Advice - Moving a Toddler into a new bedroom before baby comes

[MummyNaomi]

We are expecting a DD in July and I am currently in the process of clearing out our spare room as plan to move DS (almost 3yo) in over Easter so he is in there about 3 months before the new arrival - hoping then he wont associate the move with his new baby sister kicking him out of his current room.

We've told him we are decorating him a special new bedroom and let him choose the theme (he chose Lightening McQueen) and once we have painted I plan to get him to help 'set it up' and put some pictures and wall decals up, and give him some special little jobs etc to set up 'his special new bedroom'.

Just looking for any other tips to make the transition smooth - If you moved your toddler pre-baby - what worked well (or not)?

[Maruschke]

We've moved rooms (not because of a baby) and went into a big bed at the same time.

At first, we just moved her cot into the new room, and she slept quite fine actually, for about a week.

Then we put the big bed in there, but strapped down the edges of the cot to the outside of the bed, and every few days we would take away one side of the cot. Within 2 weeks she was sleeping in the new room in the big bed. Was so much easier than we expected it to be.

[kelsbels]

We moved DD into her big girls room about 8 weeks before bubs arrived with no problems. Once we had moved her we just told her the nursery would now be bubbas room and she just went with it!

Good luck

[Charlotte91]

DD is 15mos (I'm 25w) and we are moving house in 3 weeks.
I'm really worried how she's going to go.

[Jellyfish]

We actually did it one week after baby arrived as we were living in a one bedroom apartment so she had her toddler bed in our room but moved to a two bedroom place just after DD2 was born. Not ideal but just how it ended up working out so it might be a little different as she had never had her own room and we moved apartments at the same time but she was never anything but super excited. We had a sign with her name made up which she seemed to love having on her door and helped her put all her things away. We just spoke really positively about it and how lucky she was to have her own space. She never had any trouble with it, went to sleep in there no problem first night and every night since.

DD1 never even seemed concerned that DD2 'kicked her out of our room' (as DD2 is now in with us), she has never actually demonstrated any jealousy so far. She was 2yr10month at the time and I think we overthought it so much as we were really worried about her adjusting to the baby when if anything, she is tooooo obsessed with DD2 and smoothers her sister with love and attention... 'space' is a very common word around here! It is a good age as you can explain a lot to them, I told DD1 that DD2 was very little so needed lots of milk to grow so had to be close to me even at night because her tummy is very small. I explained that when she had grown she would be able to crawl and play so now DD1 is always keen for DD2 to feed or sleep because she wants her to be bigger!