I moved into the guest room when I was 9 months pregnant because I tossed around too much and I needed like 100 pillows to get comfy. When the baby arrived I still slept in the guest bed with her. At about 6 months, I moved back in with hub and baby slept in a crib in the guest room. It was a nice set up. We all got great sleep and it wasn't forever.

When Kid 2 comes we'll probably do the same thing and (hopefully!) move the baby in with older sister when she's ready for a crib.

My girls are 6 & 4, so not that far apart in age. However, when they first started sharing a room they were 4 & 2, and had different bedtimes. The best decision was to consolidate bedtimes, which resulted in me snuggling in a very crowded bed (they share a full) in order for my 2-year old to fall asleep. Once they were both on the same schedule, everything went fairly smoothly. The hardest part is when one has a cold, which ALWAYS results in coughing all night and keeping the other sibling awake. Then it's me and "the cougher" on the couch all night.

We have five children in our three bedroom house (a blended family). Our two older girls (6 & 8) share one room, the younger ones (both 4) share the other. Our new baby boy has his very own nursery, which up until a couple of months ago was our bedroom. We've converted the sun room downstairs into our bedroom for now, but I really miss that extra living/entertaining/reading/play space. Plus, having a bedroom surrounded on three sides by windows and 15-pane french doors opening to the living room is less than ideal. We're saving up for a basement renovation and will probably toss the older girls down there when they're teenagers.

Oh, and the baby? I said he has his own room upstairs, but I did not say that is where he sleeps.

we had our daughter sleep in our bed til about 1yr old. then she got a mattress in the corner of our room (which was soooo wonderful on weekend morning when she'd get herself out of bed, go play for a few minutes in the living room, before bringing books into our bed). but we've recently moved to a MUCH larger apt, and the kid temporarily has her own bedroom and playroom. when kid #2 is born in 10 weeks, he'll share our bedroom for the first few months, then we'll transition him to our daughter's bedroom with his own mattress.

We have a boy 7 and a girl, almost 4 who share a room. it's not always the easiest thing but in order to make our lives work (three bedroom house, two work at home parents= 1 parents bedroom, 1 kid bedroom, 1 office) that's the way it's got to be. The biggest challenge has been getting them both to sleep. At the moment, I read to them till the younger one falls asleep and then leave to let the older one read to himself until he zonks. Time consuming, but it works...for now. As with all things parentling related, just as we get used to it, it's bound to change...

Count us in on the "fail" camp, at least so far. We have two bedrooms upstairs for 5 of us, so the plan was for our three girls (one toddler and twins) to share after a few months of the babies sleeping in a co-sleeper beside our bed. Ha! From day 1, it was a failure. When the twins were newborns, the babies shared a pack-n-play in the family room while my husband and I took shifts on the couch at night, and they napped in their co-sleeper. Once we were able to stop taking those shifts, we moved them to the co-sleeper until they were about 4 months old and outgrew it. Then we tried, and miserably failed, to get them all in their room. The twins had gotten used to each other crying at night so we figured our toddler would too. She didn't. We also figured that if we waited to put the twins in their cribs until our toddler was asleep, she wouldn't wake up and prevent them from sleeping. She did. The final straw was one night when a baby woke up, started crying, and before we could get into the room our toddler had climbed into the crib and was holding her hand over the baby's mouth saying "sush baby!" Yikes. Now the twins are 14 months and our toddler is 3. She has the girls room all to herself with the added fun of two empty cribs to jump in and climb on, and the babies sleep in portable cribs in our (thankfully, large) closet. I always wonder if someone is going to come after us for making my kids sleep in a closet.

We've not lost hope, and we're planning to try again with all three in one room at the end of this summer.

We have a 6 year old and a 13 month old (and one on the way..oops!) :)

Our two bedroom condo didn't accommodate to have both girls in the smaller room... so we moved them into the master suite. Our room is tiny now, but it still has a full bathroom... just not the double sinks, granite... :) We make it work. And, until we can move into something better its nice that all 3 children will be able to share the master suite for a good year before we can move.

Cheers,
jewels

We turned the guest room into the nursery, but left the queen guest bed in there (because we have company come all the time!) and thankfully, we were able to fit a crib and dresser in there too! It's cozy, but cute. (I'm working on finishing the decor to submit to My Room) Anyway, We made an arrangement when the baby was new and eating every two hours. I slept in the guest/nursery room 4 nights, while my hubby got uninterrupted sleep. (all the better to not get fired!) On the weekends, he slept in the guest bed and I got two full night's sleep. Heavenly.

