10mo crawling out of futon on floor- safety?

[corrie_cat]

Hey all, my 10mo DD co-sleeps on a queen futon on the floor with me. The futon is raised up a few inches on a flat frame, because the floor is so cold. But I'm concerned that she'll crawl out of bed and hurt herself. She goes to bed at 7pm, and I don't go to sleep until 9. Also, she naps in there during the day, with the door closed to muffle sound (we have a very small house).

I can hear her when she wakes up from her naps, and when I go in to get her she's often crawled partway over the blanket & pillow barrier I've set up (I go in as soon as I'm sure she's really awake and not just making sleepy sounds between sleep cycles).

But we still worry about her safety. If she crawled out of bed she could fall on her face on the wood floor... and then what about when she starts walking (soon)? Anyone faced this issue? My husband wants to install a 'wall' of baby gates around the bed, but I'm not so sure about that

[Anastasiya]

I would either lay her down on something else on the floor while you're not in there with her, or start teaching her how to get off the bed by putting her belly down and pulling her ankles off so that she comes off feet first. She'll learn quickly that she's to scoot that way off the bed, and then she'll land safely on her bottom.

I started teaching my little ones this around 7 months and they all learned to get off the bed (and ours is very, very high) this way. Granted, their feet didn't always touch the ground when they let go, but they'd just fall onto their bottoms. Better than falling on a head.

[xekomaya]

How hight is "a few inches" off the floor? I agree with teaching her how to crawl out of bed. Our bed had a total height of 18" and I remember it being a very short time from when we were worrying, to ds getting up and down easily. We were waffling on the baby gates also, but never got around to ordering them before we decided we didn't need them.

If you don't think it will wake her unnecessarily, you might want to go in at the first sounds for a while until she gets the hang of crawling off backwards.

[corrie_cat]

Thank you both! We'll start teaching her how to crawl off safely -- we hadn't even considered that -- and babyproof the rest of the room. FYI "a few inches" is about 8-12"- but if your LOs could crawl off safely from higher beds, I guess we're ok! Yay for easy solutions!

[Anastasiya]

I just measured our bed out of curiosity. It's 31 inches off the floor! Wow. That's high! So yeah, you're bed is pretty darn safe compared to mine!

Another reason you don't want to use baby gates/rails is that soon after the scooting stage comes the pulling up stage, and you don't want her falling from a height even higher than your bed. She could very likely stand up to the gates and flip right over the top of them.