July 2, 2017 Olivia Harvey

Trying to get more sleep with a floor bed

So today we're testing a new nursery layout.

Our house is lovely but there isn't a straight line in sight upstairs. Walls, floors, windows and doors all have that 'Amsterdam charm', slightly precarious. Conventional furniture is pretty impossible so we either have to eat into floor space or try to think outside the box.

This along with my new found hatred for small baby cribs has lead to a new thing to test, a floor bed.

Like so many things I judged when preparing for Bo, floor beds have done a complete 180 for me, for now at least... Not because I want to follow the Montessori way of bringing up my child (although the more I look into it the more it's starting to resonate with me), but because I'm bloody exhausted from the middle of the night screams when arms, legs and heads get banged on the bars.

I've tried breathable bumpers, lining the cot with soft toys, rolled up towels but the short of it is my not so little 7 month old needs more space, and conventional cribs just don't offer this.

My original thought way about a round mattress, which in theory meant no corners for him to get stuck in, in reality however it seems they just aren't so practical.

Normal kids mattresses just aren't wide enough, a cot is 60cm so if that's too small for a fidgety baby an extra 10am wasn't going to cut it. My initial reaction was to get a grown up mattress and cut it down in length so as not to take up the whole room. We even had this in mind as we loaded our camper van ready for a big trip to Ikea. Cheap grown up mattresses it turns out are terrible quality.

After a quick search through the kids section we found the VYSSA VACKERT for their extending bed range. Starting at 80x130cm it was almost perfect and meant we has 2 extra sections which are currently making up a nice padded headboard and side section which will hopefully prevent rolling out of bed in the middle of the night.

So this is what it's currently looking like... I'm sure I'll change it as the weeks go on but for now everyone seems pretty pleased. Bo even just took his first nap in it, slept like a baby for 2 hours.

This could be the start of good things...