Toddler Bed for 19 Month-old?

Great idea, but I agree about the mattress on the floor for a while first. Also, since he's co-sleeping, you may want to transition slowly at first. It's in your best interest to keep all nighttime parenting as pleasant and peaceful as possible. What worked for us (my daughter was 14 months at the time):

She was still nursing, so I'd nurse her before her naps and lay her down on the mattress on the floor. This helped her get used to waking up in that position.

A few weeks later, we started letting her go to sleep at night in her own room. Again, we were still nursing, which really helped. We would lay on the mattress together and she would nurse to sleep. When she woke in the middle of the night, I would bring her back to the family bed, nurse, and we would stay there the rest of the night.

At 18 months, we weaned her from night feedings, but we still let her come to our bed when she woke in the middle of the night.

At 21 months, she would still wake in the night, but now we stayed in her room to sooth her back to sleep (songs, patting, back rubs). We transitioned to a twin bed (normal height) around this time too.

At 24 months, she miraculously started sleeping through the night. She has never returned to our bed (except for tickles in the morning). She has medical issues that I really thought would prevent her from EVER sleeping through the night.

I know some moms think we're crazy for going so slow about nighttime issues, but it worked for us. And now my daughter has wonderful bedtime habits and has never had a problem getting up at night to use the bathroom by herself. Everything about our nighttime is positive, for the whole family.

Good luck!
-K.

1 mom found this helpful

my son is 20 months old now and I put him in his car toddler bed when he was 19 months old at first I started with naps in the bed than once he got used to it he started sleeping in it all night long and believe it or not he sleeps better in that than he did in his crib lol. hope this helps.

This is the advice I have given to most friends who also found it helpful.
I put my daughters crib mattress on the floor to see how she liked it. I surrounded the edges with pillows (so she woulnt roll off) and made the space her own. SHE LOVED IT! This helped with the transition. We then skipped the toddler bed and got her a day bed. Go to Pottery Barn Kids or Macys or something and put him on beds and see what he thinks. My daughter hates Bunk beds we found out and thats how we got the twin/daybed for her with a side rail. She is sleeping like a baby and very happy. Good luck

We were in the same boat w/our oldest daughter - some thought that I was crazy because then she could get up and walk around - hello - if she was sleeping w/us all the time, what difference did it matter. The greatest help of all was making a big deal about her bed - I also bought the wall clings that we allowed her to put up on the walls to decorate her new room. Good luck!

I started out putting him in a toddler bed just for naps. Luckily he stayed put and just slept! I dont expect many babies would do this, and I was lucky. But anyway, it was just a nap time thing. A special thing. Then as he adapted and got used to it, we put him donw for the night. He was free to come back to our room if he needed to, and would on occasion, but was mostly content in his own room. Good luck! I'll be doing this again in the coming months!

i'm all for co-sleeping, but transitioning a 19mo old into a bed sounds dangerous. why don't you transition him into a crib instead? our pediatrician told us to keep our son in a crib for as long as possible, for safety reasons. he's three and still in a crib.

My recommendation would be to stay consistent, and have lots of patience. I moved my 2 year old daughter to a toddler bed about 2 weeks ago. In the beginning, she did not love it. It was very tempting to go back to the crib (she was climbing out of it). But, we stayed consistent. There were a couple of very tough days, but now she is much better. She sleeps through the night, and seems to like it.

Do you already have a toddler bed? I would have something set up in her room (or yours if you plan to have her share your room), and start to talk it up. She probably won't get the "big girl" talk that an older child would be excited about, but when we presented our son with his "car bed" (he's obsessed with cars), he was asking to go to bed and sleep in the new toddler bed (still does ask, 8 weeks later; he was 20 months when we did the transition). We made his room cozier so it didn't feel so big to him when he had the freedom to move around (though he has only gotten out of the bed 3 times, on his own accord). Talk to her about how she's going to sleep in her new bed and have more room, her blanky/teddy/lovey items, etc. Talking it up makes all the difference in the world, with our son. If you have anxieties about the transition, do your best to hide them from your daughter - she will sense it and may resist, knowing that you might give up. I hope this helps. Good luck with the transition! It's a new stage and for us, was the greatest change we've made for household sanity (sleep).

M.:

My daughter is 22 months and I am just going through the transition. I had tried before with no success but now I think I am making progress. My daughter is very stubborn and hard headed so the leaving her in the room to cry really wasn't working for us, she could literally cry for 5 hrs and not only couldn't I bear it, I couldn't sleep with her crying so we brought her back to our room. My approach now is that we all moved to her bedroom. She has to sleep on her bed and me and my hubby sleep on the floor on an air mattress. For the first week I would go follow my normal bedtime routine with her and we both would go to sleep at the same time, we kept this up for about 1-1/2 weeks. Now what I am doing is that she has to go to sleep by herself and I will join in once she is asleep. I have only been doing it for two nights so far but it is going well. She goes down and doesn't give me any issues. Once we do this for some time then we will leave the mattress there but we won't sleep in her room to see how that goes and then eventually take the mattress out. I am very hopefull this will all work. I am giving myself some time to work it out but my goal is be done by end of Dec. Hope this helps.

If you want some encouragement or would like to know if I am successful let me know and I'll be more than happy to share. There was a lot of crying at the begining as she wanted to be in the mattress with us but in about 3-4 nights things started to ease up. You have to be consistent.

O.