Bed guard for slatted cot bed?

[rdaddy]

Hi,

Our son (2 yrs and four months) goes to sleep every night sleeping on one of us, in a nursing chair, then is transferred in to his cot bed (Rachel by John Lewis). We need to transition him to falling asleep in the cot bed.

For ease, step one will be to do the conversion from cot - in fact, this will be a part-conversion; I'll take one of the sides off before converting fully to bed.

We have already purchased a Summer Grow With Me infant bed rail but, frankly, whilst he was immediately excited to get in, we found several issues...

• The cot bed base is slatted, and the guard is designed to rest on a base using two arms. These two arms don't align well with the slats underneath, slip around on the wood and risk falling through the gaps between slats.

• When we did get the arms aligned on to of corresponding slats and put his cot mattress on top, with him in the cot, he pushed on the guard itself and the pivoting action was easily able to make the arms beneath rise up, tipping the mattress off the cot, and the boy with it. Not good, not safe.

We chanced it for a couple of nights with neither the cot side nor the cot guard on - but he just fell out on to the floor (including one comic instance where he elegantly rolled on to cushions beneath and remained asleep)

So, the questions...

What are the options here? Are these guards all designed only for proper single beds? Is there any option compatible with a cot bed, with a slatted base?

We need to get that side off, pronto.

Thank-you.

Idea: TIE the guard arms to the slats with string, even better, cable ties.

Then, if pushed whilst he's on the mattress, it wouldn't tip the mattress. He's surely need to be strong to tip the whole cot like that.

Did you just answer your own post

Duct tape. It fixes everything.

We had a similar bedguard on DDs cotbed. It worked fine with no problems on a slatted base. we just slotted the arms under the mattress and the weight held it all in place.

When we switched to a single bed we changed to a foam bedguard. or you can use a pool noodle.

I just rolled up a large blanket into a sausage shape and put it under his sheet near the side so he couldn't roll out, I've seen people recommend swimming pool noodles or you can buy inflatable sausage shape things specifically made to stop kids falling out of bed.

forgot to add we didnt use the extra bit on the end of the arms that would hook over the wider mattress as it obviously didnt fit the cotbed base. The weight of the mattress was enough to hold it in place.

We used this one from Ikea on a similar style cot bed - worked well.

There are wooden bed guards online. Check amazon as i think there are a variety to choose from.

We use cable ties on our slatted cot bed base, we have the same bed guard.

We also used towels here, tucked under the bed sheet. Started off with a large roll the length of the bed, and reduced it every few weeks.