weird q: graduating to toddler bed w/out the cot?

[marenmj]

My daughter is 15 months old and she has never slept in a cot except when we were travelling. She currently sleeps in a toddler tent on the floor of her room (babyproofed and with a gate at the door). She sleeps well through the night (like the dead) - though she is starting to roll around a lot more in her sleep - and is used to "putting herself to sleep" in the evenings. (ie, we go to her room for Quiet Time and read books for about 10-20 minutes and she will climb into her tent and ask for her milk and stuffie when she is ready to sleep)

We will be moving overseas in a couple of weeks so we are naturally in upheaval. I don't want to change EVERYTHING all at once when we arrive, so I will keep her tent and bedding, but she's going to grow out of it soon, and all the information I can find online is geared to graduating your toddler to a regular bed from a crib/cot - things like adding rails to make it feel more cot-like.

So I know it's rather unusual, but does mumsnet have any recommendations for moving her to a 'normal' bed? My only thought so far is to place the top mattress on the floor in a corner against the walls, with blankets and whatnot, so that she can get used to the boundaries without having too far to fall. Other than that I'm at a loss.

I would think that the biggest thing for her to get used to would be the feeling of not having the snug tent over her. You can get can canopy type things (eg from ikea like this ), which could give a similar feeling? Maybe you could use one of those with a bed + rails, so she can't fall out?

Although I still haven't taken the sides off DD1's cotbed and she's 2.7, so I am no expert!

I don't think there has to be anything complicated about changing from cot to bed (or tent to bed!) - if I was you, I'd keep everything as it is until you all feel settled in the new house, but put up her new bed in the bedroom as well as her usual set-up. You can explain that when she's a bit bigger she can move into the bed because she'll start to find the tent too small. She can get used to using the bed to sit on, lie on while reading etc, so it will feel quite normal when the tent doe get too small - at that stage you can just move her bedding across and then the tent can just be for playing in.

Oh! That might work great! I had thought of the leaf-canopy-thing ikea does but had not had a proper look at their other products.

She sleeps quite happily in the open too. Nursery reports that they will turn their backs on her to find that she's gone off and put herself to sleep on a cushion. So I may just try the bed first and add a canopy if she seems to have a hard time settling

Thanks, AMumInScotland!

And in the new house she will get a bedroom big enough for both! Unlike our present house - part of the reasoning behind the tent is that there wasn't room in her closet bedroom for a full-size cot