SUBSCRIBE BELOW TO GET POSTS BY EMAIL

Enter your email address:

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

No One Puts Baby in the Corner

Or the closet apparently.

Back in August when B Daddy and I found out we were expecting child #3 in as many years, I cried. Many of the tears were shed because it meant no more wine and impending heartburn, but then there was also the fact that we had no room for a baby. No. Room.

Then I cried because I was finally skinny again and being pregnant would mean getting fat.

But back to the room thing. We live in an adorable little three bedroom ranch house. We bought it in 2005, with the assumption (like everyone who bought a house in 2005) that we would live here for a few years, decide to start a family, bank $30K when we sold the home and move on up a la The Jeffersons.

Side Note :
When we went to get a loan to buy our "starter home," our mortgage broker practically called us everything but losers for not taking out an interest-only 5yr ARM with 0% down. She was 30 and had her own mortgage company and a really shiny car. I mainly remember walking out of her office feeling like a naive country bumpkin for asking about 30 yr fixed rate loans.

But that's what we got. And then two years into our marriage Dave came to speak at church and I went home and convinced B Daddy that what we were doing wrong with our lives was having a second mortgage (to avoid paying something called PMI...) and that we needed to pay it off pronto.

And so from 2007 to 2008 we (both making good money with no diaper or formula or OBGYN line items in the budget yet) dutifully plunked down cash each month until that mortgage was gone and we could proudly say we owned a full 20% of our home.

Then in 2009 we brought home our first bundle of joy. And I found there was more than enough room for three of us. I loved that we had no stairs to put baby gates on and that there was absolutely no reason to use a baby monitor when you could hear a whisper in the kitchen from our back bedroom. So in 2010 Sweet B graced our lives with her presence and Casa Leipprandt became fully occupied. Now the plan has always been to have more than 2 kids, but apparently my knack for anal-retentive life planning went out the window with my birth control pills in 2008. So here we are with #3 on the way and No Room.

Which is where I should bring the financial side note on our mortgage status full circle. We could afford to move. We are thankfully not upside down. We bought a small home that we could more than afford and have worked hard to pay it down. We live in an amazing neighborhood where our house would likely sell for a good bit more than we paid for it.

But along the way we fell in love. You know how much I love our house. I don't want to move. Ever. I love it here. I love the scratched up hardwoods that we naively installed thinking they were lab-proof. I love the swing in the front yard and the chicken coop in the back and the big master bedroom and the renovated kitchen. I could go on and on and on.

When I finally stopped crying and we started talking about where Baby #3 would sleep, I thought the master closet was a brilliant solution. It's big, close to my bed for midnight feedings and hey NO windows! That baby would sleep like the dead. B Daddy was totally on board.

And then suddenly he wasn't. Something about not wanting to get dressed in the hallway and having to take silent showers.

So we are back to the drawing board. Sweet B cries out in the night A LOT. I really do love her and want to continue loving her and I'm worried that if she shared a room with The Squirt and woke him up ever I wouldn't love her for a while. But babies cry A LOT as well. So it's not exactly reasonable to expect my angel Squirt to sleep through a newborn's wailings either.

All this to say we're getting estimates on turning the screened in porch into a sunroom/nursery/playroom/guest room. And it ain't gonna be cheap. But it is exciting to think about. I'll keep you posted.

Anyone have sibling room-sharing tales to regale me with?? Or brilliant ideas about where else to put the baby? I'm open to any and all opinions...we have 11 weeks to figure it out.

7 comments:

  1. Katie, my girls share a room by their own choice. When we moved Hannah had a really hard time adjusting and her pediatrician suggested we put them in the same room for comfort reasons. They haven't looked back. Allie (my youngest) cries out probably 3 or 4 nights a week and Hannah sleeps straight through it. Of course there are some nights where Allie and I move to the family room, but for the most part, they don't disturb each other. They read together and giggle going to bed and enjoy knowing they are both there. I will be surprised if they choose to separate much before the teenage years. I think you would be surprised how your kids would deal. Good luck, stay healthy and don't worry about being fat...you are adorable pregnant!

    ReplyDelete
  2. To buy you some time, what about having #3 sleep in a bassinet or co-sleeper in y'alls room? This might help get you over the hump until you're ready to bunk two of the kiddos together. Lukas slept in our room for the first 4 months and it worked for us. Just a suggestion. Good luck!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Over 30 years ago we were offered the opportunity to purchase a few acres in the country and have a house built. We were young (then) energenic, already had four (yes!) kids and all we could afford was 3/2... So, we sold our little home, made a double the first price and plunked down our money. We opted for larger living areas in the kitchen and took down the wall that divided the living from the family. We were prepared to have the children share rooms, we did and we turned out "OK". Then... I became pregnant with #5 !!! Where do we put the new baby??? The bedrooms were already tiny (only 10 x 11), one child had consistant nightmares, every night, we had no choice but to bunk up. They all survived (curious note - they have smaller families) Two years into our new home, the Lord sent us our niece - then we had 6! We eventually converted the garaged into another room for the growing children, and built a carport.

    All this to say, there is no way you can plan out your life, just try to be in the Lord's will and he will work it all out. We didn't do everything perfectly, but we feel that we did have a happy family.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have a 6 year old and a 2 year old and a 2-bedroom, 900 sq ft house. And somehow it works.

    My son, Ian, sleeps like the dead once asleep, but it is really hard to get him to GO to sleep. My daughter, Evie... basically does not sleep at all. To make it work, we put Ian to be in our bed and then move him over to his own bed in the shared bedroom once they are both asleep.

    Even at 2 years old Evie wakes several times during the night and we found that Ian is much better at sleeping through her complaints than we are. Even when she pelts him with toys. Or sings him the Wonder Pets theme song for 15 minutes straight. Crazy girl.

    So there are challenges and some 10pm sleeping child juggling, but we've made it work in the space we have. We HOPE that eventually they will grow to fear our wrath so much that they will drop off to sleep in the same room without a peep. Or, at least, with minimal bed/crib gymnastics. So far it's not going so well, but we perservere!

    ReplyDelete
  5. My sister and I shared a room pretty much forever and so did my brothers. We loved it and each sibling learned to sleep through anything the other one did or go right back to sleep if awakened. I remember when my youngest brother was little, my parents simply kept him in a crib next to their bed until he was old enough to make sharing a room easier.
    If you need to put the baby in one of the other kids' room, I would suggest trying to keep him in your room until he is sleeping pretty well through the night and then pick the kid that sleeps the hardest and put the baby in there?
    And of course if you can afford to turn the porch into a nursery then by all means go for it ;)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Y'all are such an encouragement! Thank you for your suggestions and stories. I don't think the world will come to an end if Sweet B and E share a room...or if we use a bassinet for the first couple of months. Getting a full night's sleep makes me really shiny and happy though, so it's uber hard to imagine messing with the good thing we've got going on.

    ReplyDelete
  7. OK, so I am convinced that children in God's timing are a blessing, to every member of the family. Going out on a limb, but I think it might be good for "Squirt" to share a room with his sister. I can think of a lot of good character traits, like flexibility, charity, etc. that he would gain. And who knows, he might be a deep sleeper and it might not be that big a deal. Or, little sister might be comforted by seeing big brother and not scream so much... you just never know, but that's the way I would go. I agree, changing in the hallway and taking silent showers might not work out, at least not for more than a few weeks. In any case, I'm praying and thinking about you, knowing that this baby will truly be a gift to every member of your family, though it might come with a few tears for everyone too :)

    ReplyDelete

 
site design by designer blogs