Our 10 mo old sleeps in a sidecar crib on my side of the bed. I try to create a barrier with my body that prevents her from leaving the confines of the crib but sometimes I roll over in my sleep. Last night she crawled to the end of the bed and fell off. Luckily she is ok, quit crying the moment I nursed her and not even a bump or a bruise. But it was still super scary and super not ok.
So we brainstormed a solution and came up with this thing.
The problem is she will need to start sleeping between us because this set up means the sidecar will no longer be effective. Is she old enough to sleep between us? Plus my husband sometimes like to smoke weed in the evenings so I'm not sure I want him directly next to her. What is the waiting period between smoking and cosleeping. Three hours? A day? Hard no ever?
Please let me know if you guys have any more solutions we could try. I'm not opposed to a floor bed but we would like to keep our bedframe if we can.
@genstt My LO fell of the bed once too, I felt horrible. We opted for a floorbed. It works great for us.
Edited to add: your LO is too young to sleep between the two of you. The advice is not before two, and this is for good reason.
When your partner smokes weed or is otherwise intoxicated, it's is a hard no at all times to sleep in the same bed! It can lead to very, very dangerous situations. Every once in a blue moon, my husband drinks a beer, but will always sleep somewhere else. Also, don't dismiss the consequences of second- or third hand smoke. It can lead to SIDS.
@genstt In not too long at all she'll be standing up and climbing over any bed rails you use. The only safe solution is to put that mattress on the floor unfortunately
@genstt An older lady asked me if my son 8months at the time had fallen off the bed yet while cooing over how cute he was. I told her yes about 2 weeks prior during a nap. She told me that its a good omen for a long life in her culture. So hopefully you find that as reassuring as i did.
We started co-sleeping with our son between us at 6months. We had been used to having dogs in our bed so we were pretty used to being aware of smaller bodies in our bed. We had a strict no drinking rule while co-sleeping. It just wasn't something we felt was worth the risk. If you were wanting my opinion specifically on this I would recommend your husband sleep elsewhere on those nights he wants to smoke or possibly ask him to take a break until your baby is out of the bed. By the way we put a pool noodle under the pillows at the top of the bed as a bumper for our little ones head. My husband was so very worried his arm would get stuck between the mattress and the headboard.
@genstt We bought a sleigh cot and took one side off and that worked. Both beds took over the room but it was good. We also put up the barrier things around the bed and they were so good we transitioned our girl into her own bed with them in use. She is now 5.
Btw - babies falling out of bed happens, so don’t beat yourself up about it. When it happened to us we felt so guilty and maybe went a bit overboard with anxiety and protecting our girl. If it was up to my wife, we would have turned our room into a soft play area with pillows!!
@genstt If you’re set on bedsharing and don’t want transition to a crib or bed yet I’d take your bed frame apart and have a floor bed. That’s what we did.
@genstt I've got a similar set up with my 11month old, but the barrier dosn't go around the whole bed, just one side. I put him on the side with the barrier and I sleep on the other side so he doesn't fall out (I also mostly stay in bed all night with him) . My partner sleeps in spare room because he likes to star fish. However, I always imagined that of he ever decided to join us, he'd sleep on the other side of me and I'd do that sleeping C thing around LO. So it would go him, me, baby, barrier.
I, personally, wouldn't let my partner sleep next to our baby if he was high or had been high that evening. But if you are a barrier between him and baby and he doesn't smell of smoke then I don't see the harm, it's not like he's going to roll over you.
ETA: sorry I think I miss read your post about you rolling over and LO escaping. I think my set up works for me because either I'm a super light sleeper or my LO is incapable of doing anything quietly but I always wake up before he has got onto all fours and has been able to run (crawl) off.
@genstt We had a junior bed for our daughter put next to ours from the beginning. The mattresses were at the same height and her bed was 140x70 cm, so there was only a small gap between the end of her bed and the end of ours (wide enough for me to sit there, but not much more). We turned our bed around, so the headboard was at the footend and nobody could get out there (we have a very high headboard). Then we placed a big cardboard box (from a TV I think) at the end of our daughters bed and put more big boxes filled with books behind that. This way there was a big wall at the end of our bed, the gap between the junior bed and ours (were we previously could get out) was filled up pretty high and our daughters footrest was extended higher (thanks to the big box). There was no way to get out of that side of the bed. We all had to climb in from my husbands side of the bed.
Then we taught her to savely climb down the bed (any sofa and anywhere). It took maybe three weeks and wasn't a problem anymore afterwards. She was around 9 months old, I think, and had been crawling for 3 months at that point.
@genstt For us a floor bed is not an option so I would just put a cushion on the floor next to the crib to soften potential falls. Something like a couch cushion, thick zabuton, etc. This also assumes such falls are fairly rare anyway and your flooring isn't something very hard like tiles.
