Moving to big boy bed?

[dmills]

I would love to hear your ideas, opinions, and experiences when transitioning to a big boy/girl bed.  Did you just do it?  Did you try naps first?  We set it up in his new room and he has been playing on it.  We are expecting dd in February, so we need to move Jackson out of the crib and nursery soon.

[xxkaty23xx]

Firstly i like the name Jackson lol .... with Mikey we let him choose, we asked him every night did he want to sleep in his big boy bed and eventually he said yes and it went perfectly, i think it went so well as he chose when and wasnt told he HAD to iykwim, good luck!

[* Paula *]

We moved Thomas at 13 months.  The only reason we moved him so early was because he suffers from Talipes, and has to wear boots and a bar on his feet to keep them in position at night, and he kept on getting them caught in the cot rails.

Because he was so young we bought him an air bed.  I put it up that night and he slept in it no problem.  At first he was a little confused, but I just stood outside his room and reassured him.  The second night he went straight to bed, and we have not looked back since then.

HTH's

Paula x

[Critter]

I am curious about the advice here as well.  What age do you "normally" move from a crib to a bed?  My little man is 17 months.  I don't think we'll have another one until he is nearly 3, so we have time.

[ryan's mum]

We moved at 15 months  ,Ryan had started to associate his cot with pain after a bad reflux flare up .We put him straight into a big boy bed with a bed guard on the side .I also put his cot mattress on the floor incase he fell out .He actually slept a lot better in the big bed .

[Critter]

Oh wow.  I was chatting with Paula earlier and told her that I can't even begin to imagine moving him to a big boy bed now.  He has parties in his crib.  He'd be all over the place!  LOL.

I'm really curious to hear what other people's experience has been

[Lilah'sMommy]

I was really nervous about this transition, mainly because I worked so hard getting DD to fall asleep independently and she did this no problem in the crib.  I was so worried that moving her to a bed would be starting all over again.  We have had the "big girl" bed in her room from Day One (we knew we'd have two kids while we lived in this apartment, so set up the room that way, with DH's old bed from when he was a kid).  She would play on it, and very occasionally, when she was sick, we would co-sleep with her in it when she couldn't get to sleep any other way.  But up until we made the transition, she would just play on it and that was it-- she didn't really see it as a place to sleep.  So we started talking to her about how she would move to the big-girl bed, and she'd sleep there for naps and at night.  DH then asked her at just over two years old (about 24.5 months) if she wanted to sleep in her bed for nap and she said yes.  So we tried it out for nap.  It took a bit longer for her to fall asleep, but she did, and we actually had to wake her up from that nap.  She asked to sleep in it that night, but I didn't feel ready for it, so she went back into the crib.  The next day she napped great in the big-girl bed again, and when she asked that night to sleep in it, we let her.  We haven't looked back.  It took her about 3 weeks to realize that she could get out of it, and when she did, we had a couple days of no naps, but then she was back on track.

Honestly, I was more worried about this transition than I was about potty training (which is why it was good that DH took the initiative to start working on this), but it went so much more smoothly than I could have imagined.