Arm's Reach Original Co-Sleeper

My husband and I were so excited about this product. It seemed like a great alternative to a bassinet, and it was. We used it a lot for the first two months or so after our son was born. After that, however, he joined us in our bed and the co-sleeper has become 1) a diaper/blanket/toy holder and 2) a kind of safety net to keep our baby from rolling off the bed.

For the first month or two, our son was so small that I wouldn't have wanted to have him in our bed next to us for fear we would roll over on him! The co-sleeper was great during that period. I didn't have to get out of bed to get him. Equally as important, I could just look over or reach over to make sure he was okay and still breathing. (Yes, I'm a paranoid mother and I did that all the time. If he'd been in a bassinet I'd have been up and down all night to check on him.)

But, because the co-sleeper mattress level is about 4 inches lower than our mattress level, it got difficult to pick him up without straining my back once he started to get heavier. At about the same time, I decided that he was big enough to be in bed with us (my fear of rolling over on him had subsided). So he started sleeping with us and I didn't have to sit up and pick him up when he wanted to eat. Once he made the transition to sleeping with us, the co-sleeper became a junk/baby stuff collector. However, it continues to be useful for one purpose: I can put my baby on both sides of me to eat/sleep because on one side he's between my husband and me and on the other side, should he roll, he would end up in the co-sleeper and not on the floor. Of course, he's not actually rolling yet, so we'll have to see if I'm still comfortable with this arrangement once he gets to that point.

As a last note: My husband is an engineer and very critical of most baby products and their flimsy construction. The co-sleeper was the only product that he actually thought was well thought-out and constructed.