When/how to move toddler from cot to bed?

[Aquilegia]

Hi all,

things have been going fairly well for a while (yay!) so I haven't posted.  Things are still good - our 19 month old DD is bright and happy, learning lots of new words and (most importantly!) having a decent nap every day.

At nap time and bed time she always goes to sleep on her own after some time doing what I call "cot gymnastics".  It involves a bit of jumping around, rattling the bars, thumb-sucking, moaning, chatting then sleep anywhere from 20-60mins after bed time.  Occassionally she'll actually seem upset, so we'll go in to resettle and give Pamol if teething is the problem.  We never go in more than twice - the final time is very much about saying "night night, see you tomorrow" and she settles not long after.

This is all well and good, and it only takes about 15 mins to get her to bed with a story, milk and cuddles.  However, I can't imagine trying to get her to sleep in a bed where she will have the whole room to run around in before she settles down.  There is no realy urgency to move her from the cot right now, but had envisaged that we'd do this around the time she turned 2.

I'd love to hear from others who have gone through this experience, especially if their toddler is not of the immediately sound asleep variety!

Thank you,
Rachel.

[deenz]

My dd1 sounds like yours (in terms of playing around before sleeping!).  She has been in a bed since just before 18m.  In our case we wanted to get it done before dd2 arrived.  So we had the bed in her room (with the cot) for a few weeks.  Then one night dd1 was not well, and I ended up getting her out of her cot and slept with her in the bed... So the next night we thought we'd just bite the bullet and put her to bed in the bed.  At that time it was winter and therefore dark at her 7pm bedtime.  So she couldn't see anything once we turned the light out and shut the door (she has always slept with the door shut).  So she pretty much stayed in bed.  We did have a few incidents of her getting up and crying by the door, but either we came in and put her back down, or she got back in herself.  Oh yes, we did make a point of teaching her to crawl up to the pillow before lying down, otherwise she tended to just climb back in (beside the safety barrier thingy) and laying down there (and then falling out!).  About a week later I put her in the bed for naps - there was much more playing then, since she could see!  But we just rode it out, and the novelty wore off after a while.  Now we still have days where she doesn't nap, but then we used to have that with the cot as well.  There are no 'toys' in her room, just books and soft toys, so maybe that helps.  But it's amazing what she can play with!!  And I'm not sure what will happen when she learns how to open her door...!!  Good luck!