The nursery is ready for baby! I spent today doing all of the finishing touches– hanging new blinds and curtains, putting everything away, cleaning, arranging and rearranging the furniture… and setting up the Montessori bed. It is very simple, no toys or pillows as that would not be safe for an infant. I am displaying the lovely hand-knit blanket that a relative made for the baby, but it will be removed for safety while the baby sleeps. Ideally a shatter proof mirror would be securely mounted to the wall next to the bed for visual stimulation and encouraging the baby to explore and “interact” with his or her reflection, but we do not have one. So, following the principle of having a simple, clutter-free, developmentally appropriate environment for the child, I resisted the urge to add more “stuff”. We used a very firm crib mattress, although a low profile twin size mattress designed for bunk beds or a futon mattress would work as well. A floor bed must be low enough that a baby will not be harmed by rolling or crawling off, and firm enough not to sag and cause a suffocation hazard. Look for a mattress with the most coils you can find, and test it to be sure that it properly supports baby. Some parents choose to put the mattress in a wooden frame to provide a more finished look. We decided to forego the frame for budget reasons and also so that there is nothing hard between the baby and the floor once he or she is mobile. The reason for using the floor bed is to allow the child to get into and out of bed independently. A pre-mobile infant benefits from the floor bed by having an unrestricted view of his or her surroundings, which encourages visual and eventually physical exploration. When the infant becomes independently mobile, the transition from visual to physical exploration happens seamlessly– there is no crying to be taken out of a crib. When the child is ready, he or she crawls off of the bed and into the nursery environment. For this reason everything must be safe for the baby to touch. It sometimes helps to think of the whole room as the crib and prepare it accordingly.

 

An excellent description of the Montessori floor bed– one of the most thorough I have seen online, can be found at:

 

 

Please, please, please check out the link. If you have any apprehension about the floor bed concept, or if you need a place to direct curious (or furious) people, this is the post to read. The whole site is worth looking at– lots of articles and videos that explain many aspects of Montessori philosophy.

 

Once our baby is born I will post about how the bed is working out. It won’t be long now!