There is something incredibly special about preparing a space for your baby. Perhaps you’ve imagined it long before they arrive. You’ve thought about colours, chosen a cot, folded impossibly tiny clothes into drawers and wondered who this little person will be.

Alongside all that excitement, though, there can be a surprising amount of pressure surrounding the nursery. What should you buy? What does your baby really need? What will help them sleep? Do you need the perfect lighting, the perfect sounds, the perfect feeding chair or all those things you keep seeing specialists recommend?

As a paediatric nurse sleep team who has supported over 24,000 families, we want to invite you to think about your baby’s sleep space a little differently.

Before asking, ‘What should this room look like?’, try asking another question:

“How do I want to feel here?”

Because your baby’s nursery isn’t only somewhere they will eventually sleep. In those early weeks and months, it might be where you feed them, change them, sit together after a bath, sing to them and slowly discover the little things that help them feel safe and settled.

It may also be somewhere you sit at 3am with your baby against your chest and realise that the whole world feels rather different now. There will be tears in this room as well as laughter, exhaustion alongside extraordinary moments of connection.

This space is part of your postpartum story.

Your baby’s sleep space should hold you too.

One of the first things we want new parents to know is that there is absolutely no rush for a baby to sleep independently in their nursery.

Safer sleep guidance recommends that babies sleep in the same room as their parent or caregiver for at least the first six months, day and night, in their own clear, flat, separate sleep space.

So, that beautiful nursery you spent months preparing? Your baby might not actually sleep there overnight for quite some time, but that certainly doesn’t make the room redundant.

Instead, perhaps we can take some pressure away from what a nursery is supposed to be. It can simply become a familiar, peaceful and safe space for you and your baby to spend time together: somewhere to feed, change, cuddle, share a story or retreat to when the rest of the house is in chaos. 

It can also be somewhere you begin introducing the small, familiar rhythms that may eventually become part of bedtime. Your baby does not need to be sleeping independently in their nursery for the room to have a purpose.

Before thinking about everything you need to put into your baby’s room, we want you to start somewhere slightly different. Ask yourself: how do I want to feel when I walk into this space?

Perhaps the answer is calm, safe, cosy, grounded or simply able to exhale.

Then choose five things to have in this room that bring you a little bit of peace. Not things your baby needs. Things for you.

It might be a book you’re enjoying, or a little space beside your chair for your Kindle. It could be a beautiful plant, a photograph that makes you smile, a soft blanket for your shoulders or a gentle lamp that means you don’t need to switch on bright overhead lighting during those quieter moments. You might create somewhere to keep your water bottle and favourite snacks within reach while you’re feeding.

Your five things don’t need to be expensive, beautiful or worthy of anybody else’s Instagram feed. They simply need to make you feel good.

We want this room to become somewhere you can seek a little refuge during the intensity of early parenthood. Somewhere you can retreat with your baby when the rest of the house feels busy. Somewhere you might feed them while reading your Kindle, sit together after a bath, have a cuddle before bedtime or simply spend ten quiet minutes getting to know one another.

And there is another lovely benefit to using the nursery in this way. Long before your baby eventually sleeps there overnight, the room can already become a familiar and positive part of their world. When the time comes for them to move into it, it isn’t necessarily a completely new environment. They may already know its sights, sounds and little rhythms because it has been somewhere you have spent relaxed, connected time together.

So rather than standing in the nursery and asking, “What else do I need to buy?”, try sitting in the chair and imagining yourself there in the middle of the night.

You’re tired. Your baby needs you. Your body may still be recovering from pregnancy and birth. Perhaps you’re feeding, perhaps you’re soothing, or perhaps you’re simply sitting together while the rest of the house sleeps.

Ask yourself:

‘What is going to help me feel more supported, comfortable and calm during my postpartum period?’

That question might lead you towards a genuinely comfortable feeding chair rather than simply the one that photographs beautifully. It might mean choosing soft, warm, low-level lighting for nighttime care, keeping your postpartum essentials close by, or creating a little corner with the things that help you feel most like yourself.

Because this space isn’t only about preparing for your baby’s sleep. It can also be about considering what you might need during a period of enormous physical and emotional adjustment.

There is no single product that creates a calm nursery, because calm isn’t something we can buy. But we can create spaces that help us feel more comfortable, grounded and cared for.

And while you are creating a space for your baby, you are allowed to create a little place of peace for yourself within it too.

We talk a lot about babies sleeping, but much less about the rest and recovery of the people caring for them. About caring for the carer. Mothering the Mother.

The postpartum period is not simply the time after a baby is born. For mothers, it sits within a much bigger transition known as matrescence - the physical, emotional, psychological and social process of becoming a mother. Just as adolescence describes a period of enormous change and adjustment, matrescence recognises that motherhood changes us too.

While you are learning your baby, you are also getting to know a new version of yourself.

Your body may be healing from pregnancy and birth while you are feeding, holding, carrying and responding to another human being around the clock. Your sleep will look completely different. Your relationships, priorities, emotions and sense of identity can all be shifting at the same time.

