sleeping arrangments for 2 under 2

According to my ticker I have only got 76 days until number 2 arrives :shock: so I think its about time I started thinking about sleeping arrangements. At the monet Yasin starts the night in his own room and most nights he wakes up and yells so we bring him into our bed. Usually he goes back to sleep until the morning but sometimes he wakes up and needs resettling. I'm planning to have number 2 in the hammock beside the bed like I did with Yasin so I can feed in bed but I'm a bit worried that Yasin and the baby will wake each other up. Also I often used to put Yasin in bed beside me after night feeds but if Yasin is already in the bed it won't be safe to put the baby beside him. I've been wondering if I should start encourageing Yasin to sleep in his own room all night and I feel that if I'm going to do that I should start soon so he doesn't associate the change with the baby. Its not just Yasin who will have to learn new sleeping habits. If DH gets home late and Yasin isn't in bed he will wait until the first squeak (even if its a sleep squeak not a shout for room service) and then rush off to grab him and bring him into bed (if only he was so keen on loking after him at 6am).
Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas? What family sleeping arrangments have you found worked with 2 littlies under 2?

There is only 20mths between our 3 and when Erin came, Lindsay was still in the cot in his room (he has never slept with us in our bed). Erin was in the bassinette in our room until she was too big (3mths). Then she went in to the cot and Lindsay into his 'big boy bed'. They never seemed to wake each other up luckily. Is Yasin in a cot or a bed? Maybe this could be your chance to get him excited about a big boy bed. Let him help you pick sheets etc to make him feel grown up and important. That way he may want to stay in his own bed. When Bubby is big enough for the cot, maybe they can share a room and Yasin will still have a sense of someone being in the room with him.

When any of ours wakes in the night, I aways sat beside them to comfort them and get them back to sleep, without having to put them in our bed.

Dach...as you know there are 17 months between Olivia and Charlie and I had the same issue.....particularly becuase I wanted to get Olivia out of the hammock in plenty of time for Charlie to use it, and for her not to associate changes with his arrival, IYKWIM?

Anyway, she moved into a cot at 11 months, and from that point on she rarely needed us in the night so it wasn't an issue, and she has never been a co-sleeper (she never wanted to!) so I can really see how that is tricky for you.

When Charlie was born we had been in a new house for a couple of months, so we used the moving house to get her new big girl room all set up, and Charlie was next to us in the hammock. (He has now moved in to his own room).

I guess my advice would be to try & intoduce some new settling techniques now, for Yasin, just so that when you have the new bub, for night feeds etc, you attempt to just focus on one of them?! (Just from experience, night feeds for me are brain dead time, I am hopeless, if I had had two of them in the same room, it would've stressed me out!)

The other thing that a GF of mine has done (she has a 22 month old son and a 3 month old baby girl) is weaned her son off the co-sleeping in their bed, & he is now in his own room totally, but she has a small divan single bed in his room, so if either she or her DP need to spend time settling him, they can still co-sleep with him in his room, while the new baby is still in their room with the other parent....if that makes sense?

HTH?

The other girls have some great ideas. I found too that with the introduction of a baby sometimes the toddler will want to adopt more big boy traits and then reverse to baby and so forth. We had transitioned to going to bed in their room around 2 which coincided with bubbies being born soon after. We kept (and still have) a mattress along side the bed to be pulled out if needed..so for bad dreams,sickness or whatever the kids know they can come and settle with us and its there if they need it.

Jo

We used to let Harry sleep next to our bed on his little fold out couch if he came in during the night. I was worried that my two would wake each other up but they never did. It was funny, Grace would be screaming for food in the middle of the night and both DH and DS would sleep right through it! Like father like son...

Bon