Our transition to a floor bed was a saving grace! We started using a floor bed when O was ten months old, and it was just exactly what O needed to feel safe enough to nap independently. As I wrote a few weeks ago in the blog Navigating False Starts and Split Nights, seven to eleven months was a challenging sleep age. One of the hardest parts was that O would only nap on me (or in a carrier). While you know I love a good contact nap, they just aren’t possible all the time. Enter the best solution (after trying the crib several times): a floor bed.
In my last “O’s Sleep Journey” post, I shared how O’s night sleep was impacted during the seven to eleven months stage. In this post, I’ll share more about our experience with naps and how they ultimately led us to try a floor bed. Spoiler (for those who think a floor bed is hippie-dipper and are about to stop reading here) we loved it! It solved all the problems we had with crib sleep! Especially the all-too-common failed transfer.
Developmental Milestones
When O was around seven months old, she was learning so many things and her naps started to be challenging again. She began to crawl and pull to standing and eventually, by ten months old, was cruising along the furniture. She was also saying her first words at this age, and separation anxiety had begun. These are typical milestones for babies around seven to eleven months and notoriously impact sleep significantly. It can affect their nights or naps, and for some babies, both. During O’s first year, she would resist naps whenever she worked on a new skill. And new skills were plenty at this age….
Despite a burst in development, we decided to make one final attempt at crib naps when O was eight months old. I told myself, “if this doesn’t work, we are trying a floor bed.” I knew a floor bed was the next best thing to a crib safety-wise. I knew that I could safely leave O on our mattress if it was low to the floor, as long as we safety-proofed the room and I watched the video monitor closely. We had really low expectations. I read somewhere that if a baby isn’t napping consistently in their crib by nine months, there’s a good chance they never would and that a floor bed would be an easier transition.
Reasons we tried the crib one final time
I still don’t know why I made this last attempt. I think I just wanted to say she was sleeping like she “should be” to my family and friends. I also believe that how much time, energy and money I spent working on her nursery while I was pregnant played a role in why I wanted to try the crib again. We had a beautiful room that was only used for diaper changes and bedtime stories. Although this shouldn’t have bothered me, it did.
Of course, there was a small part of me that wanted some alone time, but after eight months of primarily contact napping, I had gotten better at taking care of my needs while O was awake. I can’t say I was desperate for a meal or a shower at this age.
Whatever the reason, I made one final attempt. I don’t know whether it was the low pressure I put on it working or whether she was just developmentally ready, but it worked! O began napping in her crib consistently once a day. I would nurse and rock her to sleep, finally master my ninja-like stealthy transfer into the crib, then slip out for 20-40 mins to myself (she always had a short crib nap no matter what).
So end of the story, right? She started sleeping in her crib, so that must mean crib sleep became the norm for O? NOPE! This all went out the window a month later (I’m sure you guessed that by the title and intro…)
When she turned nine months, and separation anxiety peaked, O’s crib days were over. Seriously, it did not matter how stealthy I was during the transfer, she woke up every time. She also would not nap in the car or the stroller all of a sudden; even though she could see or hear me, this was just too much separation for her during this stage. After a week of failed crib transfers and her refusing to nap on the go, we went to contact napping for about six weeks exclusively.
Realizing something needed to change
You probably know by now how much I love snuggling O while she naps (you can read all about why I love contact naps here), but I hit a wall after a few weeks. I chalk this up to SO MANY things, not just the exclusive contact napping.
The cumulative exhaustion from over a month of split nights played a significant role. One way contact napping helped during this phase is that I always set myself up for safe sleep. I did this so I could nap with O during this phase.
This phase was also hard because I had less support from my village. We still had pandemic restrictions during this time, and with omicron circulating, we didn’t see our loved ones very often. Plus, the further you are from the newborn stage, the more people assume that you have it all figured out.
And since it was the dead of winter, we weren’t getting out for walks very often. I thrive when I spend lots of time outdoors. My mental health always dips a bit during the winter months if I don’t make a point to get outdoors.
On top of all these things, I had wildly unrealistic expectations of baby sleep and honestly thought we were going through something abnormal for this age (if this is you, please know it is SO typical for sleep to be “off” during this phase).
It was a perfect storm for postpartum anxiety.
I remember feeling like everything was out of my control.
I was starting to feel touched out. And I did not want to feel that way. I loved contact naps and snuggling my girl, and I wanted to make sure that remained something I loved and looked forward to every day.
I had no desire to try the crib again, but it wouldn’t have worked at this age. And without car and stroller naps in our rotation, I knew it was time to try the floor bed.
Trying out the Floor Bed
I still remember my husband’s face when I asked him to take our bed apart and put the mattress on the floor. He didn’t bat an eye, knowing how I had been feeling, and took it apart the next evening after work. But I am sure by the look on his face he thought I was out of my mind. We made sure to safety-proof the room and moved her baby monitor from the nursery to our room. We were all set.
The next day during O’s second nap, I decided to test our floor bed. I nursed and sang her to sleep as usual, then slowly transferred her to our mattress. I immediately felt confident. I had mastered this transfer long ago. I have done it every night since we bedshare. I knew before she even hit the mattress that it was going to work.
I rolled to the other side of the bed and watched her sleep peacefully for 10 mins before slipping out of the room. When Nic came home from work, he found me standing in the kitchen, staring at the monitor. He laughed and said, “you don’t even look like yourself without O attached to you.” I laughed too.
We both went into our room and were shocked she was sleeping so soundly. We needed to wake her from her nap, which we had never done when she napped independently.
How things improved instantly
We tried a few more independent naps on the floor bed over the next few weeks, and they were all successful. It felt so good to have an option that worked for O when we couldn’t contact nap (or I didn’t want to).
But here’s the funny thing… once I knew our family floor bed was a reliable nap option, I found myself craving more contact naps. It had done exactly what I was hoping it would do: restore my love for contact napping. Of course, there were times I still transferred and slipped away, but it was reserved for when I had something else I needed to do. The majority of the time contact napped O guilt-free.
How we feel about our floor bed today
And here we are, nine months later, still loving our family floor bed. I actually wrote this post sitting next to O sleeping on our mattress.
She naps on the family floor bed all the time. I can get her down with no problem, then sneak away to work in my office, dry my hair, or do whatever else I need to do but can’t do during contact napping. Our babysitter can also get O to sleep and then transfer her to the floor bed without a hitch. O also loves the independence of getting on and off the bed herself. It’s also a fun place to play; O loves to run and flop on the bed, roll around or pretend to put her doll to bed.
I also truly believe this will make for an easier transition when we decide to move on from bedsharing. We can easily set up a similar bed for O in her room and sleep with her in there to get her used to her new sleep space.
There are many benefits to a floor bed, not just from our experience. I could go on and on, but I’ll save those details for another blog. I’ll end by saying trying out a floor bed was honestly one of the best sleep decisions for our family. Our only regret is that we didn’t try it sooner.
