Sharing nursery with home office or with guest room -- practicalities?

[Anonymous]

OP - do what works best for you. We live in a small two bedroom one bathroom house and have turned the larger of the two bedrooms into a combination guest/office/nursery. The guest bed is a queen sized futon that folds out, the nursery consists of just a crib, small armoire and small dresser, and off to the side, we have one desk and some bookshelves. my husband and I plan to sleep on the futon in the first few weeks after the baby comes home and have the inlaws who will be visiting and helping out, stay in our bed. We'll reevaluate in the future, depending on how old the child is, but we also have a pack and play we can set up in our bedroom.

We didn't want to have to put our guests up in a hotel or have them put themselves up in a hotel because it cuts into visiting time and makes the trip that much more expensive for people who already have to drive. At the end of the day, your personal factors and those of your guests will dictate which works out best for you.

[Anonymous]

My son slept in a bassinet in our room for the first 3 (or so months). It was really nice when he moved to his own room.

My vote would be to combine the guest room and home office. That is what we're doing now that #2 is on the way. The biggest room (other than the master) will become the guest room/office. (If I can't reorganize the guest room to maximize space, my computer might go in our bedroom.) DS#1 gets moved into the old office which unfortunately is the smallest room. You say you have 2 computers. Is there any way to combine them on one desk or use just 1 computer (or 1 monitor) - or a desktop and laptop? Can you pare down the other office furniture - perhaps put file cabinets in the closet or have them serve doubt duty as night stands (if the they are the 2 drawer type). Those desk armoires are very cool. I agree that you'd probably want to use the futon althought many of the lastest air matresses look more comfy than a futon.

I'm not opposed to the guest room/nursery combo - assuming you can fit a crib and futon in the room. And, you'll probably want a dresser and maybe a changing table. I would not put an infant in the futon - even with side rail. (The guest room/nursery wouldn't have worked too well for me since I breastfed my first - and even when he was rooming with us, I went to the nursery to nurse - it was just more comfortable and I had it all set up with a TV and supplies.) Until the baby is around 2 yo, you'd need to use something like a pack-n-play for him to sleep in when guests are there.

[Anonymous]

We've just been through this at our house - we also have three bedrooms, which until recently have been our room, a guest room, and an office. It was a tight fit, but we decided to combine the office and guest room. Our daughter will be sharing a room for us for the first few months, but we never considered having her share a room with the guest bed or office. Even though she won't be sleeping in that room for awhile, we'll still be using it for naps, changing, etc., and we gave her priority over our occasional guests.

[Anonymous]

We have a pretty large master bedroom so we ended up moving the office stuff into the room. I'm at work during the day so my husband can work there. We have our son's grandparents visit a few times per year and I would feel pretty rude asking them to stay in a hotel - especially when they help out so much. Instead, we made the smallest bedroom, formerly an office, into the nursery and kept the other room as a guest room with a double bed. We also use that room as extra storage for off season items, etc. Having the office in the master bedroom has worked out better than I thought it would. We just streamlined and bought the smallest of everything - laptop, small desk/armoire, etc.

[Anonymous]

Maybe you could offer up your bedroom to guests if they need a place to sleep and you and DH can sleep in the office/downstairs sofa/whatever?

[Anonymous]

OP here ...

Thanks for all the advice. Definitely some very good ideas in here, which hadn't occurred to us. I now feel confident we'll come up with a good workable solution. And I'm glad to hear that we may get quite a few months of grace period to figure it out for sure after the baby arrives, while we all share our bedroom (with the baby in a crib near our bed during that time).

One more thought on that last subject specifically ... for people who kept the baby in their own bedroom for quite a while, what about the times when (to be blunt about it) you want to have sex? is it weird or disruptive/distracting to do that with a baby in the room?? i imagine that will also affect how long we decide to stay with that arrangement!

[beanie]

Although it wouldn't be my dream situation, I babysat for a family in grad school that had a 2BR townhouse. Mom, Dad and baby co-slept in the queen size bed and a two-year old slept in a toddler bed at the foot of their bed. They used the 2nd BR as an office since both parents worked from home.

In other words, different strokes for different folks. Thoughout the world (and in Manhattan!) people keep infants in their room for much longer due to space limitations.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

I was also displaced for guests as a child, and it never occurred to me to think it was anything other than hospitable. But, that said, I would get creative with a murphy bed/rollaway/etc. in the dual home office. I highly recommend checking out Apartment Therapy (.com). They have "Small Cool" right now. It's inspiring to see people create entire homes out of 300 sq ft. Check out this murphy bed option: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/small-cool-2009/small-cool-2009-anns-ship-shape-teenytiny-division-04-081159.

[Anonymous]

Another option for guests - we have one of these inflatable beds, and they are VERY comfortable and are very close to an actual bed - I think older relatives would have no problem staying in something like this since it's at normal bed height: http://www.frontgate.com/jump.jsp?itemID=4144&itemType=PRODUCT&path=1%2C2%2C105%2C1349

We also use out small 3rd room as a nursery, and have a combined office/guest room for when folks come to visit. We moved into this house from a 1B apt when our DD was 7 months, though she still wound up in bed with us a fair amount as she wasn't a great sleeper. If things had been ideal, I would have wanted to move her into her own room around the 4-6 month range.

