Floor Bed: What to put on floor surrounding bed?

[NightOfTheLivingDad]

We like the idea of a floor bed and we've set one up in DD's room using a relatively thin futon mattress on a laminate floor. DD (7 months) sleeps well on it, but has been known to roll to the edges (and beyond) some times. As a stop gap measure, we've set up some large, thin pillows around the edges of the mattress but I'm looking for a permanent solution. Really I don't care if she ends up sleeping off the mattress, my primary concern is for her not to hurt herself when she rolls off the edge of the bed. Anyone have any suggestions?

Currently, we're considering three options, none of which I'm particularly jazzed about.

1. Surround the bed with those puzzle-piece foam pads. We have some we use for a play area in her room, but it just doesn't strike me as soft enough. Yes, I don't think she'll do serious damage to herself rolling off the bed onto the foam but I don't want her to do any damage at all! She's sitting up on her own fairly well, but from time to time topples over backwards and is in a very mild amount of pain from hitting her head on the foam.

1. Buy a large, thick plush rug and surround her mattress with it. This is a pricier option and it's hard to buy anything online and know it's soft enough.

1. Buy play pen fencing and put it around the mattress. This again is pricey and doesn't look great, but it would stop her from rolling off the bed altogether.

In summary, I'm wondering if anyone has any other ideas. Or maybe links to a rug or play pen fence they liked for this purpose.

Thanks!!

SomeHalfHumanCreatureThing

Apologies, I misunderstood who your comment was aimed at

@DrinkSangriaInThePark haha yes and learning new things every day.

Watch next week, we'll be completely against this idea and figuring out something new to keep her safe and us sane.

We are having a great time being new parents, a lot to learn, a lot of great things and of course some downfalls here and there.

A 'floor bed'????!! Whatever next...🙄🤷‍♀️

My 2 year old still doesn't sleep fully through the night and I was considering this idea due to me being sleep deprived mainly, but this has just put me completely off. I will persevere with the cot and no sleep.

@Oldknees1 I think the problem is that our DD is so young, in your case, maybe it's completely fine since soon they're be climbing out of their cots on their own as a previous poster mentioned. (2 1/2 years old)

But maybe perseverance is key! We are finally sleeping and so is she, but at what cost?

How about making a ridge around the sides of the mattress under a fitted sheet,

A couple of pool noodles (pound land) around the edge of the mattress secured in place with the sheet and if needed the sheet secured under the mattress with a strap.

No pillows involved and barrier to rolling

@NotanotherboxofFrogs that's what we have, there is no way she can go under them and there is no way she can roll over them. Our barriers are not big enough for suffocation, and they're tightly under the fitted sheet so no way for her to get caught.

So, that's what have made us happy and made our DD happy. It's very safe, very secure, and we can all sleep. :)

I think I'm more at the "at long last we can all sleep" attitude when your baby is 7 months old. What an inconvenience previously!

To be fair 7 months of broken sleep isn't fun, any parent knows that! I'm just baffled as to why the answer is a mattress on the floor

Most babies don't sleep! That's the norm, and thinking that a mattress instead of a cot will magically make it happen is a bit naive. Parents of babies are always complaining about being shattered. It's part and parcel of parenthood.

@AudacityOfHope so I think it was a few things, since she was a couple of weeks old, she slept with her arms wide out. She kept growing and is currently at the 99th percentile for her height and spreading her arms out would hit the bars on the cot... Then she would feel the bars and think they were a toy and want to chew on them... so she used to wake up due to being too tall...
now she wakes up because she like to roll and then hits her face on the bars and sometimes getting her arm stuck... She was waking up over 6 times at night, and now is waking up only once for her feed. It's a huge difference!

The mattress on the floor is firm, big enough for her to roll back and forth without falling off and also spread her arms wide out, and no bars for her to get caught on.

Wow this is such a weird post! I call troll ...

Fair enough, that makes more sense then. Our twins were in spica casts from the chest down for hip dysplasia and the cots weren't comfortable enough for them so we moved them to beds at 12 months.

Your reasons make much more sense than the way your partner explained it.

@DrinkSangriaInThePark Oh wow! Thank you for sharing and understanding.

We feel this is a good solution for our DD to be comfortable and actually sleep. We're very excited to finally have found something that works and the initial question was posed to see if we needed to worry about the falling and if so, how to prevent any injuries, since this is the decision we feel is best for our family.

P.S. Love your username :)

My DD hated the cot, could only put her in completely spark out and if she woke in it she'd scream and scream. I have a very bad back so it was agony trying to put a sleeping 10+month old over into it. A floor bed on hindsight would have been ideal. Instead we co slept until 14 months which was agony on my back so we then got her into the cot bed and then she slept better - she clearly just didn't like being penned in!

So for the OP I think a floor bed is fine but you need to clear the room of everything including any cabling, all furniture bolted to walls etc and only use the foam matting around it. You'll also need to keep the door open and have a baby gate in case she crawls and you open the door onto her behind the door. During the day you'll need to air the mattress too

@gaffamate Thank you! And airing the mattress was definitely something we learned from this thread that we will do!! :)

We definitely need to start baby proofing since she'll be crawling and/or walking soon! We've been doing the floor mattress for a week now and not only is she sleeping well, she's also sleeping on her own. We just put her down, sit next to the mattress on a chair and she falls asleep on her own. This only started happening after we put her on the floor mattress. It solved a lot of our problems.

Thank you again for your thoughts and advice :)

Don't worry too much about sleeping on her own, I think the advantage of a floor bed is you can lie with her and then move away if you need to. I still sneak into my 4yo bed if I want cuddles, it's not a bad thing!

Or just get some of this big gym mats and make the whole floor into one big bed, problem solved 🙄

Well it's not something I guess I ever considered but glad it's helping

Floor bed seems fine, but please don't surround it with all these suffocation risks. Just a simple playmat is fine, there is really no evidence of serious brain injuries from children rolling off a mattress at floor level (a drop of what 5-7 cm?) onto a playmat.

Also, I'm a scientist and your statistical analysis is a bit rubbish. You need to adjust your statistics to account for the fact that you are deliberately placing items known to increase the suffocation risk around her sleeping area. To what extent that increases the risk is unknown - but increase the risk it does. It's like saying I will walk out of the house in a storm with a 6 ft long lightning conductor in my hand. Then I can't use the average statistics of someone being struck by lightning to calculate my personal risk of experiencing the same.

@Bisquick thank you for explaining that, i knew it didn't quite make sense but i didn't know why!