I used to think floor sleeping was weird. Then I had two kids.
How our bedroom went from a Pinterest nursery to what is essentially wall-to-wall mattress. And why I stopped apologising for it.
Years before we had kids, my husband and I visited friends in Japan. They showed us their bedroom, and I remember the exact thought I had: oh, that's odd. No bed frame. Just a low futon on the floor, neatly made, sitting in a room that would become a living room by midday. I found it charming in a foreign way — definitely an interesting cultural detail, definitely not something I'd ever do at home.
I'm writing this from a room that is entirely covered in mattresses.
How it started
We did everything right, at first. We had a crib. Beautiful crib, next to our bed, exactly where all the advice said it should be. And then our daughter arrived and I realised that getting up to feed her every two hours while half dead from sleep deprivation was just not sustainable. Getting out of bed, picking her up, feeding her sitting upright, putting her back down without waking her — on a good night that's forty minutes. On a bad night it's an hour, and then she wakes again forty minutes later anyway.
So she came into the bed with us. Which worked, sort of, except there were now three people in a bed designed for two, and I spent a portion of every night with approximately four centimetres of mattress to myself, lying very still, terrified to move, overheating under a duvet I couldn't adjust because any movement might wake someone. My husband was hanging off the other edge. It was fine. We were fine. Nobody was sleeping well, but we were fine.
At some point we looked at each other and said: we need more floor space.
The first mattress on the floor
We moved a mattress into another room and put it on the floor. No frame, just mattress. And something immediately got easier. There was actual room for all of us, nobody was wedged against a headboard, and the low-to-the-ground setup meant I stopped tensing every time our daughter shifted near the edge. There was no edge to worry about. Just floor, in every direction.
Night feeds changed completely. Side-lying, half asleep, she latches, everyone dozes. We started getting more sleep, not because she started sleeping longer, but because the interruptions got shorter. I'd lose ten minutes instead of forty-five. Over weeks of newborn nights, that difference is enormous.
Then our son arrived
When our second was born, our daughter was still in the floor bed setup with us. We were not going back to a crib that nobody slept in. So we got a second large mattress and put it next to the first one.
Our bedroom is now, genuinely, mattress from wall to wall. There is no other way to describe it. The floor is mattress. All of it.
And I want to tell you that it's chaotic and we're planning to fix it. But honestly, it works better than anything else we've tried. Our daughter has a full running track for morning jumps. Our son can roll wherever he wants and there's nothing to hit. Everyone knows where everyone is at night. The anxiety I used to have — that low background hum of checking and rechecking — is just gone.
Structurally our bedroom looks unhinged. Functionally it's the best sleeping situation we've ever had.
Back to Japan
I keep thinking about those friends in Kyoto and how I stood in their bedroom doorway finding the floor futon unusual. Floor sleeping in Japan isn't a workaround or a phase. It's just how you sleep. The bedding gets rolled up each morning, stored away, and the room resets. Practical, low-maintenance, and — now that I've been living it for two years with two small children — completely logical.
Most of human history was spent sleeping at floor level, close to the people you're with. The elevated bed frame is a fairly recent addition and, it turns out, not especially well suited to the specific chaos of keeping newborns alive.
I'm not saying everyone should move their mattress to the floor. I'm saying that if you already have, and your room currently looks like a mattress storage facility with a lamp in it, you're in good company. Centuries of it, actually.
WHAT I ACTUALLY WEAR FOR NIGHT FEEDS
A nursing top that opens with one hand in the dark
The side-lying position is perfect until your top requires two hands, full consciousness, and some kind of spatial awareness to open. LULA's nursing top has a full front opening — not a clip, not a small panel — so you can feed without sitting up, without turning the light on, and without waking yourself up any more than necessary. Built-in bra means no layering at midnight. Soft enough to sleep in without it feeling like a compromise. This is what I wear every night and have for two years, which is either a strong product endorsement or a sign that I need to do laundry more often. Probably both.
The room will look normal again, eventually
I don't know exactly when we transition out of the full-floor-mattress era. These things happen at different times for different families and I've stopped trying to predict it.
What I know is that right now, in this specific season, the setup that works is the setup that's worth keeping. Even if it looks nothing like the bedroom we had before kids. Even if guests do a small double-take when they see it. Even if I occasionally look at the room and think about those Tokyo friends and the very firm opinions I used to have.
They were right. I just had to get here the long way.
— Ieva, Founder of LULA Nursing Wear