Montessori floor bed Archives - Montessori-ish Mom

Montessori Floor Bed Update

June 7, 2017 8 Comments

Good morning!

I’ve been somewhat scared to write this post as it seems like anytime I start to write something about James’s sleep improving, I jinx it and the improvements immediately disappear. In an effort to overcome my superstitions though, I wanted to share an update on James’s sleeping situation, his naps, and specifically, the floor bed.

I wrote here about the reasons for using a floor bed and how it was working for us. In short, it worked GREAT for the first six months or so. James hated his bassinet, and loved his floor bed. I liked that he could look around his environment and that we could comfort him easily without taking him out of bed.

Not surprisingly, everything got a little more challenging when he became more mobile, around six months. Obviously I knew this time would come and he would some day be able to get out of bed. I did not know how that would impact his sleep, but figured we’d deal with that when the time came.

At first, it was fine. Bedtime and nap time were a little more challenging, as he’d scoot out of bed a few times (on purpose, very cautiously, he never hurt himself this way). I would go in and silently put him back in bed without making eye contact to avoid stimulating him / making him think this behaviour would lead to play time with mom.

With some experimenting, I learned that if I went in right when he got out of bed, it quickly became a game for him. So instead I would wait 4-5 minutes and then go put him back in bed. This often worked and he’d go to sleep after a few round of this. Sometimes for naps though, he would get too riled up and excited so I would help him go to sleep. I would sit next to him silently with a hand on his back, avoiding eye contact or stimulation. This worked well, but I did feel like it was a step backwards since he had previously been falling asleep on his own. Still, I hoped that it would improve with time as he adjusted to his new freedom.

I should also mention, I removed all toys from his shelf whenever he went to bed so that there was nothing too enticing in his room. Still though, he easily amused himself by looking in his mirror or playing with his rug or window shade. No toys needed!

Separately from this, we had the nap struggles I mentioned many times. James had always taken a long morning nap and two short afternoon naps. Suddenly at about six months, almost all of his naps were short (35 minutes). This had happened a few times in the past for a period of a few days, but this time it went on and on for weeks. I went a little bit crazy….

I read everything I could find on baby sleep, circadian rhythms, ideal durations between naps, ideal times for naps, etc. I tried keeping him up longer, keeping him up shorter, putting him on a nap schedule based on the information in Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child. Nothing worked….

I tracked all of his naps, trying to decode what went right when he occasionally took a longer one.

Possibly the funniest, but worst strategy I tried was what I fondly refer to as “poking the bear”. I read that sometimes babies just get in the habit of short naps, and if you can interrupt their sleep cycle by gently nudging them a few minutes before they wake up, they will sleep longer. Yeah, this was a disaster for us. He just woke up, understandably pissed off, turning a 35 minute nap into a 25 minute nap. NOT GOOD.

Honestly, I think this was a total missing the forest for the trees situation. I was so focused on the details of his sleep times and trying to get it exactly right that I failed to take a step back and consider the broader situation.

James had always stirred at 35 minutes – if I watched the monitor, he would turn his head or move his hand, but go right back to sleep. This was just when his sleep cycle naturally transitioned. However, once he became mobile, he would pop his little head up and get right out of bed to explore. He was just too curious, too drawn to roll, and then crawl, around his environment. Who needs sleep when the big wide world awaits? Everyone, that’s who.

It felt a bit like giving up, but I decided I needed to try something other than the floor bed for naps. My friend Laura had told me about the Lotus travel crib and I liked it better than a traditional crib or pack and play for several reasons. It’s on the floor and James is used to sleeping this way – I didn’t know how he would react to suddenly being up high and wanted to minimize the disruption of the change.

It also unzips in front. I like that I can unzip it and let him come out on his own when it’s time.

Lastly, I love that it travels! We have several trips coming up and I love that I’ll be able to bring this with us to help the little guy sleep as well as possible on vacation. It folds up very small and the case can be worn as a backpack.

I had been thinking of trying this for a few weeks, but I had no idea if it would work and it was a little bit expensive, so I was hesitant. I got desperate though and decided to try it.

It was like magic! The very day I started using it, he took his normal two short naps, but then slept for an hour for his third one! It’s been two weeks since then and there has only been one day that he did not take at least one long nap. Things have actually been getting gradually better too, with his morning nap lengthening to an hour and twenty minutes many days. There have been several days where he’s taken two, hour plus naps and not needed the late afternoon cat nap. It seemed like this would never happen!

