A little over a month ago, we made the big family transition of moving Bella from her crib into her “big girl bed”. We skipped right over the toddler bed and instead went for a twin bed that we actually found on the street when someone was moving out last year. It was super sturdy solid wood, so even though it looked like it had seen better days, we carried it home. Lance sanded the whole bed down and I put on two coats of primer and three coats of white paint, and it looked as good as new! We did have to buy plywood and a twin mattress, but I think overall we spent less than $30 on it (before the mattress), so we were happy given that its hard to even find solid wood furniture anymore!
But I know that you are less concerned with the actual bed and more wondering about how Bella is doing sleeping in it.
The good news is that once she is asleep, she sleeps just as good in there as she did in her crib. In lieu of bed rails, we actually taped three pool noodles together and placed them under the sheet on each side. This makes for a nice soft barrier that doesn’t impede sheet changes. Her first two nights in the bed, we only had one pool noodle on each side. That most definitely did not work, as she rolled off three different times and we found her sitting on the floor screaming each time. Thankfully, no falls since her second night when we bulked up the number of noodles on each side!
It is definitely harder to put her down for bedtime and especially nap time now. A few weeks ago at nap time she kept getting out of bed and trying to follow us. One morning she even got out of bed, opened her door, and came into our room! Thankfully those have been single occurrence events, so we are hoping she continues to not take advantage of her new freedom!
We’re hoping that doing this transition a few months before her sister arrives helps. She definitely could have stayed in her crib until she was at least 3, since she isn’t really a climber and still rolls all over the place through the night. The headboard has those nice shelves but we haven’t even tried putting things in them yet as many nights we’ll look on the monitor and realize her head is in the shelf! We also haven’t bothered with bedding yet other than a sheet and her crib blanket, since she still doesn’t sleep in one spot. That is something that will likely come this winter!
Overall, even though bedtime itself has gotten harder, we’re fortunate that the transition hasn’t been too hard. She loves putting her animals “nigh nigh” in bed with her and always talks about her “big girl bed”. Hopefully whenever baby starts sleeping in the crib she doesn’t get jealous!
laughs n' love 