[Anonymous]

PP whose DD slept in room with us until she was 9 months - it is weird having sex when the baby is in the room. Didn't bother DH, but it did weird me out some and made it hard for me to relax. We sometimes did it anyway, but also used it as an excuse to get out of our BR and explore other regions of the house, which isn't all bad.

[Anonymous]

IMHO, a baby needs to learn to sleep on their own. I am all for bonding and being there for your child, but I've seen too many kids (I work in childcare and have a child of my own) who've had troubles sleeping on their own because parents struggle with letting their child sleep on the other side of the wall, in their own room. I'm not saying anyone is doing this, just sharing my experience.

My son was in his own room from the first hour he was home from the hospital. He sleeps well, knows that when he's ready to get up to call out, and isn't disturbed by everything else going on around him.

[Anonymous]

Hi, OP, so sorry, no time to read all the posts, so forgive me if this is redundant.

We have a 3BR home, but one of the bedrooms is teeny-tiny. It was our office before DS was born, but we moved the office down to the finished basement where our TV is when he was born and put him in the teeny room, leaving the second bedroom for guests. Fast forward two years to when DD was born, we have her crib and changing table in the guest room w/ a double bed. When guests come, we let them have our room and we sleep in the guest room w/ her. To me, that's way less disruptive to everyone than putting up a pack & play in our room and screwing with the baby's sleep. Plus if she wakes in the night, she doesn't wake up our guests, just us.

But, my 3yo son is rapidly outgrowing his toddler bed now, so I think by the end of the summer, the baby will have to get moved to the teeny room. We'll just put my son in the full size bed that is currently the guest bed. When guests come, he has a blow up mattress he can sleep on in our room.

I work a couple days a week from home, and am not a huge fan of having the office in what is essentially the rec room, but that is mainly because I am a bit of a procrastinator and easily distracted.

My first was in our room in a co-sleeper for about 3 months, making nighttime nursing so much eaiser. He was a really restless sleeper though, and it was really screwing with my sleep, so we moved him out. My second child was a dream of a sleeper, and stayed w/ us for 5 months w/ no problems.

[Anonymous]

Just a friendly note to not feel guilty for not giving the baby a dedicated nursery. I think much of whether the baby needs a dedicated space is cultural. No one in my family has created a designated nursery for a young child; I know that I slept in my parents' room until I was a toddler (I was the youngest of three kids; we lived in a tiny 2 bedroom apartment). There are pictures of me sleeping everywhere in the house, I expect my little one to do the same.

We decided that we wanted to have the crib, futon and desk in one room, with a queen sized guest bed in the smallest room. Our guests are more than occasional - we will have family coming for extended periods of time to help with the baby (including my elderly in-laws, who will come from India for about 3 months to take care of the baby). (We have two guest beds because with extended visits from both sides of the family, it's likely there will be a lot of overlap.)

We'll have a pack and play with changing table downstairs, and also a changing station upstairs. When I do work from home, I imagine that the baby will be downstairs with my in-laws, and not in her nursery. I can definitely see the appeal of confining a lot of the baby stuff to one room (and not having to trip over it while working at the home office) but for us, I think this arrangement will be best for the time being. Just remember that furniture moves, and you can rearrange once you decide what works best for you.

[Anonymous]

Here is the perspective of someone who had a lived with a child in a tiny NYC apartment until she was about 1.5 yo.

First, I think that no child ever really 'needs" their own room (own bed, yes) until they can afford to pay rent.

Unless your child has really bad sleep issues or you an your spouse tend to hang out in bed, then I think that you can keep the crib in your room for as long as you are comfortable with it. As I mentionede before, we did this for over a year. WE hada good sleeper and would put her to bed around 8:30 and then head to bed later. We had no TV in the bedroom and really only used it for sleeping so it was not an issue. In terms of intimacy, lets just say that our LR sofa saw a lot of action as our child got older.

I think that the home office/nursery combo would work if you do not work a lot at night, for naps you can always move the child to another room.


I also think that your idea of the guest room/nursery combo is also workable, but only until the child is around 3 or 4 - once he or she gets used to the idea the its their room it will be hard to kick them out when a guest arrives.

[Anonymous]

I haven't read all of the prior posts but I can tell you that trying to share anything with the nursery would be very hard for me. I wouldn't be as worried about the "stuff" component until baby is mobile, but baby goes to sleep at 7 pm and naps several times throughout the day, so the room would be off-limits during all of those times. It's also not a great idea to displace your kid's sleep space on a regular basis to accommodate guests. Infant and even toddler sleep patterns are unfortunately a very delicate thing that can be disturbed easily, and they need to stick to routines as much as possible. This doesn't mean never go on vacation, but I really think when you are home the baby should be sleeping in the same spot every night and for all naps after about 2 months.

I don't know how often you have guests, but it may be worth investing in one of the higher-end aerobeds (the ones that actually rise to the height of an actual bed.) They're about $200 but truly quite comfortable and can be set up anywhere.