18 out of 18 people found this review helpful.
Used it maybe five times
Date of Review: Apr 25, 2001
The Bottom Line: Sounds great but not in fact useful.
OK here's the thing. I bought this because I was sure it would be great, I mean what could be better, with the baby right there, but not in the bed with us getting squashed. I thought the baby wouldn't fit in the bed with us since it already felt pretty full!
However.
First of all, there's a lip between the co-sleeper and the mattress - you have to lift the baby over this to get her in the bed, rather than simply sliding her. This is harder than it sounds from lying down, even though the lip is only a couple of inches.
Second, the baby can't go from lying by themselves in the co-sleeper to snuggling in with you without an outfit change to compensate for your body warmth. So, practically speaking, my baby was either in with me or out in the co-sleeper, rather than the to-and-fro I imagined. And I never chose 'out', for the same reasons I didn't put her in the crib in the other room - it's cold and hard and lonely there!
Third, there was definitely room for the baby in the bed, because she slept tucked under my armpit (sort of). And she definitely doesn't get squashed, for the same reason I don't fall out of bed - I "know" she's there at some very deep level and I don't roll on her. (You can guess I'm a Sears follower - well sort of.)
Now my baby is four months old and has started only waking once a night to feed. So I have been putting her in her crib at 7pm or so, getting up at 3 or whenever she wakes, and either feeding her in the chair and putting her back in the crib, or bringing her in with me in the bed. I still don't use the co-sleeper! The crib is a better place to put her for that first long stretch, since it give my husband and I some privacy in the evenings at long last, and it also means I can read in bed without disturbing her with my reading light.
