Essential Elements to Any Babywise Bedroom

In this post, I talk about how to set your Babywise baby or child's bedroom up for optimal sleep. 

If you want a baby or child to sleep well, you need to do more than just plop the child down and say, "sleep." If you want to have great sleep results, you need to have great sleep prep. These elements listed below will help your baby or child sleep better and help you, as a Babywise mom, be on top of sleep to set it up for success.

My oldest spent his first six moths without a bedroom. He also spent his first six months taking 45 minute naps and waking up once a night most nights. Once we moved him to sleep in his own room (the bathroom, but his own all the same), he started taking two hour naps and sleeping through the night! There is something to be said for having a place to sleep that is set up for successful sleep.

How to Set Up a Nursery or Bedroom for Good Sleep

Crib

Your baby needs a place to sleep, and a place that is comfortable and safe. A crib is an obvious choice. A bassinet might be a better choice for your baby at the time. For toddlers, you might do a toddler bed or a big bed. Whatever the exact type of bed is comfortable for your child and a safe space (which will be dependent on age).

Curtains

I love curtains for a lot of reasons. They can help block out light, which is helpful if your child doesn't sleep well in bright spaces. They can help muffle outside sounds, which is helpful if you live in a noisy area. They also help keep room temperature more constant, which is very nice for really hot or really cold times of year. 

Sound Machine

I love a sound machine for helping a baby or child sleep well, especially if it is for a child that is anything but the oldest. People can be noisy. Neighbors can be noisy. Pets can be noisy. It is nice to be able to have a sound machine that helps blocks out sounds of everyone in the home.

Every 45 minutes, your baby or child will transition sleep cycles. When this happens, your baby will come out of sleep, close to waking, then go back to sleep. If there is something to wake baby up, that transition will not happen. So if a loud noises happens at the transition, baby will likely wake. That is why a sound machine can be super helpful to aide in good sleep. You can read up more on sleep transitions here. Also, if you are concerned about a sleep prop situation happening, read up on sleep props here.

Monitor

When you are getting to know your baby, her sleep cues, and figure out the best waketime length, it a monitor is super helpful. Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is power. If you know how well your baby slept, then you know if the condition for that sleep were right or not. 

Once things are well-established and baby is loud enough for you to hear without a monitor, you can turn it off so you don't here every little peep. You need to be equipped with the power of knowledge before you move to bliss.

Comfortable Chair

A comfortable chair can do a lot for a bedtime routine no matter the age of your baby or child. A comfortable chair can be where you sit to nurse a baby. This is great for a baby to not get distracted and take in a full feeding. A comfortable chair can be where you do the "sit" portion of the Four S's when you teach your newborn to fall asleep alone. 

A comfortable chair can also be where you sit together to have a nice bedtime store before bed with your child. A consistent routine is vital to having great naps. To get great sleep, you need a consistent routine, no matter the age. 

Conclusion

If you are following Babywise, you are doing so in large part for the good sleep. Theese five elements will help you in your quest for consistent naps and night sleep.

The BabyWise Mom Ultimate Nursery Checklist

Babies cost a lot of money. I mean, it cost a lot of money just to deliver the baby, much less to feed and clothe the baby. With all of these expenses, you might find yourself looking around Babies R Us and wondering what is really needed.

I am a very frugal person, but when it comes to baby stuff, I am a big sucker. I find it all adorable and want to buy everything. Everything doesn't fit in my house, and everything costs a lot of money. So unfortunately, everything can't be purchased. Or fortunately. I have shared my list of necessary newborn items. I also shared everything we actually used in my fourth child's first and second months of life.

When we brought our first-born home from the hospital, we lived in a very small apartment. It was fewer than 300 square feet. He had no nursery. He didn't even have a bed set up when we walked in the door. A few days later, we moved out, lived with our parents for two weeks, and then moved into what seemed like a mansion--a whopping 600 square feet. We doubled our living space. It had no usable bedrooms, though (it was a house we were remodeling). We lived on the main floor that was all open concept. So again, no nursery. We lived there until Brayden was one. When he was almost 13 months old, we moved into a home that was 2000 square feet! And he finally had a bedroom.

