Cot or Cot-Bed?

[HopeWish]

DD is starting to outgrow her crib now and we are looking at moving her into a cot. Looking around online there seem to be two options - a cot or a cot-bed.

The room she will be going into is fairly small so at first I thought cot-bed would be brill as it won’t take up as much space as a single bed will as she gets older. However, we are planning to have another baby soon and that baby will obviously need the cot so DD might not even get into the toddler bed before it’s needed as a cot again for her little bro or sis. I may also need to buy a new mattress when she gets older as she won’t need one that’s quite as firm.

Is a cot-bed really worth it? Or would it be a better plan just to get a normal cot and move DD into a single bed when baby no.2 comes along? What are your thoughts/experiences.

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MNHQ

We had a cot where the side came off and you put another side on to make a toddler bed. It worked well for us as dd was 2 yrs 7m when baby number 2 arrived and we had a snuzpod which was super roomy so she was a bit over three when he needed the cot and she went into a king single.

We went for a cot bed so it would last longer, with the plan being that when she outgrows it we'll move her into something higher with storage under it as her room isn't as big as we'd like. We aren't going to be having a second though so that's not a consideration.

Even if she ended up moving out of it when baby number 2 comes along, wouldn't that baby then stay in it from cot into bed so it would still get used?

We had 2 under 2 with a cot bed each. The smaller beds are really good and I wish we'd kept ours longer rather than rushing to single beds.

Two year age gap and two cot beds here. DD1 loved her cot and wasn't a climber so it was nice not to be stressing about getting her into a bed so that the cot would be free for DD2! Although in fairness, it actually would've been fine if we needed it.

Cot-bed.
We got cot-bed for number 2, had number 3 when he was 16.5mth. He went in to a single bed and she had the cot, she used cot until over 4 when we got a bunk bed for her and eldest. Our twins shared a cot-bed for well over a year then had one each but often shared the same one at night until 5 years old. They went in to bottom bunks with their big sisters on top bunks then. New baby will also have cot-bed from birth like the others.

3 year gap between kids (unintentionally long) but even if it had been less I'd definitely recommend cotbed. I put DD in my friends cot a few times when we were visiting and even from 9 months she was thrashing around and hitting her head off the bars, I do think she needed the extra space (she's very tall).