Although I reported us as a FAIL on the survey, we're more of a 50/50 split.

Our first slept in a Pack N Play bassinet in our room for the first 3 months. Then he moved into his own room.

Our plans were that our second would do the same (while we changed the office/junkroom over to a nursery). None of us slept well with her in our room, so she slept in a bassinet in the living room until she outgrew it. Then we moved her into a regular Pack N Play. For her first birthday, we finally cleared, painted, and arranged her room.

The next child will have to share a room with someone as we're out of single rooms. We're planning on grouping by age (youngest together) initially and by gender when the kids are older. Our plans may have no impact on future realities.

"Our plans may have no impact on future realities."

Love this! Adrienne's quote sums it up perfectly for me. For Room-Sharing. For Parenting. For Life in General.

After 8 months of camping out in our living room on air mattresses, my husband and I are re-claiming our bedroom (!!) from our very sweet and very loud one-year-old daughter this weekend. She will share a room with her three-year-old sister (Who is ecstatic about the prospect...now. But will she be so enthusiastic after she realizes bedtime stores will move to the couch and being waken up at 4am every morning is no fun?) We are desperate at this point to have our own space back, so it's time. And we will just deal with whatever complications arise. It's a two-bedroom house. No one gets their own room, so we'll just all have to adjust to the new arrangement. And I'm optimistic. And very excited to be sleeping in a real bed soon.

So far it feels like we're failing... in a two-room apartment, there is only one bedroom (and one other room -- Berkeley rental rates one student husband one non-working new mom). Our one-month-old son is really loud, not crying but just making lots of baby noises (lots of LOUD grunts). Did others who couldn't get into another sleeping arrangement just grow used to this? Do they quiet down? Our cat, at least, has found respite on a small pile of cushions in a corner of the kitchen, but he still glares at the baby as much as possible. We'll be sticking it out in this in-lawl unit for at least another 10 months...

At the most extreme, I have slept several blocks away at a friends' house to get sleep, but now we're moving so little stinker can have her own room. I'm a psycho without my sleep.

Gosh, I'm so glad we don't have to deal with this. I have a nine-year-old stepson and a seven-month-old son and we have four rooms that can be used as bedrooms. So lucky.

We just transitioned our 3 month old into the planned shared nursery with her 3 year old sister 2 weeks ago. So far so good. The baby only wakes up once at night and the baby moniter helps me get to her before she cries enough to wake up her sister. Whether our 3 year old wakes the baby in the morning is hit or miss, but that doesn't matter as much right now. The use of white noise at night helps, I think.

Heh, we have plenty of extra bedrooms but our 21 month old is still happily sleeping in our bed. He will be getting his very own big boy bed as soon as Mommy finishes painting it! We will sort of miss the little guy, though, he is such a good snuggler:)

We technically have a second bedroom where Jack could sleep. Technically. He wasn't very old when I found that he was sleeping with us more often than not (which was awesome for the breastfeeding relationship -- no more getting up multiple times a night to nurse in a rocker!) so I did some research and found many compelling reasons to choose to cosleep. After that we gave up even the pretense of him sleeping in his own room. His room stores his clothes and his diaper changing area, and the crib we occasionally use to park him in while we put laundry in the dryer.

Since he is almost able to climb out of the crib, I'm thinking I'll dismantle it next month and put a double bed in there for guests, and when he's ready, we will transition him to the big person bed, which will still have lots of room to nurse and for mummy and daddy cuddles. Basically, his toys are in the living room and he sleeps with us, so it may be a year or more before he *needs* his own room. It almost makes me wish we moved into a one bedroom as we could have saved so much rent!

The market has kept us in our one bedroom townhouse, so the four of us (mom, dad, toddler, and baby) currently share a room. We bedshared with our daughter until she was about 18 months, when we transitioned her to her own bed. However, she wound up back in our bed when her baby brother was born. Rather than fight it (hey, we were already tired enough!), we created a "family" bed; we attached the kids' cribs to our queen bed. It is sort of like an extra large co-sleeper on either side. The toddler can snuggle with us if she wants to, but we don't have to worry about her bumping into her baby brother - or us - and the baby can easily be pulled closer for middle of the night feedings. So far, it has worked really well for us. I love snuggling with my family in our big bed!

Our first was a surprise, and came in the middle of renovations, so she slept in a stokke in our room (there was no space between our bed, her cot and the wall). This worked really well for us, and she seemed quite happy.
When her brother came 14 mths later (again, oops!), he pushed her into the room next to ours and took up the stokke for himself! When he was 6mths, he was put in with his sister (who miraculously slept through his lion-like sleep snuffling).

