Safe Age to Use Baby Pillows
03/20/09
My first child happily slept in her crib until she was almost 3. The only reason we moved her to a normal bed was because her baby brother arrived. We did not even think about baby pillows and blankets. She wore a sleep sack and was snug and happy. She could not swing her legs over the rail, while wearing the sleep sack. I don't know that she would have anyway, as she was so happy in there. It was an easy transition when we moved her to a big bed. She took a couple naps there, then we moved her to the bed for nighttime, as well. It was a full size bed in a beautiful wooden frame. She had two pillows and a big comforter. We did not bother with one of those little baby pillows. We went straight to normal pillows.
My son was an entirely different story. He learned how to unzip his sleep sack shortly after his first birthday. He could easily swing his leg up on the crib rail. For months and months, that is as far as he would go. Until one night, when he climbed out of the crib entirely and walked to greet me at the door. We immediately took the crib mattress out of the crib and set it up on the floor.
Moving him to a bed presented all these obstacles that we did not have to deal with when we moved our daughter to a bed. Since he was so young, it was not an easy transition. He wasn't even 2 years old yet. So he would not hurt himself, we had to take a lot of things out of his room. Another parent recommended putting a gate on the bedroom door, which turned out to be incredibly helpful. He was so stubborn that for the first couple days, he would fall asleep sitting in the middle of the wood floor of his room. After a very LONG week, he was back in his routine.
When we finally got him comfortable in his new bed routine, the advice from well meaning people starting coming in. "Oh, he is not old enough to be sleeping in a big bed." "He could get into trouble, since he does not know better. "Do not use pillows and bedding." Wait. What? He is old enough to crawl out of a crib, but not old enough to use a pillow? What about a baby pillow? So I hopped online to check out the age recommendations. Indeed, it is NOT recommended that you give children under the age of 2 any pillows or heavy blankets. Once a child is 2 or they move to a big bed, you can introduce them then.
Since my son was not yet 2, I decided to follow the advice and start with one of those baby pillows. It was the size of an airline pillow and did not look very useful to me. It did not look like our pillows, so I think my son thought it was something else. My son did not seem to need pillows or bedding; it was just my need to make it look like a normal bed that kept bugging me. We waited about a month, until my son was totally comfortable in his bed. Then we put pillows and a comfy blanket on his bed. He loved sitting up with the pillows and snuggling like he did in our bed. And he actually used the pillows for his head, so he was happy to have a normal pillow instead of that baby pillow.
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