quick question about travelling light with a baby - cots

[BeauNatt]

We have a few trips coming up - a couple of nights in hotels and a week in holiday cottage.

We've booked a cot in all these places but should we take our travel cot "just in case"? We will take baby's sleeping bag but I don't think we need any other bedding. She has started standing in her cot and I worry hotel cots won't contain her!

Take a cot sheet, as often they aren't provided. Usually it's a travel cot or a cot bed provided, though I've had one place with a small but still deep cot.

I take my travel cot, a sheet and a mattress.

We went away for the week and were offered a wooden cot (no bedding provided) or a travel cot. We went for the travel cot because DD gets her legs stuck through the bars on conventional cots (she was 7mo; a real wriggler but not mobile enough to get herself out of trouble). When we got there it didn't have an extra mattress as mums often buy because the one provided with the travel cot is hard and lumpy. Again no sheets. The whole thing was grimey.

I got DH to put it away and we got our own out of the car. It was comfy and clean. (This was a very expensive 5* place and everything was top of the range apart from cots and highchairs; baby bits are often overlooked even in nice places).

If you worry about cleanliness, I'd take your travel cot and ask them not to use their own. If you can check if it is a wooden cot or travel cot that they are providing you can decide if you will need to take your own mattress. Definitely take your own bedding.

If you're worried they won't have a cot, you could just take a pop-up cot with you (if you think you'd use it beyond this holiday).

We're taking a pop up cot with us as we're going away for a week and will have the car jammed full of stuff that there was no way we could fit in our travel cot as well.

We bought it a couple of years ago and used it for DS1 for weekends away as it folds into a bag and takes up way less room.

The matress is pretty thin and hard so we take a fleecy blanket which we fold up for padding and its' find with that.

There are a few around, the one we have is a koo-di pop up cot (similar to this, but we probably got it a bit cheaper as it was a few years back: www.amazon.co.uk/Koo--Pop-Up-Travel-Bubble-Blue/dp/B0062IHOUI/ref=sr_1_18?s=baby&ie=UTF8&qid=1377607258&sr=1-18&keywords=koo-di+pop+up)

I've used travel cots provided by hotels before but we always took a sheet and a sleeping bag with us (just so that his head was on material that we knew was clean :-)

how light is light? when we travelled super light we didn't take a travel cot, but we were camping/ B&Bing by bike so expected to go to bed at same time as baby. If a B&B didn't have a cot we would co-sleep in the big bed or use his camping mat on the floor for him.
When he was tiny,if we used the car and took the pram we used the pram top on the floor as a travel crib.

If you are going in the car then you may as well chuck in the travel cot but if not, just ring the day before and double check. A hotel cot will be no different to a normal cot in terms of climbing out. We stayed in France once and the cot was a proper wooden one with beautiful bedding - better than ours!!