Pack N Play

The Graco Bassinet Pack 'N Play was a gift for our son. All of our friends with children constantly extolled the virtues of this product and, in researching the product on our own, I have to say that we were sold on it. We figured the bassinet feature would prevent us from having to purchase a separate bassinet while our son was a newborn and could even function as a changing table to a certain extent (NOTE: the bassinet is suggested for use only by infants up to 15 pounds). We also thought that as our son grew, we would get more and more use from the pack-n-play as a play yard and portable baby bed for travelling.

Unfortunately, we have yet to get any significant use from this product and our son is almost eight months old. He would not sleep in the bassinet as a newborn. Even though we had bedding on the pack-n-play, the product material "rustles" with every move and would wake him up within a few moments of putting him down. After many, many tries, it just became easier to not use the pack-n-play. In addition, he quickly exceeded the weight limitations for the bassinet portion.

If you are travelling by car or van and have the room, the pack and play could be useful as a portable bed, but from our experience, it is pretty unwieldy for travel by most people.

We are still hoping to get some use from the product as a play yard. Our son gets bored very quickly in it while indoors, but as the weather gets nicer, he may be more content to play in it outdoors.

On the upside, the pack-n-play is durable, easy to put together and is vented on both sides for airflow (with a roll up fly on one side if you need to block wind).

On the whole, we have always been pleased with Graco products - this one just hasn't served much purpose for us - maybe the next baby will like it better!