What do you do about your older kid when new born wakes up at night?

[Anonymous]

I have a 4 year old and am due in June. Kids will be in separate but adjacent bedrooms. How do you handle your baby waking up the older kid? Does your older kid just sleep through the baby most of the time if you get a white noise machine? Do you just have to accept that the older one will be super tired until the baby starts sleeping through the night? Are there any other ways of dealing with this that I am not thinking of?

[Anonymous]

Mine never woke that I can recall. If he did, DH would have gone in to him to get him back to bed.

[Anonymous]

Our kid slept through without a noise machine. There's a reason fire alarm companies are experimenting with alarms that feature a recording of the mom's voice calling the child's name. Young children are hard to wake up.

For us the bedtime juggle with two was a bigger challenge.

[Anonymous]

We had baby in our room for the first 4.5 months which was across the hall but not adjacent to our son's room. This helped when newborn wake ups were the highest. He rarely was woken up by us and when he was, DH dealt with it. By the time we moved her to her room, she was down to one wake up around 4am-5am. She still sleeps until about 4-5am most nights (almost 6 months), and the one night she woke him it was a bit of a disaster. We realize that he hears ME in her room and wants to come hang out with mom. So we do a quick diaper change and feed her in our room and then put her back to her crib. She'll make noise going back to sleep but that doesn't usually wake him and if so, DH goes in, sings a quick song, and he's back to sleep. We're more likely to wake him than she is. He tunes her out.

[Anonymous]

Nothing. Baby never woke up the older one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our kid slept through without a noise machine. There's a reason fire alarm companies are experimenting with alarms that feature a recording of the mom's voice calling the child's name. Young children are hard to wake up.

For us the bedtime juggle with two was a bigger challenge.

Wow, really?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our kid slept through without a noise machine. There's a reason fire alarm companies are experimenting with alarms that feature a recording of the mom's voice calling the child's name. Young children are hard to wake up.

For us the bedtime juggle with two was a bigger challenge.

Wow, really?

DP here, yes, this is not new. in fact, even adults respond faster to another person calling their names than a smoke alarm beeping.

it has something to do with sound frequency and voice recognition (especially during sleep cycles).


OP- unless your 4 yr old is a super light sleeper I wouldn't worry. Having a baby sibling can make transition tough, so consider prefacing it with a "warning". Something like "You may hear Baby cry during the night sometimes. No worries though. Either me or Daddy are on the way to getting up and feeding him/her. Just go back to sleep".

[Anonymous]

We traveled with a baby that still woke up at night. Slept all five of us in one room and baby never woke up older kids. Humans have been having multiple children for a long time. We’re made to handle that.

[Anonymous]

None of mine ever woke up when the baby cried.

[Anonymous]

Noise machines blasting in both rooms. Kids are 22 months apart and did occasionally wake one another up - but I have two very light sleepers who were even light sleepers as newborns.

[Anonymous]

I’m assuming you will have a baby monitor set up so you can hear the baby wake? Unless the baby is wailing for a prolonged period of time I can’t imagine it waking up the 4 year old. A few moments of crying from our baby in our room hardly even disturbs my husband sleeping next to me. Add white noise if necessary.

[Anonymous]

They are on opposite walls. I told my older one to just go back to sleep if she wakes up hearing the baby cry. And both kids have white noise machines.

[Anonymous]

Our kids have never woken each other up in the middle of the night with crying as babies or toddlers.

I was more concerned about the older kid waking me or the baby up during precious sleep between feedings (and am again now as we prepare for #3). DH was/will be on older kid nighttime duty & I'll be pushing him out to run interference before an older kid comes near our door.

[Anonymous]

It's so easy to sleep through a baby crying. Only moms can't do it. Can't you keep baby in a bassinet next to your bed for the first 12? Then by the time we moved our infants they were mostly sttn and didn't wake up siblings.

[Anonymous]

If dads can sleep through it, children definitely can.