I share that with you to assure you that a baby actually needs very little. Most things in the nursery are there for your convenience, and that is okay! It is perfectly fine for things to be set up to make your life a little easier and more comfortable. What I don't want you to do is make decisions that drive you beyond your financial means in an effort to make things perfect for your child. Your baby just will not notice or care. Ready for the list? This post contains affiliate links.

PLACE TO SLEEP
Your baby will need a place to sleep. Initially, babies can be quite flexible and sleep in small locations. A bassinet is large enough for a newborn. A pack and play can work. You might prefer a crib. You might use all three of those. At some point, your baby will need a crib to sleep in for best sleep. A crib will be more comfortable than a pack and play as your baby gets bigger.

In choosing your crib, you might wonder if you should get one that is just a crib or one that converts to a toddler bed. It is up to you. If you are having another baby someday, it might make the most sense to do a crib and just buy this baby a toddler bed or go straight to a twin when the time comes to move out of the crib since the next baby will also need a crib. Most cribs do seem to be convertible now, though. In the end, just get the crib you like in your price range.

You will need:

• Crib
• Matress
• Sheets
• Mattress Protector

You might like:

• Swaddle blanket
• White noise machine
• Room darkening shades or curtains
• Mobile
• Crib skirt

PLACE TO FEED BABY

Whether you are breast feeding or bottle feeding a baby, you will find it very helpful to have a place in the nursery to feed the baby. This is not necessary. If you cannot afford this, you can skip it. You can take baby to a couch or different chair in your home to sit and feed baby. If you can afford it, it will make your life so much easier and will be an investment worth your money. You will find this to especially be true in the middle of the night. 

In choosing your chair, think long-term. If you plan to have many children, you might invest in a chair that is made just for a nursery and has the look of a nursery. If you do not plan to have many children, you might want to purchase a chair that can either work in that room even when your child is not a baby or can work in a different location in your home once the chair is no longer needed for feeding babies. I do highly recommend this chair be a rocking chair. You can always check classifieds to get a deal on a chair designed for nurseries, and/or you can sell such a chair on classifieds once you are done with it. 

Another consideration for feeding at night is a lamp or light dimmer switch. You will need a way to see at night. Another idea is a night light. I don't leave a night light on in my baby's room. Light can disrupt sleep. I either just use a lamp or dimmer switch for when I am doing the night feed or I put a night light in the hall outside the bedroom so when I go into the room, there is enough light to see by.

You will need:

• Chair
• Lamp, nightlight, or light dimmer switch
• Burp rags (not all babies spit up when burping, but they are handy for wiping up spilled or leaked milk or milk dribble off of baby's chin. By the way, cloth diapers make great burp rags)

You might like:

• Nursing pillow
• Nightstand for lamp and for placing a drink for you, book for you, burp rag, etc.

PLACE TO CHANGE DIAPERS

For you, a changing mat on the floor might be a good enough place to change a diaper. All you need is somewhere clean and on something so if (when. It's really when) baby pees or poops while the diaper change is happening, you can clean that something easily. 

So what you choose to get is again based on your own preference and desires for convenience. You will change a lot of diapers over the next couple of years and you might really like having a place where you can change baby's diaper without having to bend over. I personally loved our changing table. It had the top where I put a changing bad, then it had two shelves. One had baskets. I used one basket for dirty laundry. The other had diapers, wipes, diaper cream, nail clippers, etc. I also kept a clean set of pajamas there so if (when. Again it is a when) baby leaked through the diaper and on to clothes, I could change baby without having to carry a naked or dirty baby to the closet to get more clothes. 

The bottom shelf had toys. 

