Transitioning Leo to a floor bed with Arthur Sleep Mattress

Before we get to my Arthur mattress review, let’s chat a bit about sleep. Sleep has become quite an emotive topic for me over the last two years. Firstly, my sleep during pregnancy was rubbish due to nausea, acid reflux and general pregnancy pains. Then my baby came along and it’s been a wild ride!

I wrote a post not long ago about how I bedshare with my baby. He’s now 18 months old and things are pretty much the same. Some nights are better than others but he just doesn’t seem to need a lot of sleep. And he wakes frequently. He cries until I breastfeed him back to sleep so it just seems logical for us to sleep in the same bed so I can quickly comfort him. It’s the least disruptive way for our whole household. I don’t want to night wean him as I know it would be stressful for him and I won’t cry it out as it just goes against my natural parenting instincts. I have a way to comfort my baby so I will continue to comfort him as long as he needs it.

So, our sleep situation has been me and baby in our kingsize bed and Dad in the spare room. It seemed silly for my husband to be woken up when he has useless nipples that don’t do diddly squat for soothing our child, plus he has to get up at 6 am for work so he would get woken up by the baby during the night and then he would wake us when his alarm goes off.

If I ever had another baby, I wouldn’t buy a cot. Leo has never slept in his. If I put him in it while awake then he just faffs around. If I get him to sleep and lower him into it, he wakes and cries. I’ve wanted to do a floor bed for a while but my husband wasn’t keen as it seemed a waste of money to just take the cot down when it’s never been used. So we just kept it up and it was used for storing clean laundry and an assortment of other things.

So this is where Arthur Mattress comes in. They emailed me about a collaboration to send a mattress our way and I knew what I wanted straight away. My dream of having a Montessori floor bed so we could start the transition into Leo’s room could begin!

And it was much needed, as our kingsize bed is quite high and Leo has been moving around in his sleep a lot the last few weeks, so it was starting to feel dangerous.

What is a Montessori Floor Bed?

Montessori is an education method with promotes the idea of hands-on, self-directed learning where children are free to develop in a more self-led way than formal education methods. A Montessori floor bed is one that is on the floor at the child’s level to give them more power and freedom rather than being confined to a cot.

Floor bed options

So there are three things you can do.

1: Buy a floor bed which includes a bed frame. Many have rails around them like this one with an opening at the bottom for freedom.

2: You can buy slats to lay the mattress on for airflow

3: You can put a mattress directly on the floor. In this case, you would need to lift the mattress against the all at least once a week to prevent mould – most people do this when they are washing bedding.

Is it safe?

It’s important to follow safe sleeping guidelines. So firstly, the room needs to be babyproofed. If the bed does not have fixed bed rails, then there needs to be a gap around the edges of the bed so if the baby falls, they don’t risk being trapped and suffocated between the wall and mattress – which is the same advice as a normal toddler bed.

Please do research into safe sleep regardless of your baby’s sleep environment as the guidelines do change often based on new research. The Lullaby Trust is a great starting point.

Our Arther Sleep Mattress

I decided to get a small double in this mattress (but I was tempted to get an Arthur sleep king arthur mattress for the master bedroom). Although there was enough space for a double in Leo’s room, it would not have allowed for a gap between the mattress and the wall. The mattress came vacuum-packed and rolled up in a box and it was almost hard to believe it was a mattress inside! When he opened the plastic, it grew into a normal size mattress. It’s recommended to leave it for 24 hours before use, so that’s what we did.

The mattress is medium/firm, and has 2000 pocket springs which means it’s great for people who sleep in a variety of positions and it evenly supports weight distribution. It has memory foam and reflex foam to conform to your body shape and it also helps reduce motion transfer which is exactly what I need to be able to move in and out of bed without Leo being disturbed!

The mattress is very comfortable to sleep on and Leo seems to like it too! Leo has now had his first night in his own room. I was with him, of course!

Our sleep arrangements

For now, my husband now sleeps in our bed. I sleep with Leo and will continue to do so until I feel ready to start leaving him. But this arrangement means that once I go back into the bed with my husband, I can still move to Leo in the night if he needs me and spend the remainder of the night with him.

It also means that we get the office back – which is the room the spare bed is in. So rather than working in bed next to Leo, I now move away from him and work in the office when he is asleep. Which is much better for me as I hate working in bed!

We’re loving the new bed so far and has made life so much easier for us. Check out the Arthur Sleep range here. We’ve loved a King Arthur mattress for our main bed!

Thank you for reading my Arthur sleep mattress review. I love our Arthur mattress, have you heard of this brand before?