In the last two years I have purchased vomit-covered bibs printed in Spanish, endured nipple-biting, spent a day at an amusement park entirely themed around Christmas, argued with the TSA about bringing breastmilk aboard a plane when there's no baby in sight, devoted hours to finding him the perfect shoes, allowed our freezer to be so taken over by pumped milk that we ran out of room for meat, listen to my child yell out profanity at church, and had more conversations than I can count about big trucks. But today marked a new level of odd and unexpected.
Today I found myself attaching a cut-up pool noodle to Nathan's mattress with packaging tape. Which, let's face it -- is something every mom pictures doing when she pees on a stick and realizes through joy-filled tears her name is about to become Mommy. Right? [shakes head]
But here's the thing: when your son falls out of his big-boy bed, and you therefore have the foot and one side of the bed pushed up against the wall, and the pack&play (which you acknowledge with a sigh is where he's like to end up by the end of the night anyway) pushed up
against the other side, and you realize that this isn't a very safe solution since said son can (and has) become wedged in between the bed and the "blockade" surrounding it... then the whole noodle-on-mattress thing starts to seem sort of... well, obvious. Am I right?
Nathan has spent the last several weeks falling in love with his big-boy bed, but only enjoying moderate success on actually staying in it all night. To the right is a picture taken on May 20, after his first succesful nap in the big boy bed -- note the odd furniture configuration to blockade him in, Berlin-style.
Since then we have tried various configurations of wall and bed and pack&play, but we haven't been comfortable with any of them since they all had the potential to trap him if he fell. Not comfy. And not safe.
So today, we cut a pool noodle in half lengthwise and attached it to his mattress, like this:
Then we put the pad and sheet back on, and voici -- to the left is his "upgraded" bed, with some extra "help" staying 
put but basically blockade-free. And he can still get out this way, without climbing... again, much safer.The verdict? It's too early to call for sure, but it seems to be working so far -- he had a great nap, and it's now close to midnight which means he's been sleeping almost four hours with no blockade and no falls. All a relatively decent end to an extremely weird day.
Which is about to get weirder with this question: anyone have any idea how to wean a toddler from sleeping with a pool noodle?
8 comments:
You're too funny! I love your innovativeness.
Very creative! Hope it works!
it wasn't actually MY creativity - I read it somewhere, a long time ago.
It was a very resourceful momma who came up with that idea. Hope it works well!
Did you use velcro, Schnack? :) Love it!
Don't worry about weaning. I'm sure his college won't mind...if they don't know...
very creative! you'll have to report back to let us know if it worked!
update: the noodle keeps him from falling, but doesn't keep him asleep.
So he's still waking up every few hours Most (well, many) nights, but at least the wake-ups due to falling have been curbed.
we don't know what his problem is with waking up, though - nightmares? He honestly slept better when he was a newborn. He must just be going through something - can't explain everything, so I'm just waking up more than expected in toddlerhood. Part of life. Trying to be a good sport, I know he's not TRYING to make me tired. :)
But the noodle is totally working, and I do feel much better without the possibility of N getting wedged between the bed and wall now!
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