Moving baby to a toddler bed
Yesterday we decided it was probably time to start the long and painful process of transitioning 21 month old Aerin from a crib to a toddler bed.
With Maggie this was a several week operation to get her to stay in the bed, we gave up many nights for sake of sleep as Maggie fell out of the bed, refused to sleep if there was anything at all interesting she could do, etc.
I placed the toddler bed next to the crib yesterday and for naptime put Aerin in the bed not expecting anything other than the start of a fight. I was wrong. She laid down and requested a bottle and a paci and took a two hour nap.
I kept checking on the baby cam that she was ok, she was. I hear a yell later on at the end of her nap and she was sitting up but still in the bed. Went in and helped her down (she didn’t need it) and all things were good.
Maggie decided it was time to show interest in that bed again after not touching it for a year and led a jumping on the bed campaign after hearing “no more monkeys jumping on the bed.” This lead to baby imitating her, falling down and cutting her chin on a corner of the bed.
It’s not a sharp corner mind you, but it’s also not designed for a toddler head impacting it. Might need to update my review. Anyway, one band aid later that was taken care of and I was afraid Aerin was going to associate the bed with chin damage but come bedtime the only thing she asked for was a pacifier and some milk.
From 7pm when she went down (early, the chin trauma took some out of her,) to about midnight when we finally got to bed she had complained a couple of times due to wanting more milk and once falling out of bed onto a pillow and being so asleep she couldn’t figure out how to get back in for a minute.
I put a baby gate outside her door, we cranked the volume on the baby monitor and sometime around three am heard a grunt, but when I looked she was out and happy.
I woke up with a shock at about 6am this morning and she was fine, asleep. Walked in at 6:40ish and she woke up, sat up, looked around and seemed a bit confused that she was not in her crib.
Quite possibly the easiest crib to bed transition I’ve ever heard of. However, that was day one. We’ll see how things go.
On a side note – if you’re reading this on some sort of news aggregator, let me know which one at theITbaby.com so I can stop them from posting my baby blog content.
