Making room for baby #2 in our small apartment.

Growing up I always pictured myself having babies in a giant house with a big garden out back and plenty of room for all of us to grow and enjoy our hobbies. Then I actually grew up and realized all of that cost a lot of money! Add college debt, divorce debt and getting laid off while on maternity leave with my first and it’s really out of reach now. Yes our place can feel cramped at times, there are days where I wish each boy had their own room and that I could just sit in one room without hearing every noise from inside our place and outside. Something that I will talk about later is our plans for a move but I’m honestly weary of posting about it due to already receiving negative comments about it. None the less I thought I would share how we created space in our bedroom for our sweet poppyseed who will be joining us the end of September.

First we don’t do traditional wood cribs, we have a pack and play for Ashton that he still wont use, (He’s a swing baby just like I was) and the other thing we used ALL the time with Ashton is this mini pop up crib.

I currently have Poppyseed’s going home outfit(s) and swaddle blanket waiting to be packed displayed in it. With Ashton we used the colors already in our room to add space for him till he was old enough to move into Jordan’s room and I loved the way the room flowed together but still had his space for him. So this time my wonderful mom found this lotus flower wall decal that actually was suppose to be a more soft yellow to match the yellow of our room but they sent us gold and Eric and I felt it still fit so we put it up. FYI this was the most annoying thing to try and put up and there is a lot of bubbles and little mistakes BUT again we will move soon so we figure it’s good practice for the next one we try to put up. 😉

Poppyseed’s crib is on my side of the room since I’ll be the one waking up for night time nursing sessions. Now I have a really bad habit of reading many books at once and piling them up on the floor next to my bed BUT with a little one that gets into everything and another one in my belly making bending over exhausting I actually started to break this bad habit and now have a mini stack on my nightstand and one I keep on a tray on our bed. I love this tray!! I remember using it a lot when I would nurse Ashton in bed after Eric would go to work and Jordan would go off to school. I would store my water, books and snack on it while I nursed and napped in the early days of motherhood.

Eric’s side is less set up for baby because there is actually tires on that side of the room (not pictured because I rolled them out of the room to do a little photo shoot.) but my new favorite thing is the little corner that has the pictures of Ashton’s ultrasounds and our hospital bands and the start of Poppyseeds as well as the first anniversary gift I gave him.

One thing I have learned is that when you are nursing you will be sitting a lot and to me I hate sitting in the dark around clutter because I start to feel depressed and just want to sleep so I moved my nursing chair over by our bedroom window and made sure I had things that bring me peace and are calming. One of the shelves will eventually store my pump like it use to but I haven’t dug it back out yet so I have one of Eric’s baby books there and the gold owls my late great grandmother gave me when I was younger.

Lastly a spot that’s just for me is our full length mirror that is now stored behind our bedroom door. This is where I tend to get ready while I sit on the floor and let Ashton crawl all over me and I’m sure where I’ll get ready while I nurse in the future. I wrote about how I started getting ready each day a little while ago that you can read here and it seriously has made such a difference.

With Ashton we moved into our apartment and I was already a few months along and dealing with morning sickness so organizing our place was put on the back burner. I kept saying I’d do it before he was born which turned into I’ll do it after he’s a newborn and basically never happened. So when our apartment complex relocated us to a different apartment with the same exact layout I was dead set on making this place flow. Our closets are still a big issue for me but they are WAY better than before. I honestly feel like I’ve been more at peace the pregnancy due to the fact that everything has a place now and the second something new enters our home I figure out where it will be stored when it’s not in use. I also have crystals placed throughout our house and I’m always diffusing an essential oil which helps keep the whole family a lot more zen if you ask me.

I realized that you think you need all this baby stuff but by time you have your second you realize what you truly need and what will end up being used once (or never) and then stored under your bed or in your exploding closet. I will be adding a post of where I store Poppyseeds clothes, diapers and burp rags soon so stay tuned!

XoXo

Spencer