babies in cities

We've done fine with small apartments: with kid #1 we had a 500 square foot 2 BR apartment (lol grad school) and did fine; kid #1 had her own bedroom. With kid #2 we'd moved to the Bay Area and amazingly found an affordable 2 BR apartment of about 1000 square feet. We put both kids in the same bedroom there. Then we moved again (to midwest lol college town) and have a big house, but this year we're living in Paris in a 750 sq ft 2 bedroom apartment again. We put all three kids in the same room, but since they're in school during the day we use that room as an office too (and at night they're asleep meaning the living room is fine for work).

But with babies you don't *need* a bedroom for them if you don't mind keeping them in your room some or all of the night though there's a host of sexx issues to be worked out there obviously.

Babies don't take up that much space, just shove a cot up against your bed, or co-sleep and you won't even need that. Use a sling instead of a pushchair and that's one more bit of kit you don't need taking up space!

ATM Howie has his own room and Archie has a timeshare cot in my husband's office. When they're a bit older we'll stick them in bunk beds.

However, if anyone has found a way to stop the inexorable creep of cheap plastic toys taking over the entire living-room floor, I'd like to hear it...

Congrats btw!

congrats!

We were in apt for the first 10 months, and actually found most of our building mates (esp the adjoining ones) very tolerant and generous. The only problem I ever got fed up with was hauling the stroller up the stairs.

in a small apt now, lucky to have thick walls i guess - nobody even knew we had a baby at first until we told them!

tbh the noise concerns for us have nothing to do with our kid and everything to do with neighbors who want to have all nite techno parties..

we live on the third floor now but there's a very good chance we're going to move down to the first floor in the same building soon, so that my pregnant wife with a hip condition won't have to walk up three flights of stairs on a daily basis.

in terms of noise, i'm mainly worried about people complaining about a crying baby, but there isn't much i can do about it, i guess. the apartments here do seem pretty well insulated from noise, i almost never hear my neighbors at all.

any particular stroller features i should be looking for for the urban environment? basically i just want to make sure whatever we get isn't HUUUUUGE like some of the strollers i see people using around my neighborhood

Do you need a stroller? How about slings? www.slingguide.co.uk I didn't discover them properly until A was 12 months and since then we've barely used the stroller, in fact we put it up in the attic about two months ago as it was just gathering dust and getting in the way.

The stroller of choice in most cities is the maclaren, as it folds down so well and doesn't take up that much space when it's up. Only the more expensive ones are suitable from birth though, as they need to fold flat.

I recommend the Baby Bjorn. Actually the salesperson did. Said it was the safest around. Re strollers: I can definitely recommend the Bugaboo. Yes, it's considered to be rather posh, but the design is awesome! Very compact and easy to navigate. Price wise it's of course one of the more expensive ones around.

in terms of noise, i'm mainly worried about people complaining about a crying baby

I had many people staying in our house and they never much complained. But that's relatives/friends. Strangers might be more critical.

baby bjorn is one of the worst carriers around, sorry Nath. Not too bad when the baby is tiny but once they get bigger the positioning for them is all wrong - crotch dangling can't be very comfy and it's not a great position for their hips, and they're bloody uncomfortable for the parents too.

Babybjorn is one of the better known mass-produced baby carriers, which is why so many people have them, but mass produced doesn't always mean best. An Ergo is probably one of the better known 'good' carriers, much better than the bjorn for both baby and parent.

The only unsafe carrier around is a bagsling, real chance of suffication http://babyslingsafety.blogspot.com/

I didnt carry O in a babybjorn after six months. Here they are considered to be much better for long term carrying than, say, slings (for the baby's back). Ah well. I really loved'em :-)C

urban stroller: Peg Perego Pliko. We got a really good one off Craigslist for a decent price. It's kind of in between the umbrella style and the giant stroller. It folds up okay, and has a nice basket underneath for carrying groceries. We also use an Ergo carrier, which took a while to figure out, but was pretty fantastic for front carrying up to about 20 lbs. Still use it from time to time, trying to figure out how to get her into it for back-carrying. Apparently you can carry (and do kung fu while carrying) 7-yr-olds in them (longevity was a selling pt. for us).

We had a Bugaboo Gecko when Howie was tiny, it was very nippy and you can get an attachment to clip a car seat onto the frame, handy if baby falls asleep in the car! Only used it til he was big enough to go in a Maclaren (around 6 months). They're expensive but hold their value pretty well, we sold ours to fund the Phil & Teds when Archie came along.

Vicky is right about the Baby Bjorn, although I had one before I found out more about slings and found it OK over very short distances. I have tried various slings with both of them, the Ergo is fantastic and I carried Howie in it until about 18 months iirc. Never got the hang of the back carry either!

