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This happened once when he was around 8 months old. He was standing in his crib and something on the floor caught his attention. He stood on his toes and leaned forward and tipped over. I caught him just in time before he hit his head. So we lowered the level of his mattress to the lowest point.

Now he's about to be 12 months old and has grown taller. We cant lower the crib mattress any further and it looks like any day now, he can do the same thing again - stand on his toes and tip over. We do say "no" when we see him trying to stand on his toes and bend down, but he's a curious kid and we're not always going to be there, especially at night.

I don't know if buying a crib that has taller sides would help because :

  1. It would be hard for us to put him down sleepy but awake. We have to bend down a lot as it is. Any lower and we wouldn't be able to reach the mattress surface while holding him.
  2. He might just grow taller again

I don't think he's ready for a toddler bed either - he may fall out of that too at night, although it would definitely be less dangerous. (right?)

What do we do to make sure he doesn't fall out of his crib? Is he ready for a toddler bed - How do we know?

P.S : He moves around a lot in his sleep. He sometimes sleep right up against the side of his crib. This is another reason a toddler bed scares me.

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    You are lucky you made it to 12 months. Most of my kids were able to climb out of their crib by 8 months and were consistently getting out of it by 12 months. Toddler beds, IMO are a waste of money, unless your crib converts to one.
    – Jax
    Dec 31, 2020 at 16:37
  • Did they climb out safely though? I wouldn't mind if that happened. But at this age at least, my son is sure to FALL out head first if he climbed out of his crib.
    – learner101
    Jan 1, 2021 at 5:44
  • Ha! It wasn’t very graceful, at first. Nobody ever got seriously hurt. My daughter was the sneakiest. She never really made any noise and we didn’t hear her the first few times-we just found her asleep somewhere else, which was scary, since she was on the second floor. One advantage (I guess you’d call it) of the clumsiness of a crib-escape is the noise. When they can just get out of bed there’s no way for you to know, and if they don’t have a gate or a closed door to stop them they can get into trouble (at least) or danger (at worst) while you sleep.
    – Jax
    Jan 2, 2021 at 1:41
  • Apparently, instead of climbing out, I took it apart - Mum had to wait for Dad to come home to put it back together...
    – Solar Mike
    Jan 8, 2021 at 20:08

2 Answers 2

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He might just grow taller again

I would hope he does!

Some babies just like to climb, and there's nothing you can do to stop them - my oldest was one of those. I don't think we had to go to toddler bed quite so fast (our crib converted), but it was pretty close, and realistically he'd known how to climb out before we switched. We switched at around 15-18 months, I believe, and I think that's very common.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends switching out from the crib when the baby reaches about 35 inches of height, or when the rail reaches about to the baby's nipples. If that's the case for your baby, then you should go ahead and switch to another option.

Options vary; you can use a toddler bed, particularly if your crib converts to one. If it doesn't, you can easily switch to a twin mattress on the floor; if so, read up on how to do that safely; it's a very common choice both from a cost point of view and an ease of managing baby. Sleeping on the floor makes it easy for you to put him to bed, as you can lay down next to him.

In terms of your concern for his safety in a toddler bed or other alternative; you certainly need to take some care to ensure he's safe, including a new round of baby-proofing since he could be up at night when you're asleep, but for the most part babies by this age sleep through the night. In terms of falling out, a toddler bed or floor bed is very close to the floor, so no serious injury is likely. Rolling out of bed is something that may happen, and he'll cry some, but a fall from a foot or two off the ground is nothing like a fall from a 4' high crib. Obviously, a floor mattress is lower, so that's something to consider; and toddler beds can still have low rails to help keep baby in for the most part (just like my kids' bunk bed has a rail on the top bunk, just six inches or so, in order to keep them from rolling out by accident).

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  • I used to fall out of bed a lot, don'y know why, but remember it as unpleasant and scary at most (no physical pain.) Our kids slept on floor mattresses. +1.
    – anongoodnurse
    Dec 31, 2020 at 17:38
  • He does sleep through the night on most days. Some days, i don't know why, he wakes up in the night and stands up in his crib. Just shushing and putting him down again makes him go right back to sleep. Its these times that worry me the most.
    – learner101
    Jan 1, 2021 at 5:49
  • For my friend (when she was that small) they put a mattress next to her baby bed, not only she did not hurt when she fell out, she could also climb back in. (Locked the door in such a way she could not leave the room.)
    – Willeke
    Jan 3, 2021 at 12:23
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Children falling from the beds are a known danger, and you are rightly concerned (see, for example, Chaudhary, 2018).

When you transition the child out of the crib and into the toddler bed, consider adding a bed guard rail or a bed bumper. Our kids would have fallen onto the floor many times if not for these. Search the web for something like amazon best sellers child bed rails to find a few popular choices, for example: https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Baby-Kids-Bed-Rails-Rail-Guards/zgbs/baby-products/166872011

REFERENCES:

Chaudhary S, Figueroa J, Shaikh S, et al. Pediatric falls ages 0-4: understanding demographics, mechanisms, and injury severities. Inj Epidemiol. 2018;5(Suppl 1):7. Published 2018 Apr 10. doi:10.1186/s40621-018-0147-x : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5893510/

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