7 Reasons We Love Floor Beds

My Connected Motherhood Author

Here at My Connected Motherhood we firmly believe that where a baby or toddler sleeps is a family decision. As long as it’s done safely, we think that families should decide if their little one sleeps in a crib, side car, bed shares, or sleeps on a floor bed. While we firmly support everyone’s decision on this, we have a personal preference for floor beds.  It’s what we have found to work best for our families. Today we’re going to take you through the 7 reasons why we love them. 

1. They’re a safe way to bed share. Safe bed sharing guidelines recommend (among other things) that the bed is close to or preferably on the floor to reduce the risk of injury from falling. Floor beds are a great option that grow with babies because as they become mobile and start crawling around in the night, there’s no fall risk. 
2. No Need to Transfer. One of the trickiest parts of baby sleep is getting the transfer to the crib. It seems that no matter how easily a baby will fall asleep, successfully putting them into the crib and keeping them asleep is a whole other challenge! With floor beds, you are able to support baby to sleep in the floor bed, which eliminates the need to transfer them altogether. Even if your baby prefers motion like rocking or bouncing to fall asleep, the transfer is much easier when you can gently lower them beside you rather than mustering all your core strength to reach down into the crib. 
3. Easy to sleep when baby sleeps. It’s a lot easier to get the rest you need and to sleep when baby sleeps when you’re able to provide them with the comfort and closeness of being right beside them. We remember trying so hard to get our little ones to sleep, then transferring them to the crib, running back to our own beds, only to close our eyes for maybe 10 minutes before they were calling us back! Floor beds are an easy way to join your baby in their sleep space, when you need a few extra minutes of sleep during the day. 
4. Flexibility. While floor beds offer a lot of the benefits of bed sharing, they also provide a lot of flexibility for families. We don’t believe you need to bed share in order to use a floor bed effectively, which is really where some of the beauty of floor beds lies. A room set up to use a floor bed safely allows for babies and toddlers to sleep safely on their own, which in turn allows you to have some time to yourself while baby naps or sleeps in the evening, and some space to sleep in your own bed if that works better for you and your family. Then on the inevitable trickier nights due to teething, illness, or development, they also provide the flexibility to join your little one to provide extra contact and closeness through the challenging phase. This might be one of our top reasons we love floor beds, they really do help make sleep work for a variety of families! 
5. More Natural Transition from Bed Sharing. A lot of families we work with love bed sharing in the early days and months, but start to want to create a bit more space in their own bed as their babies approach toddlerhood. We love floor beds for this transition because they’re such a natural way to move away from a bed sharing environment, because they can replicate a bed sharing environment for the beginning of this transition. It also feels a lot more familiar for an older baby or toddler to sleep on a different bed without a parent than it would to transition to sleeping in the crib if they’ve never slept in it before. 
6. It’s Easier to Shift Patterns. In many families, at some point the way they’re parenting to sleep stops working well for the family. They find that either they no longer enjoy rocking or bouncing their babies to sleep, or they want to reduce how often they’re feeding back to sleep in the night, or maybe a different transition altogether. Whatever the transition is, it usually requires a change to a pattern that a baby has come to expect. We have found that it is much easier to make these changes to patterns while laying right next to baby or toddler to provide as much contact, closeness, and comfort while making these transitions. Floor beds allow you the ability to be right there for them the whole time!
7. They Can Mean More Rest for Everyone. This is definitely our top reason for loving floor beds. They really do mean more rest for the family. You’re not up rocking baby for 20 minutes every time they wake through the night. You can sleep in your own bed then quickly continue sleeping in theirs if baby just needs more contact or closeness. 

So there you have it, 7 reasons we love floor beds!

If you’re thinking about making the transition to a floor bed, a mattress on the floor will do the trick, but there are some beautiful frames out there if you’re looking to invest. Our personal favourite is the Sprouts Kids floor bed because it grows with your child with the option to flip the frame so the bed is raised as your baby or toddler grows! Plus you can save 10% with the code Connected10 at checkout!

Categories: Attachment, Bedtime, Motherhood, Night Wakes, Parenting