I was so stressed about him getting enough sleep, not to mention how unpredictable our days were and how difficult it was to do things with him always on the verge of being over-tired and needing to nap. This thing has been a life saver!

After a week of excellent (for him) naps, I decided to use the Lotus for night time sleep too. He was sleeping okay at night, but it was sometimes taking him a really long time to fall asleep at bedtime. After seeing how well it worked for him during the day, it was an easy decision to move away from the floor bed at night, for now.

This is by no means meant as a knock against the floor bed – I’ve seen it work well for many babies at the school where I taught! It was just a great reminder for me to remember to observe my own specific, unique baby and do what works for him.

Maria Montessori was a scientist who observed children and tried things based on what she saw. I don’t believe she would ever say that one thing worked for all children or that a method should be blindly, rigidly applied without considering the individual child. She wrote of following the child and of giving the child freedom within limits – I think James needs more limits than the floor bed gives him right now, and that’s okay.

The great thing about it is, it’s just a twin mattress, so it’s not like I bought an expensive piece of baby equipment that is going to waste. We’ll just put it away for now and watch him to see when he’s ready to give it another try.

I definitely don’t regret using the floor bed, but I am SO happy to have moved on to something that’s working for us now!

Montessori at Home, Uncategorized

Thoughts on a Floor Bed

February 14, 2017 No Comments

I have pretty much zero talent with design. I am simply not a visual person. However, I very much believe in the impact of a well-designed environment, on adults and children alike. I certainly saw this when teaching in a Montessori classroom, where simple tweaks in the organization and flow of the room could alter behaviors and classroom dynamics. Thus, I was excited to design the little buddy’s room when I was pregnant. I read many blog posts and articles about Montessori baby rooms, and couldn’t wait to put it into practice. One thing I was the most excited, curious, and anxious about was the floor bed (a simple bed or mattress on the floor, rather than a crib). I loved this idea, but wasn’t sure how well it would work in real life.

While I planned to use a floor bed, I had read that new babies liked to be in more confined spaces. I also wanted to keep James close for the first few months, so we chose a lovely bassinet, gifted to us by my parents. We set up James’s floor bed in his room, and put the bassinet in our room by our bed. I chose one of the larger bassinets, with hopes that he could stay in there longer, until he was ready for his floor bed.

Things did not go as planned (shocking, I know). When we brought James home from the hospital, he slept terribly the first few nights. I put him in the bassinet awake; I put him in asleep; every time resulted in crying within a few minutes. I thought he just had his days and nights reversed, as happens with many newborns. One night, when he started crying, I took him into his room, figuring that at least this way, my husband and I could take turns sleeping. There was no reason we should both be up all night. This was what led me to first put him in his floor bed as a newborn.

It was an instant change! He still of course woke often to eat, but he slept for hours at a time, for the first time since we’d brought him home. No more constant wake-ups and tears! I couldn’t believe it. I’m still not sure what he so strongly preferred about his floor bed versus his bassinet, but he certainly made his opinion clear. Perhaps the mattress was more comfortable, perhaps he liked being closer to the ground, perhaps he could see me better and felt safer. I have no idea. I feel so lucky though that we had that option available, or who knows how long it would have taken him to accept sleeping in the bassinet.

Another benefit has been the ease of comforting him when he has trouble to fall asleep. It is so easy to lie next to him and put a hand on his belly (or back, now that he rolls over), without having to pick him up. I think this has helped him learn to fall asleep independently (though this is still a work in progress). I imagine this would be far more difficult in a bassinet or crib. Also, since he has been sleeping in his own room from the start, we won’t have to deal with the struggle of transitioning him out of our room when he is older and more aware. As he goes to bed around seven o’clock, we don’t go to bed with him, so he is already used to going to bed in there on his own.

The only downside has been that, due to the SIDS prevention recommendations of sleeping in the same room as the baby for the first six months, either my husband or I sleep next to him on the floor on a camping mattress. This is obviously not ideal, but it’s only for a few more weeks. We considered moving his mattress into our room, but didn’t want to create a future challenge of transitioning him to his own room later.

So far, our experience with the floor bed has been overwhelmingly positive. I’m curious to see if this remains true as he gets older. James is fighting every day to become more mobile. His crawling attempts right now look more like swimming, with only his belly on the floor, limbs flailing, but I know it won’t be long until he’s moving about freely. I very much hope that he adjusts well once he’s mobile and that the floor bed continues to work so well for our family. We shall see!

Montessori at Home

The Nursery – AKA, My Favorite Room in the House

September 20, 2016 2 Comments

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!