If you anticipate that you may have a baby in your next house, I suggest you look for a few things:

• The master bedroom and the baby's bedroom should be close together. Ours are on opposite sides of the house, which has some advantages, but is overall a minus. If one or both parents are light sleepers, you might not want them too close.
• There should be a full bathroom pretty close to the baby's room. Ideally, it would be immediately adjacent, perhaps separating the master bedroom from the baby bedroom. This is handy for baths and cleaning up after diapers.
• There should be a second full bathroom elsewhere in the house in case your baby is a light sleeper.
• The baby's room should be away from the living room, kitchen, and other noisy parts of the house.
• The master bedroom should be large enough that you can fit a bassinet comfortably. It's likely that you will want the baby in there at least to start.
• Following the above, make sure your master bathroom has a door between it and the master bedroom. Ours does not, which made things kind of stressful for the first few months when Uma was in with us.
• Make sure that the baby's room is big enough for a crib, a dresser, a rocking chair, a changing table, and a twin bed.
• If you have rambunctious pets, you'll want to be able to close off part of the house so they can't disturb the baby. Dogs scratching themselves at night can be surprisingly loud, especially with metal tags (which I suggest taping together anyway).
• See how comfortable the baby's room is with the door closed and the AC and heat on. Uma's room is small, and we have forced air heat, which makes it alternately hot and stuffy or cold and dry with the door closed, especially since there's no thermostat. As a result, we leave her door open at night. That works well, but it means she's not isolated from noise, and we have to keep the dogs out of that part of the house. Radiators and radiant floor heating are apparently much better for this.
• If you're doing cloth diapers and washing them yourself, you'll want the washing machine to be close to the baby's room so you don't have to lug so much stuff back and forth. Even if you're not washing your own cloth diapers, you're still going to be doing a lot of laundry. It may be worth it to pay extra for energy efficient appliances, including a front-loading washer, assuming you have to buy new ones. It's not worth it if you already have inefficient ones. And, of course, having a laundry room inside the house is better than having to go out to the garage. That's true without a baby, but you're going to be doing a lot of laundry.
• Wood flooring is your friend. Tile is hard and not appropriate for many rooms, while carpet gets dirty easily and is a pain to clean. Your baby will be spending a lot of time on the floor. Laminate flooring should be fine, also.

It may sound like we're a little excessive with keeping things quiet. We're slowly getting more cavalier with making noise, as she is getting better about sleeping through noise and falling back asleep if she wakes up. However, if you have problems with your child's sleep, you will be desperate to avoid anything that might disturb her.

¶ 1187 Posted at 02.15 PM ⇒ No Comments ( house | tips | babies )