A lot of people rave about ring slings but I couldn't get on with mine at all. Had more success with a Close baby carrier which is more like a wrap sling, very comfortable and easy to use and apparently you can breastfeed in them although I never managed.

If you do go down the sling route don't get disheartened if you don't get on with the first one you buy. Everyone's different and not everything suits everyone. If you do think it's a route you want to go down then www.thebabywearer.com is a great site, though it's a little overwhelming the first time! They've got a great 'for sale or trade board' on their forum that means that if you don't get on with something you can sell or trade to try something else. If you bought it second hand in the first place then you should be able to sell it for what you paid for it so it's only costing you the postage. There are often local meets too, where you can go and try out everyone elses slings and see what's available and what might work for you.

I started off with a stretchy wrap when A was tiny, then at 11 months I bought a Mei Tai and did front and back carries. Then I moved onto wraps about 12 months ago and haven't looked back since, they've got the biggest learning curve but they're the most flexible carriers and I think they are the best for carrying in as they hold the LO very close to you. I'm still wearing A in the wrap to get about when he's too tired to walk or I want to get somewhere fast, and he's two and a half now.

I can't recall when we gave up on the Bjorn but Ava wasn't very old. Had got rid of it by the time Lulu arrived, I think. I do recall walking to Safeway (as it was then) with Ava in the BB when she was a few weeks old and feeling like the King of the World. We had a proper pram-with-carry-cot in those early weeks, which was a pain to dismantle and lug up the stairs to our flat, so an opportunity to go out with the baby sans pram was brilliant.

O/T You had not got rid of it by the time Lulu came, I remember you bringing her round to ours in it! Granted it was an all of 90 second trip so wouldn't have hurt so much.

Ah, right! (It probably hurt me more than it hurt her...)

it's a subject near to mind for me these days because we're about to relocate from manhattan to knoxville, where we'll almost certainly land up in some outer-urban neighborhood with lawns and cars and all that stuff. our entire child-rearing career so far (5 years and counting) has been in nyc, so this will be an interesting change. based on our experience, i'd say i have mixed feelings about the whole urban-baby thing. on the practical level, as a lot of posts in this thread attest, it is definitely do-able, even in small apartments. (i have a friend who has lived in the same one-bedroom apartment with his wife and kid since the kid -- who is now 10 or 11 -- was born. the kid doesn't have a bedroom, he has an alcove sectioned off by curtains. but, you know -- it's rent-stabilized!) getting around the city with strollers can be a chore, but like most people we have a lighter collapsible stroller for those outings and a heavy-duty one for long pedestrian treks. there are also big conveniences, like being able to take the kids for a stroll to the park or the grocery store without having to mess with cars at all. in general, i think keeping them out of cars is one of the best things you can do for kids in terms of keeping them safe. and the kids love lots of things about the city: the parks, the subways, the excitement of the streets.

on the other hand, i have definitely noticed with our older one over the last year or two that whenever we leave town to go somewhere where we stay in a house with a yard (his grandparents' places, or the beach house we rented last summer), he just loves it. at the beach house he spent most of his time out in the small backyard and sideyard. and when we leave those places to come back to the city, he has absolute tantrums. he doesn't want to come back here. so that has made me feel sort of bad. i worry that i'm indulging my own fantasies of urban childhood (i grew up mostly in rural areas, and spent most of my time playing outdoors too) and that actually he'll be happier elsewhere. which, now that we're moving, i hope turns out to be true. i don't look forward to having to pack them in and out of the car every time i realize we need milk or toothpaste, but i think there will be big benefits for them too.

I recommend the Baby Bjorn.
me too! i prefer it to the sling (easier on the shoulders), and our 5 month old seems to prefer it as well. dunno how she'll feel about it in the next couple months, but it works for now ...

Get an Ergo, spreads baby's weight across your shoulders and hips, and much better for baby's spine than a BB. You'll never look back, honestly!

Man to man, here, n/a, I recommend the Ergo. Total bonding apparatus, keeps your baby up close to you. It's as close as a man can get to a third trimester (with breaks!) that lasts a year.

cool, thanks for all the tips. the ergo seems pretty popular all around and i definitely want us to have a carrier like that.

WOW. Congrats N/A!!!

This might be a question for alex in NYC. His blog has actually given us some really good kid tips.

when we leave those places to come back to the city, he has absolute tantrums.

tipsy couldn't this just be him realizing the vacation's over? that if you lived in the country and visited the city he'd have the same reaction? i dunno. you and me are very much in the same boat here - i grew up in knox county and am now raising a son in one of the world's biggest and busiest metropoles. i don't have any template for this - which makes everything fun and new but i have to admit that the pull of my own memories is strong.

london has great parks though. i don't know if we could do new york.

