Real Parents Share 6 Challenges of Moving While Pregnant or with a Newborn

Most people agree that moving is a chore. And whether it’s a move that involves buying a home, selling one, or both, it’s almost guaranteed to be a little trickier when you add a baby to the mix. But that’s where many growing families find themselves: managing a move while expecting or with a newborn in tow. So, how do they do it? 

We partnered with Opendoor—a digital platform that puts you in control of buying and selling your home on your own timeline (with fewer hassles)—to ask seven Babylist parents how they navigated the challenges of moving. From preparing to sell or buy to working on sped-up timelines, get their real POVs on moving with a growing family—along with a few hacks that can help you on your own journey into a new place. 

1. Moving in a Time Crunch

Nothing puts pressure on a move like a looming delivery date. And if your little one has already arrived, it makes total sense to want to be settled into a new home, like, yesterday. Briana Englebrecht, mother of two, sold her family’s previous home and had been searching on weekends for about a month before finding their dream home on Opendoor. 

“It was very quick,” she said. “On the team, there's a person for everything, so they get back to you very quickly. From the time we saw this house to when we decided to put in an offer, it was the same day.” Her offer was accepted a week later and a month after that, they were all moved in.

Moving Hack: The traditional real estate process isn’t the fastest option when you need to move ASAP. Using Opendoor to sell or buy can put you in control of your next move in a whole new way. If you need to sell, you can request an all-cash offer in minutes, close, and get paid in days (and you can even pick your close date). If you need to buy, you can tour homes on your schedule and skip the bidding wars with Opendoor’s no-haggle pricing—aka the price you see is the price you pay. 

2. It Takes a Village to Move

Asking friends and family to help you pack, load up a truck and unpack it all might feel like calling in a huge favor. But here’s the thing: when their favorite new baby is involved, people are often much more open to help. For Latifah Miles, mom of two, that help came in the form of babysitting and unpacking.

“Our in-laws lived 5 minutes away from where we were leasing, so we were able to drop the baby off. My son was in school, so we had a good chunk of time that we could go look for a house and we just tried to pack as many houses as we could in a day,” she said.

Once her family was ready to move into their new home, now 35 minutes away, they came to the rescue again. “My in-laws actually would drive out to us and kind of just sit in the living room and play with her, hold her and entertain her while we buzzed around the house to unpack, which has been really, really, really helpful because it's almost impossible to unpack and get your house organized with a baby who can't really maneuver on their own.”

Moving Hack: If you don't have family nearby, you may need to get creative. Maddie Eisenhart, now a mom of two, moved across the country at 31-weeks pregnant, and without any family nearby to help, had to call in reinforcements.

“My aunt offered to fly out and help us pack up our house and accompany me to our new state, so I wouldn’t have to fly solo with a four-year-old,” she explained. “Then my husband and I used our airline miles to fly a friend out to help do the week-long cross-country drive with all of our stuff.”

3. Touring Homes Can Be a Challenge

Before you decide on a forever home, you probably want to get a good look at what’s on the market—and that means touring (not the easiest thing to do with pregnancy fatigue or a newborn’s feeding schedule). Amanda Michelson, now a mom of three, was pregnant and living with her parents during her house hunt. 

“Being pregnant during a move increased the pressure to get everything done quickly. I did not want to be living at my parent's house with a new baby so it made us make quick decisions in order to buy our home and move in ahead of my due date. It's also logistically challenging to tour homes and be present, available and able to act fast when you're also caring for a toddler and juggling doctor’s appointments for pregnancy.” 

Moving Hack: Download the Opendoor app to start self-touring homes on your schedule without having to coordinate a time with an agent or a seller to see a home—so you can go from browsing homes to buying your dream home all from your phone.

4. The Hassles of Preparing to Sell

If your move involves selling a home, that can come with additional prep work like painting walls, repairing fixtures or making upgrades to get it ready for its next owners. To get her home listed, Jen LaBracio, mom of two, started prepping two months in advance.

“We had to do a lot of editing and cleaning because we have two kids,” she said. “I would go to the master bathroom and spend like two hours every night for like two or three nights going through every drawer, every cabinet.” 

After the work of staging, her family had to figure out how to work around showings.

“Because it was too much with people coming in and out with kids and working from home, we stayed with friends for the whole weekend…Our realtor told us we could come back at night and sleep there, but then we’d have to clean up again with the kids and all their stuff.”

Moving Hack: No time to make repairs with a baby? Want to skip showings altogether? Selling directly to Opendoor helps you skip the hassles and close with an all-cash offer in just days—minus all the prep work. 

5. Having the Right Team in Your Corner

Sometimes, it’s just easier to call in experts. Agents can be a helpful resource during this process (while you do other things like care for a whole new human). When Alainna Wurfel moved from Texas to Virginia with her one-year-old, she relied heavily on hers. 

“We put a lot of emphasis on finding wonderful realtors who understood our needs and our style, who could bring us on virtual tours and share an honest appraisal of the place after seeing it in person,” she said. 

“I loved being able to tour homes without driving to or stepping foot into them. It might have been scary for some people, but it felt like a luxury to have realtors working so hard on our behalf, particularly while we were both working full-time jobs and taking care of a toddler.”

Moving Hack: You can use Opendoor whether you have an agent or not, but if you’re going solo, Opendoor has Experience Partners (think: on-demand experts) who are there for you every step of the way to help make your next move a breeze. From going over your initial offer to finalizing the details and all the moral support in between, they’ve got your back. 

Already on the house hunt? Check out these 5 Tips to Help You Survive Buying a Home When You’re Having a Baby, or you can head to Opendoor to get started on a hassle-free search for your family’s next home. 

This article is sponsored by Opendoor. Babylist’s free site, apps and emails are made possible by our sponsors. We limit our sponsored content to relevant partners that offer products and services we believe in and use ourselves.