my girl. Once she was sick and we tried to be nice parents and have her sleep with us but she just refused to do so.

From your description it seems that even in the same room, your girl needs you to be there to fall asleep. So be mentally and physically prepared cause you may have to deal with some late nights and her crying when you transit her to her own room. I think you should start from now. Train her to sleep in her own bed, and train her to sleep through the night. This way when she finally has her own room, less headache for u.

 

[annie]

pinkdiamonds, how your girl fall asleep for her naps?

my girl can fall asleep on her own as long as im beside her for her night sleep but she needs breast to fall sleep for her naps.. then recently she keep waking up after 30mins through her nap crying n looking for breast.. ive been giving it to her till today i decided not to give it to her n let her cry. so end up she didnt nap back.. only napped for 20mins today.

i think its easy to get her to fall asleep at night as she can sleep anywhere (we have been travelling rather often n she can sleep in hotels, fren's house etc without any problem. ). perhaps its the night routine tat helps. i only worry she wake up n see no one in her new rm then she will scream.. lol

yes my girl needs me to be there... if i leave the rm, she will start to cry.. she sometimes can fall asleep on her cot without touching me but sometimes she needs to come n hug me to sleep like tonight..i cannot train her to sleep through the night now cos hubby sleeps with us n he needs to work.. so i cannot let her cry.. so i desperately need her to have her own rm asap so i can sleep train her! lol

 

[PinkDiamonds]

All I need to do is put my girl in bed, give her her soft toy, and leave the room. At night also the same except that I give her milk.

I think it's a very bad habit to nurse your girl to sleep! In fact, you shouldn't have done that right from day 1. Now you need to break the habit and it is not going to be easy. She may not nap for long for the next week days or weeks. But if you persevere on not to let her nurse to nap, then I think eventually she will understand that she will not get mommy's breast to nap.

I think I've mentioned before that if you are worried she will disturb hubby, do it during the weekend as he will not need to wake up early for work right? It will be very very hard when you switch her to her own room, cause you have to deal with a few things. Firstly, she will have to learn to fall asleep on her own without coming to bed to hug mommy. Secondly, she will have to deal with sleeping alone. Thirdly, she is NOT going to sleep through the night just because you shift her to her own room.

Even if you shift her to her own room, won't her cries disturb your husband too? How do you intend to deal with it? These are some things you will need to consider and be mentally and physically prepared for. I don't know about 2 year olds, but I have heard from friends that the older they get, the harder it is to change certain habits. So you have to be very strong-willed about this decision you are going to make.

No point she has her own room, but every night you still have to go sleep with her right?

 

[annie]

letting her cry only on weekends n not maintaining it is not gonna get her to sleep through the night. ive tried. i need 1 whole week in order for her to get the idea.. n even after tat, on n off she wakes up n try her luck so i got to keep doing. jsut over the weekend is not gonna work in anyway..

her bedrm n our bedrm is rather far n if i let her cry n switch off my bb monitor then i guess its not gonna disturb hubby. he is basically a deep sleeper n wont wake up even if our girl cries in our rm unless its for a period of time.. if i let her cry for bout 15-30mins, sometimes hubby didnt even realise it... the thing is she is super stubborn n will cry for 2hrs or so continuously to get wat she wants..

i dun nurse her to sleep since day 1. its only until recently that she cries whenever i remove my breast. i give her milk before naps n before sleep but i always make sure i put her down when she is awake. i will remove my nipples from her mouth once she seem to slows down in sucking. only recently dunno y she keep crying once i remove my breast..

so.. now if i want to train her to nap on her own without even giving her milk, how do i do it? she is capable of totally not napping if i dun make her nap! am i going to just throw her in the bedrm n let her cry till she happy even if she dun nap after 1-2hrs of crying?

btw, your girl started to be able to fall asleep on her own for naps like this only after u did the cry it out method or even before tat?

 

[PinkDiamonds]

Hmmm, because it's only my 1st year with her. Usually I give her milk during nap time so that she will go to sleep after she finish the milk. But recently I decided to "try my luck" and realized that she actually can fall asleep on her own without the milk. So now I don't give her milk at naptime because lunchtime + naptime is only 1-2 hours apart.

Actually it really depends on what you are prepared to do. There are different philosophies when it comes to sleep training and not all parents are willing to use the cry-it-out method when it comes to sleep training. There is such a thing called controlled crying method. This is when you let her cry for a while, eg: 15min, before going into the room. You then comfort her and leave the room within 1 minute. & u repeat it until she finally gets the idea, but every time u increase the waiting period before u go into the room.

