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Why Baby Isn't Confined to the Baby's Room (and How to Cope)
Awww! Baby’s here and that beautifully decorated nursery is finally in use, as happy gurgling baby lies down at seven PM and wakes again at seven AM without a whimper in between. The mobile above the bed plays pretty songs and baby smells of baby wash, all clean and shiny from a bath before bed.
OK, so either you have the World’s only perfect baby, or this is a complete fairy tale! Like every human in history, each baby is different, but for most parents, reality is very different.
Baby ends up in with mum so that poor exhausted mum can feed in the night without moving too far, or a parent is sleeping in the baby’s room, sometimes falling asleep on the floor. If they’re lucky and escape back to their own room, a favourite teddy or comforter will sometimes find itself in parent’s arms rather than baby’s cot as sleep starved parents stagger back to bed.
Invasion into parents’ bedroom! This is just the start of where things start moving out of baby’s perfect space and into the rest of the house.
There are cribs, Moses’ baskets, prams, baby relaxers, floor mats that will follow you around the house to wherever you might be. Going into office space to check something or send an email? Baby needs to come too so as not to be left unattended. Sitting in the living room with visiting friends or family? Of course you need to bring your little angel to meet them.
So now we have invasion into parents’ room, office, lounge….
You think it stops there? Think again!
Your kitchen has, short term, become a sterilisation station for absolutely anything that’s been on the floor and bottles if you’re not breastfeeding. If mum’s expressing milk and freezing it, the kitchen has also become a processing point as poor mum is milked and the expressed milk put into appropriate receptacles and frozen. Longer term, it will become the place for whatever kind of food prep you’re making to wean.
‘Parents room, office, lounge’ just became ‘parents’ room, office, lounge AND kitchen’.
And there’s more!
Weaning babies are sitting up babies, so let’s add in a big plastic floor mat and a highchair to the dining room (giving us parents room, office, lounge, kitchen AND dining room).
Bath time requires special baths, seats, sponges, gentle cosmetics and perhaps the odd bath toy or two.
Add the bathroom and we’re starting to get the full picture. Baby’s ‘stuff’ is no more confined to a single room than you are.
Making space for baby’s ever-changing needs
How you choose to manage the paraphernalia that comes with babies is entirely up to you, but will depend on the space and storage that your home currently has, and to some extent finances that allow the purchase of storage items like toy boxes.
The only real way to stop this huge amount of paraphernalia taking over your home is to be utterly brutal with yourself over anything that baby has grown out of or no longer uses.
As soon as it’s no longer needed, any item, from clothes to baby spoons, baby bouncers to prams, needs to go into storage or find a new home. Note we don’t say into the bin: most baby things are so lightly used that unless they’re broken, they can be passed on to a new owner or saved for siblings. Selling on is a great way to help fund the next stage of growth and whatever paraphernalia that requires.
However, don’t give yourself a hard time for not wanting to part with that hand knit from grandma, the welcome cards or baby’s first toy. Children grow so fast that they are permanently moving to new stages, often before we, as parents, are ready, or – Murphy’s Law – just as we’ve got one routine licked, they move on to a new life stage.
Anything you do decide to keep, be sure to store it away, clean and dry.
And if space is tight, you know where we are! easyStorage will even collect and deliver back your belongings (or baby’s, of course!)
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