Now we have 5 kids, girl - 7, boy - 6, girl - 3, boy - 3 and girl - 9 months.

When we renovated, there was no ensuite in the master bedroom so we decided to make a smaller bedroom the master bedroom, and added ensuite/WIR to it, keeping the biggest room for the kids. The bigger room is now shared by the girls, and the boys share a room. We have our room, and sick/scared/sad kids usually come into our room and one of us will go to the spare room.

total fail.
we live in a 2br apartment: 5yo and 2.5yo are in the same room. 2.5yo has been climbing out of his crib for weeks but i'm in denial. they come charging into our room at 5 in the morning and stay awake. i'm thinking of just making one room the "sleeping room" and the other the play room.

So all of this is so depressing as I contemplate still living in our small 2-bedroom after we have a second child (not on the way yet). We'd planned to move a long time ago, but didn't forsee this real estate market! (As if anyone did.)

Can we have another post about how people got kids to share rooms with each other?? How the older kid just got used to the baby's waking? Pleeeeeeease?? People who successfully got their kids to be quiet until 7 a.m.? I HAVE to believe that it's possible!!

No fail here. We have four and are expecting another this Fall. We've lived in 2 bedroom 700 sq. foot apartments before and always had our own room (usually with a co-sleeping little one until they were about 3 years old). My kids love sharing rooms, and growing up in a big family, it was totally normal to share rooms and co-sleep. So I guess I can't really see why someone would choose the living room-seems more inconvenient to have to pick up all your stuff and get your bed areas out of the way for company and kids to play and be together in the house.

The only problem so far has been in my oldest (9) keeping my 5 year old awake by reading late at night, but by pushing her bedtime back, the 5 year old is asleep by the time the 9 year old lays down. Our room isn't big now by any means, but we have an affordable and beautiful old house and french doors to open outside for beautiful views.

Why is everyone on here having trouble with kids sharing rooms? I know no one who ever has had issues with it, so I'm curious-is it one kid keeping another up at night or something? Is it space? We've had 3 kids in a 12 x 10 room before thanks to bunks and decluttering.

my two boys of 4 & 2y have their own top floor with three rooms, but prefer to sleep in the same room. They used to sleep each in another room, but snuggled into each others beds. Now they sleep together in one bunk bed which we had for older kids staying overnight. So, it's rather the opposite over here.

We have a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old and we made it work. 1-year-old shared a room with us until he moved in with big brother. Big brother quickly learned to sleep through baby brother's frequent interruptions. I don't want to sound obnoxious, because I know it sometimes just doesn't work. But I've seen first-hand a lot of homes where families of 5 or 6 sleep in 1 or 2 bedrooms. If they can do that in Africa, I can in America (however, I make no promises--I'm just saying we have so far).

In regards to problems with kids sharing, it can be difficult.

We struggled at first to get our two eldest to share. Our eldest (2.5 at the time) thought it was fine to wake up her brother whenever she woke, even when we specifically asked her not to.
A rewards chart fixed this - every time she woke up and left him sleeping, she got a sticker. She also quickly learnt that if she left him sleeping that meant alone time with me and/or my husband!

Now everyone goes to bed at 6.45pm (3yo twins also nap at 11.45pm). With 5 kids it's too hard having staggered bedtimes, much easier to have one set bed time. We all have a story together in the lounge room, and then bed.
Miss7 has started requesting before-bed reading, which she is allowed to do in our bed for 15 minutes.

I put alarm clocks in both rooms, that go off at 7am. The kids know if they wake up before 7, it's quiet play until the alarms go off (again - reward chart helped here, as well as only books, soft toys and puzzles being kept in bedrooms).
Our youngest (9mths) is a dream sleeper... she's slept through since 4 mths, and usually doesn't wake til 7.30, so we have been VERY lucky.

In the boys room are two twin beds, one with trundle for cousins and friends. In the girls room is a low loft bed over toddler bed setup for our older girls, and a crib for our baby.

It took a bit of shuffling and experimenting, but we eventually found the setup that worked.... for now!

He he he, I have one of those who grunts as well! And it kept me awake all night while everyone else slept....
We co-shared the first months with a baby-bay (one of those beds you fix onto your own).
Since he was six months old he slept in his own bed but still in our bedroom (not much better for me).
And now (as I have posted in another thread) I let him fall asleep in the bedroom and wheel him out into the hallway for the remainder of the night. And it works wonderfully!
We have our bedroom back to ourselves, he sleeps soundly from 8 pm to 8 am and everyone is happy and rested.