If you DON'T have your mattress directly on the floor...

[Beauchamp]

...what do you do? We sort of want our bed frame back, but are torn because DD's safety will come first. Can it be done safely? She's 1yo, walking, climbing, etc.

Should we just keep her between us? Or get a rail for one side? Or also for the foot of the bed? We tried side-carring, and it didn't work so well, because it's hard to move her back into the sidecar once she nurses back to sleep. It seems like she always wakes up. So we have the 4-sided crib flush up against my side of the bed. She starts the night in her crib, then comes in the bed on the first waking, with the crib acting as a bed rail in case she is on the outside.

DH is somewhat bothered by having her in the bed because she wakes him up, and I think HE wakes her up, too.

When you sidecar, if you use a bed frame, is your crib on the highest setting? I worried about DD climbing out and falling, so we lowered it all the way. Then we took our bed frame apart to match the crib.

We've had a minor ant problem in our house, and DD and I both got bit on the eyelids by ants, and it was not pretty. So DH wants to put our bed back up.

Can you cosleep safely with a mattress on a frame?

[Mandala126]

We did the same thing with the side crib as a bed rail but DD1 was taking too much space on our bed so we got a twin size for her and put it right next to ours right on the floor (just the mattress). So she was lower than our bed. When she learned how to climb up and get off the bed safely we put a box spring under hers and a bed rail at her end. We ditched our frame at the same time, so we are all on the same level now (mattress and box spring). Now DD2 sleeps there as DD1 has her own twin size.

[Jayray]

When DS is in our bed (which is only a few hours a night), he stays in the middle. Even bed rails wouldn't contain him, because if he's rolling around, he'll roll down to the end of the bed!!

If I nurse him on the other side, I just keep an arm around him so if he moves I'll notice. But mostly he stays in the middle.

This has actually been working well for us, because when he's ready to get up for the day, he just slides off the bed and plays in the room a bit.

[CherryBombMama]

we have a HUGE mattress, its almost as thick as two normal mattresses stacked together and we sidecar. we dont use the box spring because that would be like climbing mt. everest but we do have a pretty normal bed frame.

our crib is in a middle setting. my ds has only fallen off once but it was my fault for letting him sleep in the middle of our bed, instead of in his crib part as usual. i just put a body pillow where the missing crib rail should be and then a baby monitor on top of the pillow. i wish we had a video monitor but those are $$$!

one thing that might make you feel safer: when my ds woke up frequently but would stay quiet, i would put a noisy toy in the exact middle of the bed. our room has night lights so if he woke up, he would see his toy and start playing. i would hear "clank clank clank" of legos LOL

[voxana]

We made a very cozy "family crib" for my ds (now 13 months). We side-carred the crib, with the crib on the lowest setting, and to make our mattress levels even, we boosted up the whole crib by putting the crib legs into longer pvc pipes. See what I mean? The pipes were cut to the size we needed for the mattresses to be even. The other thing we did was push the foot of the bed up against a wall, and the opposite side of our bed also against a wall, so that our bed was in the corner of the room and our tall headboard served as a third retaining wall. That way we had two retaining walls, plus the headboard, plus the crib. There is only a three foot wide opening on the crib side where we all get into and out of bed. I barricade that opening with heavy stiff cushions when ds is sleeping.

[starling&diesel]

We removed our boxspring when DD started to roll. We're about a foot or so off the floor, with our mattress sitting on an IKEA frame on the lowest setting. She's never fallen off the bed, and learned to safely back off at about ten months, and can now do it with her teddy bear in one hand and her blanket in the other! When she couldn't back off on her own, she'd sit up and holler for us to come get her. I guess it partly depends on if you have a mover/wiggler/explorer or not.

[Chamomile Girl]

My kid is also a year old and I can't imagine sharing a bed with him without bed rails. They are awesome! He rolls all over the place when he is sleeping and I know that without those rails he would fall right off.

On a side note I really wish he would learn to back off of the bed safely. He takes the headfirst method instead.

Oh, and ant bites on your eyelids OP?