Our floor bed journey was sort of unintentional. While I had been seeing these cute beds and the term floating around social media, I didn’t quite understand the entire concept or the benefits behind it.
Our first two little ones are exactly two years apart. When we had our second child, we were living in another home that upstairs consisted of our bedroom, a guest room and our toddler's room. We do cosleep, but for nap times as a two year old, our son did have his own room with a crib in it, with one side removed and replaced with the toddler rail. As we transitioned into a family of 4, I knew I didn't want the new baby napping in our older child's room. I was concerned with her being disturbed by him, him not being able to utilize his own space, and their nap times potentially overlapping and both needing the same room at the same time.
Originally for naps, I would put our new baby in our master closet in her Snoo bassinet (mostly without any motion or much at all, and not strapped in or in a swaddle). By that time I had learned a lot about reasons not to swaddle, so we were doing mostly contact naps or just laying her in the bassinet or on our bed when we felt she needed some deeper sleep and we needed the ability to move uninhibited without a sleeping baby attached to us.
Anyways, the closet was great, because it was dark and quiet! But after the first two or three months, I knew the time was coming where we would need to make an adjustment. Her bassinet was quickly becoming too small, she would soon be able to roll off our bed, and contact naps weren’t always an option. So, I needed to make a shift.
I figured it was also the perfect time to transition my very rapidly growing toddler, into his own bigger bed too. So, I ordered him a full sized mattress and the cutest ‘house bed’ from Etsy. My plan was to then take the crib and bring it into our room for baby girl. The problem was, the full sized mattress was on its way quickly from Amazon and the floor bed needed to be constructed and sent from Europe. Two very different delivery time frames.
I received the mattress first and for some reason, put it in the corner of our bedroom as opposed to bringing the crib in and putting the bed on our son's floor. I would lay down with baby girl, side lie nurse her, she would fall asleep and I would miraculously and effortlessly just roll away. It was amazing. And I mean, amazing!
When my son was a baby, he had used the Snoo bassinet in all it's extensive modes, a rocking swing for naps, he slept in the car, he contact napped and I had tried a crib with him for naps as well, where he would be jolted awake when I would try to lay him in it. Our journey with sleep with him was, and still is honestly, a struggle. He was unable to lay flat, still and without movement or bodily contact. So when I say that laying down and just getting up and leaving a baby without disturbance is amazing, I really mean it. I was so thankful.
I fell in love with the mattress on the floor. I placed cute little baskets next to it with books and toys, and when she would wake, I’d see her on the camera just kind of get up, take her time, maybe get off the bed and start enjoying her things. I never had to rush in to get her and she always had such a peaceful, self paced experience with her floor bed and her sleeping.
The house bed finally arrived and I ended up bringing the crib into the room where the mattress had been, removing one side completely and also removing the feet. It was flat on the floor like we had grown used to, but it was significantly smaller and the two end sides made it harder for me to lay down with her and roll away. I missed our simple mattress on the floor!
We later moved and I immediately ordered another house bed and full sized mattress for her and her new room. She finally had a designated space for herself and she adores her *super cute* floor bed. And so do I!
While it’s really helped support great sleep and great transitions to sleep and to wake, it also comes with some pretty amazing researched based benefits! To name a few, it promotes their independence by providing an option that meets their physical abilities and capabilities, promotes bodily autonomy in enabling freedom of movement without limitations, provides bodily and spatial awareness by being able to freely explore their environment, and more! I highly recommend looking into it further if it’s something you’re interested in!
And people often ask me or seem concerned about the fact that they can get out of it, and it’s true, they do! Or they fear them rolling off mid sleep, and they do that, too! But with ensuring the environment is a safe, ‘yes’ space, and the fact that the bed is only inches off the ground, my babies have always been unharmed. I’ve even seen her roll off the bed and just fall back asleep right there on the floor next to it, no harm done! Or maybe just with legs hanging off. I’m a firm believer in the Montessori/Respectful Parenting type approach, where if you really trust a child and give them the opportunity to navigate their experiences on their own, without a sense of control or expectation, they really do impress you!
If you have any questions about our experience or want to know more about floor beds or how we’ve decorated ours, please leave me a comment, I’d love to hear from you!