Nap and sleep

Floor Bed Update – 17 months

Thursday, May 31st, 2012 3:07 pm | By Stephanie Woo

Now that Brooke and Mackenzie are 17 months, I decided to do an update on their sleeping situation. They are still sleeping on the same floor bed they’ve been sleeping on since they were four months old. Here’s a video of their bedroom:

Parent Q&A: How do you keep your babies in bed on a floor bed?

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011 10:07 pm | By Stephanie Woo

From Helen, mother of twins: I am really intrigued with the floor bed idea, but how would you keep your babies on it once they start moving and walking and would not want to go to bed or stay there as long as they should? do you close bedroom door? I know with my son, he never wanted to go to bed, but once we put him in his crib he had no choice but to fall asleep….

A: I noticed you used the words “as they should.” Whenever the word “should” is involved, there is a lack of freedom. Notice how you feel when you feel you “should” do something: “I should lose weight” “I should make more money” “I should be a better person.” “Should” comes with an invisible pressure and doesn’t allow someone to choose freely.  

When and if you decide to go with a floor bed, the idea is to give your child the freedom to choose when he sleeps and when he wakes. With my girls, who are crawling around, we close the door at bedtime and let them play till they are tired and fall asleep. Encourage your child to sleep because he is tired, not because he is confined and bored.

A baby has an internal rhythm, he knows within himself when he is tired. A floor bed respects this internal rhythm, whereas a crib imposes a rhythm on him – one that is set by mom and dad. 

In the long run, children who sleep in floor beds sleep longer and better because their natural sleep-wake rhythm is respected. When B and M were 6-7 months old, we put them to bed at 7pm. Mackenzie was almost never tired at that time, whereas Brooke would fall asleep often on the dot. I would close the door and Mackenzie would crawl around, play with her toys, talk to herself, crawl into the closet, sometimes she would even crawl into Brooke’s bed. All this time, I am in another room cooking or writing, and lo and behold, 15-40 minutes later, I would hear her little cry. I would walk into their room, pick her up, put her on her bed and she would be asleep in no time. No struggle at all. We’ve since changed their bedtime to 8pm, and both of them almost always falls asleep as they are finishing their bottles.  And if they don’t, then we do the same thing (see pictures below, taken the day after this post was written)

Another thing to consider is this: when a child is tired and you put him in the crib, he cries because he’s tired and he doesn’t want to be confined in the crib. It’s very common for those children to fall asleep only when they absolutely cannot hold on anymore. Whereas children who sleep on floor beds will cry because they are tired, but once you put them in bed, they sleep. Without that additional layer of complexity and struggle in their cry, it makes sleep easier for babies and LIFE better for moms and dads.

12:25pm Naptime. Mackenzie is already asleep, while Brooke is still playing

1:03pm I heard Brooke cry to be put in bed. I picked her up, fed her a little water and put her in bed. Fell asleep within minutes.

When your child sleeps on a floor bed…

Saturday, September 3rd, 2011 10:37 am | By Stephanie Woo

Our apartment is a railroad-type house: baby room, our room, living room, dining room all in a row. This morning I was lying in bed when Mackenzie came crawling into our room, followed by her playmate, Brooke. They stopped and chatted with each other, played with something they found along the way, looked up and said hi to me, then made their way into the living room. It was like a mini-parade going through our room at 7am…

630am: Chatting begins in the babies’ room.

7am: They open the door to their room (we don’t close it all the way at night) and come crawling into our room…with their bed head

Say hi to Mom and Dad

Play with some toys on the shelf in our room

Mackenzie heads into living room where they hang out most of the day

Brooke follows!