Designing a Baby Nursery (When You’re Sharing a Room)

Designing a Baby Nursery (When You’re Sharing a Room)

Before we had our first baby, Anneliese, I carefully arranged a special room just for her, even though we knew we would have her in our bedroom with us most of the time. With a 3-bedroom house, it was easy for her to have her own spot. Of course we had the master bedroom, and the second bedroom was our “office” and craft area. The third room was going to be a playroom for my in-home childcare, until we found out I was pregnant and we scrapped that plan.

One thing that I thought would be absolutely necessary was a nursing/pumping “station.” In truth, I rarely used this area. Anneliese nursed so much that I never had time to pump (I had planned to try pumping in between to increase my supply), and I didn’t want to be confined to this chair while she nursed. Most of the time I was on the couch in the living room or in bed with her.

So while a nursing station is cute, it’s far from essential.

From the beginning, her room had a Montessori floor bed, not a crib. Everything within her reach was child-safe, and “explorable.” While she didn’t sleep in this room much (we moved when she was 5 months old), some naps took place here, and I loved watching her have playtime on the floor bed in front of the mirror.

But what if you’re sharing a room with your baby? Maybe you don’t have the extra room for a separate nursery, or you’re going to wait until baby is sleeping through the night before having him share a room with his sister (cough). Maybe you just like to have baby close by and you’ll deal with making a separate space for him when he’s older… That’s all well and good too.

You can design a baby “nursery” even if you share a room.

Here are what my 5 essentials looked like when Joseph was a newborn:

1. Joseph’s place to sleep was his cosleeper when he was new. He slept really well in it, up against my bed at first, but after a little while I noticed he nursed better if I was alert and sitting up, versus just pulling him to my side from the cosleeper. So…
2. I moved the sleeper away from the bed so that I would have to fully wake to nurse him. I could help him with better posture, breast compressions, and so forth, and put him back in his cosleeper when he was finished nursing. When I started pumping and we were bottle-feeding him for a while, having his sleeper away from the bed also helped me sneak back to bed without waking him after I finished pumping. So my bed was his place to nurse, separate from where he slept.
3. His place for diapering was a changing pad on top of the dresser. It has tethers that screw into the back of the dresser, so that it won’t fall off, and we could keep our diapering things in the top drawers and on top of the dresser. Everything in one place. I say “was” because my 6 foot tall husband really prefers changing pads at a comfortable height like this, whereas I am comfortable changing babies pretty much anywhere. Since my husband took care of the majority of nighttime diapers in the first months, I went ahead and set up this changing area for him. Because if your husband is on board with diapering, you want to make it the best diapering experience of his life.
4. I bought a new dresser before Joseph was born, a Hemnes dresser from Ikea, the same style Anneliese has in her room. My dresser was small and rickety, a cheap thing we had gotten from Target years ago, so I had been wanting to replace it anyway. Joey’s things are in one half of it, and mine are in the other half. It works just fine, because most of his things are tiny and most of mine are hung in my closet.
5. I found this gorgeous laser-cut bamboo mobile at ecomom.com (watch Plum District for vouchers so you can get more bang for your $ there!) and knew it was perfect for my little boy. I hung it above the changing table, and he still loves to watch its shapes twirling gently. I still change him on the changing pad sometimes, even though I’m a “wherever/whenever” girl when it comes to diapers, just so he can watch these sweet creatures dancing.

What your 5 essentials could look like:

1. A family bed on the floor, a king-sized bed with rails so baby won’t fall out, a crib in your room, a basinet next to your bed, a cosleeper attached to your bed, a (safe, made for babies to sleep in) hammock near your bed, a separate mattress on the floor in your room…
2. A special chair in your room, your bed, a beanbag chair (hey, it could work), or baby’s floor bed (twin or bigger, so you can lie with baby to nurse)…
3. A changing pad on the dresser like mine, a changing table in the hallway right outside your room, a Patemm Pad on the floor or at the end of your bed, an area in your bathroom (if yours isn’t miniscule like mine is), a blanket on the floor…
4. A shared or separate dresser, baskets in your closet (one for night clothes, one for day clothes, one for tiny things like socks and hats), a drawer that slides under your bed, the shelves in your night stand, baskets in a small bookshelf, or hung in your closet on hangers.
5. A framed photo of your family, a mirror, a special mobile, a painting you made just for baby…

Do you share a room with your newborns? What do you consider to be necessary or helpful in your room? What do your five essentials look like?

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