I am considering getting bunk beds for my boys. Am I completely insane? Big P will be 4 in a few months and Little P turns 2 in less than a month, and we desperately need to figure out a new/different/hopefully better sleeping situation for our family before Baby P arrives this summer.

bunk beds
Photo from Pottery Barn Kids

Here is a rundown of our current situation:

Right now Big P sleeps in his own room in a twin bed. His bed is the cheap-by-Pottery Barn Kids-standards Catalina bed (annoyingly PB Kids slightly modified the standard brown color, so we aren’t able to 100% match if we bought more PB Kids furniture). Big P usually needs or wants a little help falling asleep, but, once he’s out, he’s out. He may wake up in the night and come get me, but he always goes right back to bed without complaint. He also still naps although I think we may start phasing him to a daily “quiet time” before Baby P arrives this summer.

Little P also “sleeps” in his own room in a crib, although he isn’t doing a lot of sleeping these days. He has been climbing out of his crib for a few months now, and all of our attempts to keep him contained have now officially failed. We can basically only put him to bed sound asleep because he will just climb out if we put him down awake. And if he wakes during the night (which he has been lately as he’s been battling a cold & ear infection), he immediately climbs out and often takes awhile to fall back asleep (in our arms of course since he just climbs out if you lay him down awake). It’s become clear what we’re doing now is not sustainable and that we have to give up on the crib and somehow train him to sleep in a real bed.

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The two boys’ rooms are both upstairs and connected by a Jack and Jill bath, and they spend a lot of time playing with each other in both rooms. We’ve been tentatively planning to move Little P into Big P’s room for awhile now, and we even bought him a little toddler bed that is all set up in Big P’s room. But so far we have been unable to consistently get them both down in Big P’s room.

Baby P will likely sleep in our room for a few months, so we don’t need the older boys to start sharing yet. But I do need them to sleep, and right now that’s not happening consistently or long enough each night! I’m cautiously optimistic that once we figure out a solution and stick to it they’ll get better at falling (and staying) asleep in whatever room they’re in. We just need to figure out that solution!

And here are my ideas for a new solution:

1- Keep Little P in his own room for now and either convert his crib into a toddler bed or remove the crib and replace it with the toddler bed that’s currently in Big P’s room. The upside to this solution is that we can keep him in his own, comfortable space while we “train” him to sleep in his bed before we move him into Big P’s room (also we can lock him in ha). The downside to this solution is that Little P seems to sleep better in a bigger bed and we can’t lay down with him in a toddler bed to help him fall or back to sleep. I shared a king bed with him this weekend on a quick out-of-town trip and was shocked at how much better he slept. A few nights ago in desperation I actually moved Big P into our bed and then lay with Little P in Big P’s twin bed, and again Little P slept like a champ! He moves a lot when he sleeps, and I think in his crib he wakes up abruptly when he bumps into the rails.

2- Keep Little P in his own room for now but get him his own twin bed. This offers the same benefits as the first solution but gives him a bigger bed that we can also climb into with him. The downside is – we have to buy another twin bed and mattress, and we can’t get an exact match to Big P’s current bed for when we move them in together. Plus 2 twin beds in the same room, even a big one like Big P’s room, take up a LOT of floor space (and there is a decent chance we will move this year, likely into a smaller house).

3- Move Little P into Big P’s room now and just force him to sleep in the toddler bed. This is obviously the easiest solution since it’s already set up. But I have no idea how to force Little P to stay in a toddler bed, plus we have Big P in the same room to deal with and I won’t be able to climb into bed to lay with Little P.

4- My only other idea (other than bunk beds – see below) is to jury rig some type of temporary solution. We have been debating upgrading from a queen to a king in our bedroom, and, if we did that, we could move our queen mattress into Little P’s room for him to use for now (or into Big P’s room and give Little P the twin). We also have a queen in our guest bedroom downstairs – I suppose we could try putting Little P to sleep in that bed for now, but he’d be on a different story than the rest of us unless one of us slept with him. One other idea I had was to add a trundle bed to Big P’s bed, so Little P could sleep in a bigger bed if he wanted to and/or we could lay with him.

5- My wildcard idea is to move Little P into Big P’s room and get them bunk beds. I feel like this could be a spectacularly good or bad idea and would love any insights from people who’ve braved bunk beds before. On one hand I think my boys will LOVE the idea of bunk beds and that excitement may incentivize them to develop better sleep habits. I also think the vertical separation may help with some of the distraction issues we’ve faced when we’ve tried to get them to sleep in the same room before. Bunk beds also allow both boys to have twin beds or bigger and are a great space-saving solution . Plus they’re just plain fun (didn’t everyone want bunk beds at some point growing up?). And I can see us using them for a long, long time given we have a 3rd boy on the way.

I do worry, however, about the ages of my kids. Big P is a heavy sleeper who doesn’t move much, so I think he’d do OK on a top bunk, but he’s not even 4! Is that too young? And Little P will inevitably try to climb the steps to the top bunk, which could be problematic. I can also too clearly envision a scenario where they both climb up to the top and attempt to jump off. Oh and we’d have to buy the bunk beds and figure out what to do with our twin and toddler beds (store them? sell them? give them away?).

So what’s a sleep-deprived Mom to do? Please share your thoughts and experiences. Also, if we did go with bunk beds, what should we take into consideration when buying them? Staircase or ladder? Should we add a trundle below the bottom bunk or look for one that has drawers for storage?