Personally the controlled crying method was more tiring and wasn't effective for me, cause have to walk in and out in and out of the room. So in the end I just toughened up and let her cry it out. Her record was 6 hours. Gave her milk, comfort her, sing song, everything also didn't work. But I let her cry for 6 hours at that time because I knew all her needs were met and that she was already sleeping through the night.

Recently she seemed to have a "growth spurt" and woke up in the middle of the night. When it happens we usually wait 15 min. If she goes back to sleep then we will just assume she having a bad night and let her comfort herself. If more than that we will try to go in and comfort her and see what's wrong. Then realized it is that she's hungry. We increased her milk intake in the day and now she's back to normal.

Actually I am quite a worry-some person so initially I was very reluctant to let her cry-it-out. Scared she will cry until hyperventilate. So in the beginning of it I didn't have much sleep cause I will stay up until she cry finish, check on her, then go to sleep. LoL.

When she was sleeping with us, her cot is next to me but we have 0 physical contact at bedtime. She will talk to herself and fall asleep. So when we shifted her to her own room, she was very uncomfortable that nobody is around. Plus she was so young, cannot bring her go out to choose her bed, room deco, etc! lol.

 

[annie]

in fact ive tried the controlled crying method n cry it out method both(tat time i ask hubby to endure for 1 week to give up midnight feeds lol). at first it seems to work (her crying gets shorter n shorter as days goes by) but after about 1 week, her cries her worse n i decided to stop as she might not be ready... then on n off i try n eventually she dosent wake up midnight for milk feeds anymore. midnight is still ok as my hubby sleeps late. sometimes when she wakes up crying for milk, hubby is not even asleep. he is watching tv or wat.. so its ok to let her cry.. but now 6am or so is a difficult time to let her cry..

she used to be sleeping in her cot alone in my rm but away from our bed as well. no body contact between us too until about 10mths old she keeps waking up at night pulling up to a stand n cry.. then after few weeks i really got so tired out n decided to join her cot to ours n she dosent wake up crying anymore. if she happens to wake up she will just come to me n then fell asleep hugging me or wat lol. think she needs more sense of security maybe..

BTW, congrats on your pregnancy! Are u going to have twins??

 

[PinkDiamonds]

Actually for my girl it took about 1 week+ before I was successful. In fact, if this time you try, as long as there is an improvement you should try it and not stop. Cause I believe she is old enough. Otherwise, you may want to continue to give her milk at 6am, until she's a bit older. Recently, my cousin managed to wean off her 3 yo son from his middle of the night feeds. She took about 1 week, but this time she incorporated explaining to him, so I think it helped make things easier for her.

Yes twins. Thanks.

Anyway, hope I didn't sound too blunt. But just want to remind you it is not easy, BUT doable if you have enough determination.

For me I think when my girl is able to crawl up and down on her own, I will remove her cot rail and let her sleep on the lowest setting of the cot. Will put a mattress below in case she falls, but right now I am having trouble baby-proofing her room.

 

[annie]

wow twins... i wished to have twins before i was married but taking care of 1 bb is already so hard.. hehe. congrats again!

yah i think she is old enough to be sleep train too. the only problem is with my hubby. if i let her cry at 6am he will wake up n wont be able to sleep back. but he needs to wake up at 730am every morning to work thus i try my best not to disturb his sleep. im not very bothered by her waking at 6am for milk but i think ive posted this before tat she praticaly sucks non stop since the 6am feeding. im trying to stop this but since it might disturb with hubby's sleep again, i didnt have the chance to do tat.. thus im very much expecting her own bedrm so it makes my sleep training easier hehe.

yah previously i tried for about 2 weeks.. 1st week ok n getting better but 2nd week her cries get so much worse so i stopped thinking she was not readt. that time she was only 7mths old. now im sure she is ready so i wont give up! but i cant do tat for her early morning bad habits though due to hubby... im doing for her naps now. today too, i let her cry to nap (with me beside her of cos). i tried to set up a nap routine to wind her down as well.. starting today hehe. now i shower her, bring her to bedrm, darken the bedrm n just put her on her cot. she cry n cry then i hackcare her n she fell asleep in my arms. lets see how long she will nap.. she jsut went to nap heh

yea tats wat i did. i remove the rail of one side of my girl's cot n put the setting to the lowest.. so now she can go up n down her bed herself. coincidentally, her cot's lowest setting and my bed is the same height so i just join them together...