Going from a Crib to a Bed.

I think it would be better to move her to a bed BEFORE the baby comes so there is no connection to the two events. That way, she won't see the baby as the reason she has to move. Make is a separate, exciting reward for being such a big girl.
With my first, we moved him to a toddler bed first. I wish we had skipped that step and skipped straight to a twin size.
With my second, we put his big boy mattress on the floor so we didn't have to worry about him rolling off. That worked REALLY well.
Good luck!

I'm not sure if this is an option for you but when I was pg with #2 we changed our office into my daughter's new room. She was so excited for her new room and big girl bed that it wasn't a big deal to give her old room to #2. She was 18 months at the time...oh and we put her mattress on the floor for a while to start too. I agree with the taking changes one at a time but also think that time moves faster for kids so even a couple weeks allows them a good time to adjust, in my experience. Good luck!

My daughter really likes the "in closed" feeling so we turned her crib into the toddler bed to help the transition. We are now going to put her into a full/twin size bed (she will be 3 in Aug).

Your daughter is younger then mine when we made the transition so hopefully you get more helpful advice on the matter.

J.,

I would recommend not putting your daughter in a new bed for the first time when you bring the baby home from the hospital and put baby in your daughter's old crib. Those events need to happen seperately, probably a few months apart. I put my 18 month old daughter in a big bed when she started to try and climb out of her crib. It was 3 months before new baby brother came along, so she had lost attachment to her crib by then and had no problem with the baby being in there.

As far as getting her to stay in her new bed, just shut the door and turn out the lights or put up a baby gate. I would also recommend putting away toys and books so her room becomes quite boring at night. If she is a climber, you can take the handles off her dresser drawers or put the dresser in the closet. She may fall asleep on the floor for a few nights. When she is sound asleep, put her in the bed so she wakes up there. Be patient. You may want to put her to bed early the first couple of nights in case she has a hard time settling down.

She may also roll out of bed a few times. My kids all did. Put something soft down by the side of the bed to land on, especially if you have wood floors in her bedroom. She should be able to keep herself from rolling out of bed fairly quickly.

Good luck,
S.

J.-
Our kids are 18 months apart. It will be important to have your daughter in her new bed before the baby comes -- it's less work for you! So...we told our son we were getting him a big boy bed. I took him with me to get "fun" sheets (he chose them...even picked Blue's Clues!), and he watched me make it. I think as soon as it was made, he wanted to climb in and sleep in it...because it was his. I took all the sheets off his crib and moved it into a different room (he didn't know it would soon be his sister's!), and he was perfectly content with his big boy bed. If you chose a toddler bed first, it's just another transition. You will have plenty of transitions with making another for yourself. Good luck!!

I would switch to a big girl bed. Bring her with you to pick it out, have her help pick out the sheets. Set it up in her room and leave the crib up for a week or two.

When we transitioned our first son to a big bed, he needed to go back to the crib for a little while, and then he was ready to make the permanent switch.

Our kids are 16 months apart, so we weren't ready to put our daughter in a "big bed" right away, but we wanted her out of the crib before the baby arrived. We were lucky enough to find someone wanting to get rid of their toddler bed (on freecycle.com). I think we probably would've gotten out my old twin bed otherwise, and put the mattress on the floor. I know other people who've done that.

We went through the same last year. My son was 22 months old (back in October), we were moving to a new house, I was pregnant and he had to go to a new daycare. We didn't want to do all the changes at the same time so tried them one at a time. First we moved, then we bought him a big boy bed with cool bedding something he really liked- trucks and planes. Then we bought bedrails for his bed and made a HUGE deal out of him sleeping in his own big boy bed. I bought the bedrails for both sides of the bed. He slept through the first night and hasn't fallen off ever since. Just an FYI we took the rails off about a month ago and still going great. The only problem we had was him getting up at night and walking to our room. I wanted him to stay in his room to make sure he is safe. So we put a gate on his bedroom door so he wouldn't go walking around at night. We can still hear him so it is great. Then he moved to a new daycare and then baby came. Bottom line-- don't do everything at the same time and make sure that you make a HUGE deal that she is a big girl now! Best of luck to you!

We just went through this this past year. Our daughter is 2 1/2 and we had our second in April. We knew we were going to need the crib so in Jan we put her in a toddler bed. That transition actually went really well and we made a big deal out of her being in a bed. She was going to be changing rooms so at the end of Feb, we painted her new room and let her help a little and picked out new bedding for her big girl bed. We made a big deal about this being her new room and she was actually mad a couple of times when it was not quite ready for her to move in to.

When she would get up in the middle of the night, we would take her right back to her bed and tell her it was night time and time to sleep. She got the hint pretty early that she would not be sleeping with us.

Good luck with all the transitions coming up and congrats on the new baby!!

What did you do with the bottle and paci transitions? Did you go cold turkey or did you do a slower more gradual change? If she responded favorably to whatever general approach you used in the past for other transitions, then go with that same general idea. If she had no problem quitting the paci cold turkey, then she might be fine going right to big bed. (You can probably also guess if she would rather be told the day ahead that she will be switching, or if she would be utterly thrilled at having it be a big "surprise" one day having her new bed set up when she walks into her room.

(My son -and myself, for that matter- doesn't like surprises. We both like to know what's going on and feel in control as much as possible. Transitions are long and slow on our house, done as gradually as possible. But do what works for you and your daughter!)

I am due in September with baby #2 and we just did this with our 2 year old (26 months) literally 2 days ago. I skipped the toddler bed since it is no different than her crib size-wise, and if you have to put bed rails on the toddler bed, than it's still basically a crib.

So for the past 3 weeks, we have been talking A LOT about her getting a new room (moved from the smaller bedroom to the bigger bedroom), a new big girl bed, new carpeting,new paint color, etc. All we did was talk talk talk about her new big girl bed. She goes to an in-home daycare twice a week and by my mom's house once a week so what I believe coompletely helped us was having her start sleeping in a "big girl bed" by their houses. All kids obviously listen to other people a little bit better than they listen to their parents, so the sitter and my mom would talk to her before naptime and tell her "No standing in the big girl bed" and make her repeat it back to them, "No getting out of the big girl bed" and make her repeat it, and then they told her "When you are all done sleeping, you stay in your bed and you wait for me to come and get you out of your bed." Worked like a charm. She never once tried to get out, and when we got the bed here at home, it took her about 30 minutes to fall asleep for her nap, and 20 minutes at night, but she never tried to get out of her bed (My husband and I had the same talk with her the last 2 days), and last night she was asleep in 10 minutes.

So, I would suggest going right to a regular bed, talking a LOT about how great it is to get a big girl bed for a few weeks, get really pretty bedding or her favorite character bedding, and if possible, try naptimes somewhere else to start with. Good luck!

We are right there with you! Moving in a month, 20 month old now and baby due first of Oct. I am going to try and do the rails first on her crib b/c she rolls around so much when she sleeps. But, I'm not really in a hurry b/c we bought her the 4 in 1 bed for the purpose of keeping it with her thru her life. The next one gets their own too.

I loved the idea of putting the mattress on the floor first though. I'm just dreding her waking up so early. As it is now she talks to herself for a good half hour before getting up... what will she do then?!?!?

Good luck with the pregnancy!
AJ