Why I'm switching my 10 month old into a toddler bed.

Why I'm switching my 10 month old into a toddler bed.

OK so I will start at the beginning, 

after we announced we were pregnant John's parents offered us the Crib John slept in when he was little, and also his mother slept in, we took a look at it and it looked nice & sturdy  and really cool, it was all metal and not huge like most cribs these days seam to be, so we said yes and got it all set up in Cort's room.

Then a few months after we had Cort I realized that the sides of the crib were about 10 inches shorter then a standard crib and the mattress wouldn't go down.  

oh no! That would be a problem when Cort learned to stand up in his crib, and sure enough Cort learned to pull up & stand JUST turning 6 months, 

I walked in his room and he was leaned over his crib and looking over the side! 

I was afraid he would fall out! I knew that was not going to keep him in there much longer.

So I stated researching what to do, we didn't really want to go out and buy a new crib because they are pretty expensive to get a nice one,
so I looked and looked and found the answer! Montessori style bed!

Basically it's a mattress on the ground, 

I Totally Baby proofed everything in the room & I put pillows all around it so if he rolled off it would just be on the pillow, and gradually removed one pillow at a time till there was none. 

It has worked SO well for us, there have been times that I've laid him down, he wakes up, crawls to the door crying, stays there a few min, then goes back to his bed & falls asleep! I feel like he's so much happier now that he's able to go to & from his bed, now when he's napping after I think he's napped enough I'll just open his door and when he wakes up he'll walk out with a huge smile on his face! So from 6 months till now (10 1/2 months) we've been doing that, but we knew we wanted him a traditional bed for when he gets older, 

my dad found a really nice toddler bed at goodwill and we put that in our spare room till we think he'd be ready for it, after talking to John I thought it would be best to wait till he was over a year, 

just because I didn't want him rolling out of bed and hurting himself, but after seeing how well he's been getting off the couch I decided it was time, I also didn't want him bumping his head against the wall so much. 

He took a nap in there yesterday and slept for a hour and a half, then woke up slid off the bed and walked to the door, last night was out first night with him in there and he did great! Slept from 9:00pm till 2:30am then I nursed him back to sleep and he slept from 3:00am till 7:30am just a normal night!

I feel like With me moving him at such s young age he will get used to sleeping on a normal bed and will be a lot less likely to fall or roll out of bed as he gets older. This is definitely not for everyone, but it worked well for us. I don't think we will do this with all our other kids, but for Cort it worked good!