In the middle of so much change, your need for rest does not become less important because you have a baby. It becomes even more important. 

Rest in early parenthood may not always look like eight uninterrupted hours of sleep. Sometimes it is lying down while somebody else holds the baby. Sometimes it is closing your eyes during a safely-done contact nap rather than using that time to complete another job. It might be accepting help, sitting somewhere comfortable to feed, spending ten quiet minutes with your baby, or simply allowing your body to be still.

This is why we want you to consider yourself when you create your baby’s nursery. Let it be somewhere your body can be properly supported. Somewhere you can feed comfortably. Somewhere you can put down the water you’re drinking, keep the things you need close by and retreat to when the rest of the house feels busy.

Parents - and particularly mothers - can disappear surprisingly quickly from the conversation once a baby arrives. Everything understandably becomes centred around what the baby needs, but you haven’t stopped having needs of your own.

You don’t need to feel peaceful through every feed, enjoy every moment or be perfectly calm during every 3am wake. Matrescence stacks enormous love alongside exhaustion, vulnerability, joy, uncertainty and change.

So while you create a space in which your baby can be held, soothed and eventually sleep, create somewhere that acknowledges the person becoming their mother too.

Newborn babies do not arrive understanding the difference between Tuesday afternoon and 2am. Their sleep is biologically immature and develops enormously throughout infancy, which is why we don’t expect tiny babies to follow rigid schedules.

Instead, we love thinking about rhythm rather than rigidity.

Over time, small repeated experiences can become familiar signals that rest is approaching. You might lower the lights, change your baby’s nappy, pop them into their sleepwear, feed them, read a little story, sing the same song or have a cuddle.

The exact sequence matters far less than the gentle familiarity of it, and it certainly doesn’t need to happen perfectly every night.

Sometimes bedtime happens at Grandma’s. Sometimes a sibling is making noise outside the door. Sometimes the bath gets skipped. Sometimes your baby falls asleep during their feed. Sometimes everything you usually do seems to stop working for no obvious reason whatsoever.

A flexi- routine should support your family, not become another standard you feel you have to meet.

One of the most sacred parts of those early months is slowly getting to know your baby. Long before they have words, they are communicating with you in all sorts of tiny ways, and over time you may begin to notice the individual signs that tell you they are becoming tired, need a little less stimulation or simply want to be close to you.

Perhaps their movements begin to slow, they become quieter, turn their face away, seek more contact or become a little fussier. Every baby is different, and those cues won’t always look the same from one day to the next.

The clock can be a helpful piece of the picture, but it doesn’t need to become something you feel you have to get exactly right. There isn’t one perfect moment that you must catch for your baby to sleep well.

Instead, give yourself permission to be curious. Notice how long your baby has been awake, what their day has looked like and what they seem to be communicating, and hold all of that alongside what you already know about them.

Because over time, something really lovely happens: you begin to recognise your baby’s rhythms.

You are learning them, and they are learning you. You don’t need to know everything straight away. That understanding grows quietly, through all those ordinary moments you spend together.

Safety is always the foundation

However beautiful or calming a nursery feels, safer sleep must always sit underneath the choices we make.

Follow current safer sleep guidance around your baby’s sleep surface, position, bedding, room temperature and sleep environment. Babies should be placed on their back for sleep, on a firm, flat sleep surface in a clear sleep space, with pillows, duvets, cot bumpers, soft toys and loose bedding kept out of their sleep space.

We always encourage parents to familiarise themselves with current safer sleep recommendations and to seek individual advice from an appropriately qualified healthcare professional where needed.

A sleep environment should, first and foremost, be a safe one. Once those foundations are in place, everything else can become much more personal.

There are so many beautiful and thoughtful products available to parents, and the right ones can genuinely make life easier and more comfortable. Having so much choice, however, can quickly become overwhelming.

Rather than beginning with ‘What does everyone say I need?’, try asking:

‘Will this support and work for us?

Will it make feeding more comfortable? Will it make nighttime care easier? Will it help create the atmosphere you want in the room? Will you genuinely use it? Does it suit your baby and your family? And, most importantly, is it safe?

Perhaps the things that transform this room for you will be beautifully designed nursery products. Perhaps some will simply be wonderfully practical. Maybe the item you value most will be the chair that supports your back properly during a long feed.

Your baby’s nursery doesn’t need to be finished, perfect or Instagram-ready. It doesn’t even need to be where your baby sleeps yet.

Let it become somewhere you can exhale. Somewhere you can feed your baby, cuddle them, learn them, laugh with them and soothe them. Somewhere you can recover, heal and slowly find your rhythm together.

There will be plenty of conversations during parenthood about what your baby needs. We hope this can be one small reminder to ask what you need too.

When we create spaces for babies to feel safe, rested and cared for, we shouldn’t forget the person who will spend countless hours providing that safety, comfort and care.

So, when you’re creating your baby’s sleep space, don’t only think about how it looks. Think about how it might feel at 2am. Think about the version of you who may sit there tired, feeding your baby in the half-light. Think about what might make your shoulders drop just a little.

Create that space for you, too.

With love,
Gem & Eve

Calm & Bright