It’s always been a bit of a burning question in our household. When should you move your little one from their cot to a big bed? It seems such a momentous step and also a pretty scary one. I was so unsure whereas Edd was all for it.

On the plus side you get to choose pretty new beds or cute new bedding. You kind on need to focus on these positives as it can be quite an unsettling time for some. This post actually started out when Laura from Rock My Wedding began chatting about moving Bertie to a big girl bed. You may know Laura from her gorgeous Instagram feed and the beautiful Coco & Wolf With Little B bedding you see gracing these pages.

Having gone through the experience twice now I thought I’d share my stories with you. Let’s just say one was incredibly successful and the other, well, wasn’t.

Molly

I hadn’t planned to move Molly to her big girl bed quite when we did. It wasn’t something I thought she was ready for but we sort of got thrown in to it. We had a cot bed so we would simply be removing the sides when it was time. Molly adored sleep and adored her cot. She didn’t try to climb out and would happily sleep for hours.

The crunch came went we went away for a weekend to Wales. To a caravan. With two little ones. Now if anyone has tried to fit two travel cots in to the bedrooms of a static caravan you will know you need Houdini like skills. It wasn’t happening. So Edd had the bright idea that Molly would be fine in the bed. It was a teeny bed so sort of similar and in a nice cosy little room. That night it’s safe to say I had no sleep. She cried, she got, she fell out of bed. Twice. I ended up sleeping in the room with her the two nights we were there which was no fun. On the plus side I had some early nights as I was in there from seven.

When we got home we probably should have just put her back in her cot but decided we had made the initial jump so just go with it. She was two and a half.

It was not easy. We were up and down the stairs about 20 times a night once she learnt she could get out. Considering she is two flights of stairs up it certainly kept me fit. You’d hear little feet creeping down or sometimes she was so stealth like she would just appear.

I spent a lot of my evening sat up in her room with her for hours until she drifted off. It didn’t help that we also made the decision to take her dummy off her not long after this. Gluttons for punishment springs to mind. Not only was she coping with a new bed but also not having her comforter. It was probably this which affected her most as she could no longer send herself off to sleep.

Over the course of a few months we slowly tried to leave her room a little bit before she was a asleep. Gradually it worked and she soon became a wonderful sleeper again.

She does still tiptoe down the stairs or in to our room in the middle of the night but she’ll soon settle back down.

Alice

Alice on the other hand was a breeze. After the Molly debacle I was dreading it and when Edd suggested taking the sides off her cot bed I was reluctant to say the least. She hadn’t tried to climb out yet but she had climbed in on numerous occasions so really it was only a matter of time before she attempted an escape. This was never going to end well with Alice’s clumsy tendencies. Alice was two and a bit when we asked her if she wanted a big bed like Molly. She didn’t but what does a two year old know? So off came the sides and we have never looked back.

I’d braced myself for an eventful first night but it never happened. She didn’t get out once. In fact she downright refused to budge. Instead calling ‘Mummy I’m awake’ the next morning until I went to fetch her. That call continues to this day. We tell her she can get out but she’s quite content to wait until she is fetched. It’s like she thinks there are bars there still. It’s so funny.

Only in the last month has she actually started getting up herself in the morning and pottering downstairs. She still rarely gets out at bedtime and tends to just call us if she wants us.
 
So I’m not really sure what the rhyme or reason is behind my experiences. We didn’t really do anything different but I’m glad both girls are now settled in their beds (for the most part anyway). How have you found the transition or are you planning on a move soon? Any top tips to share?