The Nursery – AKA, My Favorite Room in the House

When I found out I was pregnant, we were living in a one bedroom apartment and knew we would move before the baby was born.  We decided to buy a house and the process took months.  While the search was sometimes exhausting and frustrating, it did give me plenty of time to research the type of nursery I wanted to have.  Since I couldn’t do any real nesting to speak of, I poured all of that pent up energy into researching Montessori infant rooms.  When we finally moved into our house when I was just over 30 weeks pregnant, setting up the nursery was fairly simple.

Right now, the room has four basic areas: sleeping, playing, diaper changing, and nursing.

I’ll start with the one that I spent the most time researching: sleeping.  I knew I was interested in a floor bed, especially after seeing them work wonderfully in the infant room at the school where I teach.  I was unsure of the actual logistics of this though, particularly making sure that it was safe.  I researched floor beds and mattresses, but honestly didn’t find a whole lot of specifics, mainly just accounts of how a floor bed worked or didn’t work for different families.  I did read somewhere that Ikea had a thin mattress lower to the ground than most, and that is what we decided to go with.  We wanted a twin mattress that would give him more room to move and that would grow with him.  The Ikea mattress (I believe it was this one: Minnesund) seemed firm and was under 4 inches high, so that when he does eventually roll off, he won’t have too far to fall.  We also placed a rug by the bed to soften the landing.  While a bed frame is totally unnecessary, I fell in love with this one from Etsy.  When we assembled it, there was a small gap between the mattress and the frame, so we decided to wait until he’s a bit older to use the frame for safety reasons.  I’m not too upset about this though since, as it’s a twin sized bed, he will still get plenty of use out of it into the toddler years.  The flag bunting hanging over his mattress came with the bed frame.  One other note, we could not find sheets that fit the low mattress tightly enough for an infant, but used sheet suspenders (I believe these) to pull the sheets nice and tight.  We plan to start him out in a bassinet in our room, but to transition him to the floor bed for naps fairly quickly so he can begin getting used to his space.

For the “playing area”, we hung an acrylic, shatter-proof mirror on the wall (pictured above with the bed).  We purchased it from Home Depot.  They have all different sizes and it was very easy to hang.  It is very lightweight, so there is no fear of it falling and hitting the baby.  We hung the black and white mobile above the mirror so that he can watch the reflection of the movement for added interest.  We were so fortunate and a wonderful Montessorian here in Austin gave us the beautiful mobile.  My mom is also making a more traditional Munari mobile, which I’m so happy about, as I love the Montessori mobiles, but am decidedly un-crafty myself.   I can’t wait to see him interact with both the mobile and the mirror!  Along the lines of play, we also have a low shelf from Ikea with a few books, toys, and photos on it.  The black and white rattle was part of a lovely giftset of Montessori baby toys I received and the pictures are photos my husband has taken.

For the changing station, I knew I wanted to have this on the floor for a few reasons.  Since I know it won’t be long before he is mobile and crawling around the room on his own, I wanted to minimize furniture that may not be safe later on.  I also plan to do stand-up diapering as soon as he can stand holding onto something, so did not want to invest in a piece of furniture we would use for such a short time.

Lastly, nursing: I was not planning to purchase a glider / rocking chair for nursing, but a wonderful family at the school where I teach gifted us this one and I could not be happier about it!  It is the most comfortable chair and I already sit in it all of the time to read.  Once the baby starts to crawl, we will likely need to move it to a different room so that he doesn’t hurt his fingers under the rockers, but for now, it is a great comfortable spot in the room where I’m sure we will spend lots of time over the next few months.

I’m sure this room will go through many iterations as we observe the baby in it and as his needs change.   Right now I just can’t wait until he’s here to test it out!