Re: family bed vs. crib

[Larry McMahan]

Original clipped to save space. :-)

"Cheryl M. \(ChatBrat\)" > writes:
: Didn't you worry about the mobil 7-9 mos. plus baby getting up and roaming
: about in the night? We're having a problem with Jas never wanting to sleep
: apart (I mean never - not even for 10 minutes despite the mattress on a
: floor routine). If she awakens during the night, her sleepy, floppy self
: immediately rolls over and begins to crawl. I'm terrified she'll crawl
: right off the bed. How do you deal with that?

: Cheryl

Hmmm. The way you write, I think you could be concerned with one of two
diffrent things. (or maybe both!).

1. Falling off the bed.

It is amazing how quickly a baby can develop the "sixth sense" to know
where the edge of the bed is and not fall off. With both babies, we had
them sleep on our bed when we were there, but we also had them nap on our
bed. Neither ever fell off the bed when we were there. When we were not
there Clara fell off once, and Niel fell off twice. We had placed pillows
and comforters on the floor around the bed so that they were not hurt.
In each case, that was all it took for them to learn where the edge of the
bed was. Many times after that we would find them sleeping with an arm
hanging over the edge, but they never fell off again.

2. Escaping.

OK. I will admit that neither of ours were much of "walkers," but when
we were sleeping in the room with them, if either purposely got out of
bed to go somewhere, we would wake and "retreive" them. In the case where
we had put one of them down to nap, she or he would wake and come out to
where we were. This only happened once or twice, and only after they were
toddlers.

Again, these things were never a problem for us.

Larry

[Ruth Shear]

G'day

ChatBratwrites:

> I'm terrified she'll crawl right off the bed. How do you deal with that?

Larry McMahan > wrote:

> 1. Falling off the bed

I went through a phase of using a long bedrail from One Step Ahead, uhen
I was worried about falling asleep while nursing with DS on the
"outside" side. Then I learned thanks to mkb about nursing from both
breasts while keeping DS on the "inside" side, so the bedrail became
redundant.

I also went through a phase of having a long body pillow on the floor
beside the bed in case DS fell. (he didn't).

But primarily my solution for once DS became mobile was to teach him
from the very beginning (again thanks to some thing I read on mkb) to
get off the bed "feet first" meaning flip onto his tummy and lower his
feet off the bed to the floor. He learned this pretty quickly and would
get off the bed even when he was so small my heart was in my mouth. This
useful skill also translated into being able to safely go down our
stairs feet first from quite an early age.

> 2. Escaping.

When we go to bed at night, we make sure that the gate at the top of the
stairs is closed (only time we use it these days, oh and when I am in
the shower too), and that the right doors are opened or closed, so DS
has the run of the "safe" upstairs area if he gets up before we do.
These days he heads straight to his new bookcase and sits down and
"reads" to himself until we are awake enough to read to him.

DrRuth