BabyBay Co-Sleeper

[Tamof79]

Hello.
I'm pregnant with our first baby and am thinking about getting a BabyBay co-sleeper as we are quite limited on space in our flat.

I've had a look online but can't seem to see how long a baby can actually sleep in a co-sleeper for in terms of months? We are limited on money so I want to make sure we get something that will last. Is it a better idea to have a moses basket and a cot later? Just a bit worried about the space.

I'd love some advice. Thank you!

[Xiaoxiong]

A babybay appears to be just shy of £300 with the mattress and there are a lot of reviews on the NCT site saying their baby grew out of it at 5 months or so.

We looked at this and also the Arms Reach but in the end we got an Ikea Gulliver cot (£60 new), assembled it but left off the fourth side, and bungeed it to our bed. You can also use C-clamps instead of bungees, they're about £5 from Homebase but we only had one so we used one clamp and two bungees!

We were all prepared to alter the height of the base of the cot by either drilling new holes in the legs, or by raising it up on blocks, but miraculously at the highest setting the mattress was exactly the same height as our mattress so it was like a completely seamless extension to our bed.

There are some pictures here from someone who did this - she seems to have had a piece of nursery-grade foam custom cut to plug the gap (we just used rolled-up cellular blankets) and also had a dip between the cot mattress and bed mattress because her mattress had a memory foam topper. We just used the regular Ikea mattress (we have this one and it has square edges and no memory foam, so it was flush between the two mattresses.

At six months we put the fourth side back on and moved DS into his own room. It then converts into a cot bed so in theory, you can buy one piece of furniture now that will last until your baby is about 4 years old. We're actually moving DS out of it now into a toddler bed because we'll be reusing the Gulliver as a co-sleeper again for DS2.

I make that £60 for the cot, £60 for the mattress, £20 for a waterproof mattress protector. We've used it for 2 years with DS1 and will probably get three more years out of it with DS2. £120 for 5 years' service is pretty good value for money

We used a moses basket in the living room but if we'd used it at night in our room I never would have got any sleep at all getting up and down. The co-sleeper was amazing because DS was always within arm's reach - we used to put him to sleep on a folded blanket so I could just drag the blanket over to me and then drag it back again rather than lifting him up.