• Toddler and 5-year-old's loft bed
• Student family in 1BR - should we get a loft bed?
• Do you like your kid's loft bed?

Toddler and 5-year-old's loft bed

Our twenty-month old toddler has always slept with us, but we're getting to the stage where we'd like him to sleep in his own bed. (Technically speaking, my husband is way past this stage and I'm grudgingly going along because I can see it's important to the health of our marriage that I compromise on this issue, but I digress.) In our small house, that means our two kids will share a bedroom. Currently, our five-year old sleeps in a low loft bed, about four feet off the ground, and the other twin bed abuts that at a right angle. Our toddler loves to climb up to the loft bed and hang out there. He can climb the ladder as well as pull himself up by standing on the end of the other bed, so just moving the bed won't work, and it's difficult to change the furniture arrangement in that small room. I always insist that 1) an adult be in the room when he's up there and 2)he stay seated on the bed. Of course, he doesn't always stay seated and so is very often removed to the ground.

My concern is that he'll try and climb up there at night, if he wakes up - which he always does, to nurse - and that he'll fall. Our five year old often comes into our bed around 4 or 5 and is a heavy sleeper anyway, so wouldn't necessarily wake up if his brother did climb up. I can't think of a way to make this a safe situation. Has anyone else solved the problem of a billy-goat toddler and a loft-bed set-up? If anyone has any ideas, I'd really love to hear them.

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Student family in 1BR - should we get a loft bed?

My husband, 4 month old and I live in a small one bedroom appartment and I am worried about what we will do for space when my son starts crawling. We are students, and can't afford anything much bigger unless we move far away from campus, which is also undesirable. (We have applied for UC housing, but that's not so cheap either) Recently I had the thought of replacing our bed with a loft bed. We have pretty high ceilings (8'8'') in our appartment so it seems like a good way to create more space... but I worry that it's not safe, esp. given the earthquake issue. Does anyone out there have experience with loft beds? How safe are they? Are they sturdy enough that I could safely make the area under the loft baby's play area? Does anyone have a reccommendation of a good place to get a sturdy loft? Feel free to respond here or email me in person. Thanks for any advice you might have, Agnes

When our daughter was about 1 1/2, we knew we needed to get her into her own bed so we looked at lofts and bunk beds. Not being from around here, we were especially scared of earthquakes so we wanted a really sturdy bed. We wanted something where we could have a double bed on top for my husband and I to sleep in, and a twin or a toddler bed underneath. Most of the lofts we looked at seemed *really* flimsy (especially the ones at Ikea) ..

We finally found what we were looking for at the Berkeley Kids room. They had a lot of beds on display, and it turned out that they would also custom build lofts to meet the height and mattress size that we needed (you could even get a kingsize bed lofted... crazy!).

We bought the lowest loft (I think its 6 ft, but i'm not sure), and its low enough that we can fit a box spring and full mattress and still have room to (almost) sit up without hitting the ceiling :) . The loft is VERY sturdy. We thought about putting a toddler bed under it but instead, my husband built a twin bed frame into the bottom so our little girl would be able to sleep in it for many years... and even with the twin bed built in we still had room to put our dresser under there. I know its probably hard to visualize but email me and I can send you a photo.. :)

The lofts at berkeley kids room are a little expensive, but we figured that we were actually saving a lot of money by not moving into a place that had two bedrooms or to a place where we couldn't walk to campus anymore.

Anyways, now we've graduated and moved into a two bedroom, but the bunkbeds are up in our daughters room. Whenever we have visitors, we always have a bed for them to sleep on! And people are always amused when we tell them about the ''dorm room'' set up we had in Berkeley -- my husband and I on the top bunk and our kid on the bottom bunk :)

Well, thats our story.

By the way, we didn't buy the mattresses that come with the bed. Instead, we bought high grade foam mattresses at one of the foam shops in Berkeley, which have also held up well. Kim