What do you think? - sleeping arrangements

PrairieMom wrote: I have been debating where to put this kid once s/he is born, and wanted to know what you guys thought.
I live in a quad level multi level house. So, on the top floor is My bed room, and Al's room. Then you go down a small flight of stairs, like, 6, and its all open, to a living room and kitchen. Then you go down 6 more stairs to another living room and what is now Ben's room. Down 6 more stairs, (more closed off-ish) to the spare room and laundry room.

We basically spend all our time in the kitchen/ living room or in the basement living room.
So, the big debate is instead of putting the nursery upstairs right next to my room, putting it down stairs where ben sleeps now. It is equal distance from the kitchen to Al's room or to where I would put the nursery, plus, I would be nearer to the nursery during waking hours. But, at night I would have to walk down 12 steps to get to the nursery to get a crying baby, which I would more than likely take down those stairs into the living room to feed anyway.

Basically, what do you think about having a baby's room on a different floor from your room? We have 2 different monitors, so its not like I couldn't hear the baby crying or something. It kind of makes sense in my head to do things that way, but I wanted to hear what y-all thought about it.

I thought about moving Al down there, but she has this heirloom bed set that she inherited from my mom that won't fit in that room, so she is kind of stuck where she is, and I COULD bunk them together upstairs, but it would be a tight squeeze, and we have that spare room, so it seems kind of silly to squish them together like that.

bluebear replied: What about moving Ben?

PrairieMom replied:
ben will be moving all the way to the basement to the spare room now. I am debating putting the baby where he is sleeping now.

Crystalina replied: This is hard for me to answer. For me, personally, it would bother me but then again I'm a bit more anal about things like that. I refuse to live in a house with more then one story (unless theirs a basement of course). I have this thing that I want to be able to reach the kids in case of fire or at least give them a chance to be able to get out in case of a fire. I'm not saying that people who live in multi level houses don't want to give their kids the same chance but it's part of my OCD when it comes to that.


Then again I have major panic attacks when I get on the interstate so there ya go.

moped replied: Yeah I am NOT OCD and that might bother me.......but my kids have always been right beside our bedroom, never on another floor. I wouldn't like them on another floor at all!

Whatever you are comfortable with !!!!!!

PrairieMom replied: we have thought a lot about fire safety. i totally get where you are coming from. i actually worry more about the upstairs besause it is so high up. i can easily jump the stair rail to get to the

PrairieMom replied: 3rd floor bedroom. the window is street level and easy to climb out of. the sub basement where we would move ben would be harder to reach in a fire, but he could get out his window.

boyohboyohboy replied: our house is set up so all the boys are upstairs, and we are down stairs..I hate it. I wish we were on the same floor, but thats just how it is..
we keep fire ladders in both the older two boys rooms, caleb knows how to use it.
but it does worry me that we might not be able to get to the stairs.
I am sure as the boys get older we will like being on a seperate floor from them.

mom21kid2dogs replied: I would go with oldest child in the area of least egress, next oldest in the second area and the baby on your level. I understand the walking downstairs to the kitchen (we live in a 2 story with bedrooms up and everything else down) but it just seems safer to be able to grab the most dependent child first in a fire. I hate that stuff~seems like choosing between children a little, doesn't it?

PrairieMom replied:
I know. every year we practice fire drills , this year we will practice actually getting out the windows on the lower level. It never hurts for them to know how.


I have thought about having the most dependent child closest to me, but when I think about it, It would be easier to get a baby out of the ground floor window. We would have to get down a story anyway, or else risk jumping from 2 stories up. I need to invest in one of those ladders.

Either way, I am rolling ideas around in my head, I have a ton of time to figure it out anyway, I have at least 6 weeks before I even know gender so I can begin to plan the nursery.

bluebear replied: I'm having a hard time picturing your house... is it like a multi family house? My grandma had one before she sold it, it had a downstairs with a kitchen, upstairs with living room, two bedrooms, then on that floor there was a door that led to the front door to the second "house" that had a staircase leading to another floor with all bedrooms, kitchen, other rooms, etc.. is it like that?

my best bet would to move Ben's room

coasterqueen replied:
This is me, exactly.

PrairieMom replied:
We don't have houses that are less than one story here. Literally everything is 2-3 bedrooms up, split foyer / ranch style with basements.
Ours is kind of like a typical split foyer, but its like the house is cut down the middle and 1/2 of it is jacked up. So we have a 4 bedroom, 3 bath, but the bedrooms are split between 3 levels, which, really are only 1/2 levels.

Des10ed2b replied: for me personally, that would scare me to death. we almost bought a half duplex years ago. it had 2 bedrooms upstairs and one in the basement. the basement was a very open area. at the time it wasnt a problem, because it was just myself, my husband and our daughter. But i started to think in terms of having another baby and one night i had this nightmare that we had moved our daughter to the lower bedroom and a fire broke out that spread across the lower living room and stairs and i could stand there and see her standing in her doorway, holding her blankies and stuffed bear crying, but i had no way to get to her. it terrified me and i have been ridiculously anal about it ever since. we ended up buying a house and the kids rooms are a mirror image of each other and directly across from our bedroom.

MommyToAshley replied: I personally would not be comfortable with that and the kids would probably be sharing a room on the same level with me...LOL. I still get up in the middle of the night and check on Ashley and she's 7.

coasterqueen replied:
Yeah, we have a lot more 2 story homes around here - which is why we built ourselves. We built a ranch for many reasons, not just fire safety, but who wants to lug heavy kids up and down stairs? - that was my main reason. Our kids are still on the other side of the house - we call it the "kids wing" and that makes me nervous enough.

PrairieMom replied:
I can't imagine how much square footage that would take. A house like that would not fit in town for sure. Do you have a basement? what do you do for tornado safety?

luvmykids replied:
We have houses like that all over in town, they are still built on average lots too, they probably just don't have as much yard as you do. Average lot size is 1/4 to 1/3 acre for those in town.

In both NM and the part of TX we are in now, NOBODY has basements....some people have tornado shelters they've had built and others (like us) hunker down in the closet under the stairs.

coasterqueen replied:
Oh there are also lots of houses in town on small lots that are ranch.

Ours is on 3.5 acres that we bought, though. So we have tons of room.

Yes, we have a basement. It is not a walk-out basement, though, so there are no permanent sleeping rooms down there. Just living room (movie room), game room, den, bathroom, storage rooms, etc. We use our basement as our place to go during tornado. We have 4 bedrooms on main level - master, 2 kids rooms, and the last bedroom is used as a playroom. See, this is why I can't have more than 2 kids - our house is just perfect for us. And since we plan to die here.....it has to stay perfect.

PrairieMom replied: we have a slightly larger than average lot, and our house is already pretty long, we have a garage to the side, which makes a difference, but we have about 20 feet to our east and 10 feet to our west to the lot lines. The house next to us sits about 3 feet from the lot line. There is just enough room for them to walk between their house and our fence. our lot is 110 feet long and 80 feet wide from curb to the edge of our lot.
If I threw an apple out my kitchen door I would hit the house behind us. I would LOVE to have more space. It is one of our goals, for in the future, when we pay this bad boy off to build somewhere just out of town and have a few acres.

coasterqueen replied:
Yeah, I'd go INSANE living that close to people. What neighbors I do have - 75% of them are family or long time friends so that helps.

ETA: Our garage is on the side as well, so it does make for a pretty LONG house.

msoulz replied: I would want the baby on the same level because I am a huge klutz and the fewer stairs I have to take while sleep deprived and carrying a baby the better.

But that may just be me!