G'day

ChatBratwrites:

I'm terrified she'll crawl right off the bed. How do you deal with that?

Larry McMahan wrote:

1. Falling off the bed

I went through a phase of using a long bedrail from One Step Ahead, uhen
I was worried about falling asleep while nursing with DS on the
"outside" side. Then I learned thanks to mkb about nursing from both
breasts while keeping DS on the "inside" side, so the bedrail became
redundant.

I also went through a phase of having a long body pillow on the floor
beside the bed in case DS fell. (he didn't).

But primarily my solution for once DS became mobile was to teach him
from the very beginning (again thanks to some thing I read on mkb) to
get off the bed "feet first" meaning flip onto his tummy and lower his
feet off the bed to the floor. He learned this pretty quickly and would
get off the bed even when he was so small my heart was in my mouth. This
useful skill also translated into being able to safely go down our
stairs feet first from quite an early age.

2. Escaping.

When we go to bed at night, we make sure that the gate at the top of the
stairs is closed (only time we use it these days, oh and when I am in
the shower too), and that the right doors are opened or closed, so DS
has the run of the "safe" upstairs area if he gets up before we do.
These days he heads straight to his new bookcase and sits down and
"reads" to himself until we are awake enough to read to him.

DrRuth