Co-sleepers: how do you do naps once the little one starts moving around?

[foreignerforlife]

DS has slept in our bed from the start. We have a crib for him attached to the bed, but he almost never sleeps in it. No problems so far, but now he is starting to become mobile--he's 9 months old and starting to turn over and crawl. So my question is, how do we make sure he's safe during naps, when he's in the bed alone? Where does your little one nap?

[katelove]

We moved out mattress to the floor at around that age. The bedroom wasn't completely "babyproof" but she has never been a stealth waker, she always calls out straight away and we go in.

[rinap]

Early on, we walled off the sidecarred crib with pillows. Now we have a mattress on the floor for them in their room, and they mostly nap there (still with pillows to block crawling, but the fall would be six inches).

[Sneezykids]

When I'm not napping with my babe, also 9 months, she sleeps in a pack and play next to my bed. I'm thinking of moving the mattress to the floor. We also have a crib sidecarred and she rarely sleeps there!

[Glimmersnaps]

I was really worried about this too! Sometimes I'd put him in the Pack and Play but I felt like it moved too much every time he moved so he was easily awakened. I also tried keeping him in a "nest" of folded blankets on the floor downstairs with me. It worked okay but I was worried he was cold on the floor. Once he was more adept at crawling, I let him nap in the sidecarred crib. Every time we got down from the bed I would show him how to go feet first. He quickly learned so now I'm not worried about leaving him in the crib/bed. I keep a monitor on so I can can hear him "talking" when he first wakes up and I'll just run up and get him. 

[Redmom]

My little guy 13 months naps in our bed - and I nap right along side of him.

When he wakes, if I'm not awake, he jumps on me! 

[xekomaya]

My kids always nap/ed in our family bed. I found it was a very short window of time where they could crawl enough to fall out of bed, but weren't proficient enough to get down safely. Back when my first was about the stage yours is at, we took the mattress & box spring off the frame and set them on the floor so there wasn't so much height to worry about. Now we have a different set up but still a low bed.  We also did little mattress on the floor as the next stage of sleeping but I never used it for naps. 

[cat13]

I've been wondering this same thing. DS is 5 1/2 months old and loves to roll. He doesn't crawl and is still too young to understand how to get off the bed by himself. When I nurse him to sleep, I make sure he's laying in his side-carred crib, and he's yet to roll all the way over to the other edge of the bed. The trick is when DH (SAHP) puts him down for a nap, he has to do the super-stealth transfer or DS wakes up, so DH can only reach the middle of the bed. I worry that DS will roll over a few times and fall off. I'd love to hear if anyone else has other ideas besides removing the bed frame.

[Katie8681]

Well, my ds tends to fall asleep in my lap, then I transfer him over to his swing and buckle him into that. I put him in a pack n' play to contain him when necessary. He's not even fully crawling yet, but he can scoot himself on his tummy well enough to quickly get to the side of the bed and, I assume, off of it, if I didn't snag him in time!  

[quantumleap]

We had our mattress on the floor when our kids were that age. In fact, we still had it on the floor until about a month ago when we moved. My new mattress on the floor warning is this: be careful of mold. We have a king sized mattress, and laminate flooring. It was too cumbersome for me to flip on my own, so I would rotate it periodically, but never saw the underside. And, it molded. We do live in a fairly humid climate, but all the same. The mattress is molded pretty much in the shape of our bodies, which is totally disgusting, but also logical as people do sweat in their sleep. Gross. Anyway, be aware. I think some sort of slat/pallet frame only a few inches off the ground would be roughly equivalent in terms of safety and be much better in terms of air flow. Heaven knows, no one wants to buy a new mattress unnecessarily! 

I would nurse and rock kids to sleep, and then carefully lay them down either in the kanoe or on their bellies on our bed. No one ever fell out, even when we were away from home and using higher beds. My kids are pretty fearless too, so it's not like they don't usually try to get in to trouble!

[cristeen]

We also moved the (guest bed) mattress to the floor when he started crawling.  And I'll second what the pp said about mold - you need air circulation under your mattress, or plan to flip it once a month (and actually follow through).  We had ours on hardwood, and not only did the mattress mold, but the hardwood took water damage, and is now discolored and buckled in that area. 

If you don't want to move your mattress to the floor, you can just get him his own mattress, or even a sleep mat.  The nest on the floor works pretty well too, if you have a rug or carpeting (or even a playmat), it can be a bit cold on tile or wood. 

My DS loved sleeping in the beanbag for a while.  He'd crawl up into it and go to sleep.  Not what I considered the most comfortable, but he seemed to really like it. 

The most important thing for my DS was his blanket.  So long as he had one of his favorites, he didn't much care where he was sleeping.