Sure you can! Central Park!

well, that's what i mean.. london actually has parks within walking distance of wherever you live. new york (in general) has a couple of big destination parks that you have to plan a whole day around.

what is alex in nyc's blog?

http://vassifer.blogs.com/

gracias

Thanks, guys!

Update!
We are in the process of moving down to that first floor apartment now. Now, we'll only have four or five stairs to carry baby and baby accessories down, as opposed to three flights of stairs. As a bonus, that unit was just upgraded with all new appliances. We'll have a dishwasher for the first time ever. ooh la la

We looked at strollers. I really liked the Bumbleride Flyer, but now we're pretty set on the Peg Perego Pliko Switch. We also agree on the Ergo carrier. As Nick mentioned upthread, I have a hip condition (avascular necrosis), so he'll be the primary baby wearer, but I still wanted to make sure whatever we got would be least damaging to my poor bird bones. ha ha

I was pretty concerned at first about city life with a baby, but OTOH, I didn't relish moving far away from all our friends right as we moved into this new stage in our lives. It sounded so isolating. I figure that at first the baby will be small and we can have more control over what comes into our home in terms of baby necessities. It might get more complicated later, but we can always change our minds and move later if necessary. Also, I read a bit about babies in small spaces on Apartment Therapy and it seems most people don't advocate "sleep training" for babies under one year of age anyway, which should prevent some late-night crying. Those with experience in that department want to weigh in?

I was also worried at first about a kid growing up in the city being exposed to more bad elements, but then I remembered all the awful things kids would do that I knew when I lived on a farm as a preteen. I didn't do them myself. I just need to have faith in my own kid to make good decisions no matter where we are and try to bring him/her up the right way...

We sleep trained at about five months. Total hard-ass cry-it-out stuff. We didn't feel too bad about it because A) she'd been crying like crazy all the time anyway B) our downstairs neighbour was an a-hole who blasted awful folk music full blast in the middle of the night (and was the building manager's daughter) C) we gave the guy upstairs a Starbucks giftcard cuz he was really nice about everything.

Ha. Yeah, I feel like bribery might come into play at some point.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259358/Yummy-mummy-baby-slings-kill.html

One of the reasons I never ever wanted a sling

Nath, you should probably know that 50% of the stories in the mail are of the X Causes Cancer, Y Causes Poisoning, Z Causes Infertility genre.

(the other 50% are about immigrants)

Ive never trusted those sling things. i don't even really trust the baby bjorn (sp?). even though it has like a million straps and clips i still hold on to the kid when I use it.

When Maclaren recalled their buggies because of the finger pinching incidents the media didn't go on a witchunt about every type of pushchair but it's ok to do it about slings. The advice is about one very specific type of sling - the bagsling, which people have been trying to bring attention to for years, in particular the infantino bag sling. Just looking at them it should be obvious that there's a potential for danger as you can't see the baby when they're in there.

http://www.babydepot.com/recalls/framecarriers/sling_156x250.jpg

To be honest if you are responsible and use things properly then I don't see why using slings should be any more dangerous than using the pushchair?

Oh look, I'd already mentioned that those slings were dangerous upthread on the 22nd Jan:

The only unsafe carrier around is a bagsling, real chance of suffication http://babyslingsafety.blogspot.com/

I'm going to duct tape the baby to my chest

Good idea!

Sunny, yeah, the only problem (or rather fear) I had with my baby bjorn was taking out Ophelia out of it.

I just thouhgt (wrongly?) that a sling was not so good for a baby's back. Here they hammer on that. One of the rea

Shit, one of the reasons why they don't like you putting your baby in those chairs. Bad for back.

Depends on the sling Nath. With most slings it's no different from carrying them position of the spine wise, putting babies down and leaving them is a relatively new parenting method! The bjorn isn't great for the hips as the legs dangle down, carrying a newborn with them upright and their legs froggied is actually very good for them - it's the default position for babies with hip displasia

Ha I kind of feel like this is "my" baby thread now. We've been buying so much baby stuff over the past few days. We had the second of our baby showers on Sunday so then we could "fill in the gaps" of stuff we needed that we didn't get. Ended up ordering the Graco stroller/carseat system because Consumer Reports gave it a really high rating but it was like 1/3 as expensive as most of the other high-rated strollers. Also emailed about a used Ergo carrier being sold on Craigslist. BABY STUFFFFF

Awesome, n/a. We just started buying baby stuff last month (we waited until we found out she was a girl). Haven't bought a stroller yet.

when is yrs due?