You will need:

• Changing pad/mat
• Garbage can or diaper pail

You might like:

• Changing table
• Changing pad cover
• Diaper caddy for clean diapers

WAY TO ORGANIZE CLOTHES

You need a place for both the dirty and the clean clothes your baby has. You will want a dresser and/or a closet for clothing. You will also need a place for dirty clothes. A hamper in the baby's room is very convenient and worth it. You can, of course, just move the dirty clothes out of the room each time and into a family hamper somewhere. In all actuality, my four year old doesn't have a hamper in her room right now. She did as a baby (with the changing table). She will as she gets older. For now, I just take her dirty clothes each night and each morning and put them in a hamper. The reason I like it for a baby is convenience. Babies go through a lot more clothes than a four year old each day. They leak through diapers, they spit up, and they get baby food on them. 

You might also find you will like some organizers. You might like closet organizers or drawer organizers. Baby clothes are small, so drawer organizers can be a great way to keep those little things separated. 

You will need:

• A place to store clean clothes

You might like:

• A hamper
• Closet organizers
• Drawer organizers

WAY TO HEAR BABY

If your baby's room is in a location where you won't be able to hear baby for sure, you will want a monitor so you can hear baby. You might also really like a video monitor. The video monitor is not necessary. I didn't get one until my third baby. I LOVED it and would absolutely get a video monitor if I were to do it again.

You might like:

• Monitor
• Video monitor (I like using a Foscam camera. I can view my child on an app on my phone anywhere I have internet connection). 

PLACE TO STORE BOOKS and TOYS

As your baby grows, books and toys will enter the house. You might decide to keep some or all of the toys in the nursery. You can store toys under the crib, in a dresser drawer, in the closet, or on shelves. You might put them in bins or totes. You can get a book case or a toy storage set-up. 

You will need:

• Somewhere in your house to store books and toys

DECORATIONS

Decorations are of course entirely optional. You might like curtains, frames, pictures, phrases, mirrors, letters, or a whole slew of other decorations to make the space what you want it to be. 

You might like:

• Decorations for the room

Related Posts:

• Necessary Newborn Items 

• Newborn Products: What We Used Month 1

• Newborn Products: What we used month 2

Inclining the Bassinet

Our Bassinet

I have had many people inquire about how we set up our bassinet. Here is the answer. 

Brinley loved sleeping in the bassinet. She loved it so much, I took it off of its stand and put it in her crib so she could sleep in the bassinet. She slept in it until she was 5 months old. At that point, I had her take one nap a day in the crib, then two naps a day, then three naps a day, and finally added night. By about 5.5 months, she was in just the crib.

A great thing about a bassinet is that you can have it on an incline and keep baby in place much easier. I wish I would have thought of this when Kaitlyn was a baby. She had to sleep on an incline because of reflux and slid down the incline. We had the bassinet, set up exactly like this, in our room and she took at least one nap a day in it until she was 7 months old and finally just too big for it anymore. Something else people have done is put their SnuggleU with baby in the crib and they report it keeps baby in place. We had a SnuggleU at the time, but I never thought of that, either. I kept it in the bassinet at all times. 

There is nothing fancy about our bassinet. It is a Kolcraft, but we have had it for over 7 years. It is old. Amazon has a lot fancier Bassinets--some even have built in inclines that you can remove at some point. Those tend to be between 150-200. Simple ones that are more like the kind we have are more around 50-75. 

When we got home from the hospital with Kaitlyn, my husband took some foam we had from Joanne's. This foam is quite expensive. We had some leftover from when we added it to our piano bench and covered it. If you do end up buying some foam from Joannes, be sure to use a coupon. I think you might be able to get smaller cuts of it, too, but I can't remember for sure.Also, Amazon has some less expensive options: Foam on Amazon 

He traced the mattress on the foam pad and cut it out. He just used a kitchen knife--a cheap one. You can see the cutting is pretty rough. We have since found that automatic knives (like the kind people use to carve turkeys) make it much smoother and is easier. 

He then used a marker to draw an angle on the foam and then cut it so it was at an angle.The angle recommended for reflux babies is 30 degrees.

We put that foam pad in the bassinet, then put the mattress on top that the bassinet came with. We then use a SnuggleU at the bottom. Brinley slept with the SnuggleU until she left the bassinet. She started in the crib with it, then I took it out.

If you have a bassinet already or some foam (or access to inexpensive foam), this way is probably the best. If you are buying a bassinet, I would probably buy one.