Are guardrails necessary?

Just thinking ahead (hopefully, way, way ahead!) to the day we convert our cribs to toddler beds. We have the option of buying the matching toddler guardrail...they seem pretty expensive, especially since we need two!

DD is pretty "active" in her crib at night...is this something that will change over time? Once they are in toddler beds with a pillow/blanket/etc and have a sense of top and bottom of the bed, will they stop rolling around so much?

Any suggestions or advice? Thanks

 

We didn't use rails, but we moved from cribs straight to twin beds when they were about 3. They each fell out of bed once or twice over the first few nights (we put their crib mattresses on the floor next to their beds just in case), but have not done it again except for one freak occurrence about 9 months after we switched.

I posted about this at some point when my twins were 2.5, and the responses seemed to indicate that some kids were like mine and only fell out once or twice, and some continued to fall out frequently until they were in kindergarten. You might as well not invest in the toddler bed rails until you know which kind you have! :ibiggrin:

ETA: My kids (particularly Amy) were also very active in their cribs and seemed to have no sense of which was the "head" end. So that doesn't necessarily predict whether they will be faller-outers. Amy is still pretty active in bed, but it's like there's some no-falling-out switch that just got turned on after the first couple of nights.

 

We have them. Clayton's is actually the top bunk, so it comes with wood rails but Audrey's is cloth. She relies on it to not fall out... as a crutch. Sometime next year, when she gets her own room and Evan gets moved up to a twin bed, she will probably not have it. She is known to sleep in some odd positions, but hopefully a full sized bed will help. Did that help? If they never have them, they probably will fall out of their bed a few times but will learn.

 

We have them and I'm happy we do. They sleep all over the place.

 

I think as PPs suggest, it really depends on the kid. I vividly remember falling out of bed a few times when I was a child, so I must have been 4-5 years old when this happened.

We didn't get any guard rails with our cribs (though we did purchase the rails that convert them to twin beds) but I will probably get 2 sets of guard rails when we move to big boy beds just in case. I think we'll get something like this because we can't push the boys' beds against any walls in their bedroom, so we'll need double rails.

 

They have guardrails that are much cheaper than the matching ones. They fit under the mattress and then the rail stick up on the sides. They are collapsible so storing them is easy and not too bulky. I don't have my boys in a toddler bed yet, but they will be soon. We got the matching rail, but that was just because we wanted the matching set.