October 11.

How about you?

july 26, pretty soon

Just a month left to go - that's great!

OH SHIT SO SOON. Very happy and excited for you and Sarah!
And for you too kkvgz, even though I don't know you.

I am having so much fun in the city with my 1.5 y-o lately. She's really into going for walks around our neighbourhood and visiting with everyone from the drunks in the park (they have their own corner opposite the playground) to the old Chinese ladies at the bakery who always give her a little cookie. She waves and blows kisses to everyone. EVERYONE.

Not to get all sappy and sentimental, but having a kid has really made me more engaged with my community and kinda opened up the city to me in a way I didn't anticipate.

thanks dude!

just bought an ergo baby carrier off of craigslist

ha ha

the ergo carrier has turned out to be a very wise investment, because as soon as I put the baby in it, she calms down, and after I walk around for 10-15 minutes she falls asleep and stays asleep until I take her out again. I think it's basically like being in the womb; with the infant carrier she's almost in a fetal position and it's warm and holds her tight and she's bouncing around in front of my chest. The only thing I haven't figured out yet is how to transition her from the carrier to the crib without waking her up.

We've got a stroller/car seat too. We're supposed to drive to my parents' house in NC for xmas and I'm a little concerned about a 13-hour road trip with the baby in the car seat, since she doesn't really seem to enjoy it very much. We're going to do a practice 3 1/2 hour trip to the mother-in-law's in the fall and see how it goes.

You just have to sleep sitting up in a chair w/ the baby in the Ergo carrier until she is a toddler.

:/

anyways it's come in handy because my wife is sick right now and the last couple of afternoons I've been able to pop the baby in the carrier and take her out for a couple of hours and let my wife sleep

13 hr roadtrip with a little baby seems nuts to me, but our kid has never loved the carseat -- don't think she's ever fallen asleep in it, no matter how tired she might be. but i know people whose kids love the car, too.

no matter how bad a 13-hour drive ends up being (and we're going to split it up over a couple of days with lots of stops), I would still rather do it than try to fly at xmas with a five-month-old baby. I hate flying in general though.

yeah, it's true -- we're flying out to california over xmas (baby will be about 16 months by then) and I'm dreading it. though i've found that traveling so far with the kid has been way worse anticipating it in my head than it actually turns out to be.

We took a 10 hour road trip (plus 10 hours back) with our one year old in the early 2000s. It was way better than it's been with 2,3,4 year olds, when they're too young to read or play video games & anyway their attention spans are short, but too old to just sleep the whole way (as our baby did on the aforementioned 10 hour trips).

We took transatlantic trips with our oldest child & youngest child when they were about 10 months old (respectively) (and a few cross-country red eyes too). They weren't a big deal. Again, the transatlantic trips with the 2,3,4 year olds have been worse (though better since you can play with them on the flights at least).

We flew transatlantic with Aidan when he was 7 months, it was fine with him in the wrap. At least flying you can attend to their needs immediately. We were lucky in that Aidan didn't dislike the car or the carseat and he'd sleep for most of our long car-rides, sorry.

The transatlantic flight we took when Aidan was 18 months was much worse, sorry Tyler, especially as he was still on my lap at that point. If you can afford to buy a seat for them then I heartily recommend it. A red-eye flight on a full plane sitting in the middle of a row with an 18 month on your lap, who's uncomfortable, claustrophobic and unwilling to sleep on you is one of the circles of hell, I'm sure.

haha, yeah, i'm sure. fortunately the flight itself for us isn't too long (2 hours) -- it's mainly dealing with airports around that time of year that I'm dreading. I'd be dreading it even if I didn't have a baby tbh.

W/r/t the 13hr drive, can you do it overnight? Then (in theory, don't blame me if it goes hideously wrong) all you have to do is stop for night feeds every however often (mind you Howie was still feeding hourly at night at this stage, though Archie was sleeping through, so depends how much of a good sleeper you're lucky to get!).

yeah my older brother is a big proponent of the "put the kids in the car at 1am and drive for 8 hours" strategy, which seems to work for the kids. he's pretty wiped for the rest of the day, but it might be worth it.

Kinda miss those good old days of my daughter in the Ergo, walking around to bookstores, record stores, comic shops, 3-hour sojourns with her nestled up against me. Now it's all pulling everything off the shelves, pointing, screaming, blowing kisses at winos.

We're going to Hawaii in October. She'll be 22 mos. We're flying overnight, which will either be the best or the worst idea ever. We flew with her last summer, she b-fed during take-off and landing, no problems, but she's fully weaned now, so who knows!?!