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Pregnancy

Talk about every stage of pregnancy, from early symptoms to preparing for birth.

FTM bassinet/ mini crib question

86 replies

luxxlisbon · 19/01/2021 14:26

I live in a small flat so I'm trying to find something that lasts the full 6 months that baby will be in our bedroom without it being too big and bulky. It seems like a moses basket might be out as I would still need something bigger before 6 months, and the full cot in our room wouldn't work so I've been looking at bassinets and cradles but then I came across this mini cot.

www.zarahome.com/gb/kids/furniture-&-decoration/furniture/mini-cot-with-liner-c1020264587p302055549.html?ct=true

Can anyone tell me roughly how long you think this size would be appropriate to use for? Obviously can't say for certain but I will likely have a baby that is slightly on the smaller side.
The dimensions are 79 x 77.8 x 54.1 cm

Google says you should still get a year or two out of a mini cot but i'm unsure if that is for a bigger one.
This would be ideal because we could use it in our room, then wheel it into the babies bedroom after and then transition to a more longterm cot to bed when she is about 12-18 months.

Is there a reason this is a terrible idea?

OP posts:
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Caspianberg · 19/01/2021 14:57

@dementedpixie - the one I linked isn’t. A full size cot is 120cm or 140cm for cot bed. The mamas and papas petite cot is 90cm long. So smaller, might fit, but lowers down to get around baby climbing out at 6/7 months

TitsOot4Xmas · 19/01/2021 14:58

@TitsOot4Xmas I've never heard of someone not putting their newborn down for 3 months to the extent of literally not having anywhere to sleep.

It’s the norm in most parts of the world.

dementedpixie · 19/01/2021 15:01

[quote Caspianberg]@dementedpixie - the one I linked isn’t. A full size cot is 120cm or 140cm for cot bed. The mamas and papas petite cot is 90cm long. So smaller, might fit, but lowers down to get around baby climbing out at 6/7 months[/quote]
Sorry, it was aimed at a previous poster who had linked to a larger one

luxxlisbon · 19/01/2021 15:01

[quote TitsOot4Xmas]**@TitsOot4Xmas I've never heard of someone not putting their newborn down for 3 months to the extent of literally not having anywhere to sleep.

It’s the norm in most parts of the world.[/quote]
Normal to not have a single place for the baby to sleep other than your arms?
I appreciate your feedback but that has certainly not been my experience in the UK and really doesn't seem like the norm here.

OP posts:
dementedpixie · 19/01/2021 15:02

@escocesita

We went for this: en.mokee.eu/products/mini-cot

It’s quite a bit longer than the one you saw, but it is quite compact and can do up until 3 years.

This is a full sized cot especially if it lasts until age 3
Caspianberg · 19/01/2021 15:05

You def need somewhere for them to sleep and be put down at nighttime, even if you end up co sleeping some of the time.

My baby is a terrible sleeper! But he still goes in his own bed 80% of the time.

TitsOot4Xmas · 19/01/2021 15:10

Normal to not have a single place for the baby to sleep other than your arms?
I appreciate your feedback but that has certainly not been my experience in the UK and really doesn't seem like the norm here.

Is that what I said? I said we had a pram with bassinet and a bed. You are worried about space in your bedroom. You do t have to have a specific place for baby. As it happens DD was like the majority of newborns and would only sleep on another person. (Hence advising you read the sleep forum.) You can plan to safely co-sleep and it would suit your living space better as well.

Just offering an alternative option.

(There are lots of things that are normal in the U.K. that are contrary to what is best for babies biologically, eg pram shoes, forward facing car seats, rear facing car seats for long periods, baby TV, dummy clips, walkers, many baby carriers. It’s a massive industry designed for profit. We also didn’t bother with baby furniture, changing table, baby bath, cot bed, purées/baby food, monitor. Just showing that there are lots of things people buy because they think they need them but really they don’t.)

TitsOot4Xmas · 19/01/2021 15:12

@Caspianberg

You def need somewhere for them to sleep and be put down at nighttime, even if you end up co sleeping some of the time.

My baby is a terrible sleeper! But he still goes in his own bed 80% of the time.

I didn’t, other than the pram. Nor did several of my friends. 🤷🏻‍♀️

It’s possible to cosleep 100% of the time if you want to. No “definite need” for anything else at all.

(Maybe he’s a terrible sleeper because he’s separate 80% of the time. Wink)

luxxlisbon · 19/01/2021 15:13

@TitsOot4Xmas I already replied in my first post to you that I will not be co-sleeping with the baby in the bed. You can have your opinion on that and that is fine but it isn't a route I want to go down. I don't know why you are so insistent on trying to convince me how "normal" it is and how many places in the world do it.

OP posts:
TitsOot4Xmas · 19/01/2021 15:14

Fair enough. Good luck with the fourth trimester.

kwaziseyepatch · 19/01/2021 15:29

We had the purflo breathable bassinet. Lasted DD until 7 months, DS until 5 months but he's exceptionally long. I hated the look of the other bedside cribs too and had lots of compliments on it. Otherwise have you seen the Stokke sleepi crib which converts into a cot. That's £££ though but you can often get them second hand

Housing101 · 19/01/2021 16:08

Both my babies were in Next to Me with the sides up so it's the same as a mini cot until 7 or 8 months (when able to stand).

Both tall and the moses we had only lasted 3 weeks, waste of money.

Inkpaperstars · 19/01/2021 17:59

My mum’s generation are bemused about the ‘baby only sleeps on me’ approach, they told me ‘that’s a modern thing’. I don’t know how they all managed and it’s good we now understand more about the concept of the fourth trimester, but one way or another pretty much no babies back then only slept on their parents.

I personally plan to go to great lengths to avoid co sleeping if I can because it is so risky. If a baby only sleeps on you...do you stay awake that whole time? How otherwise could it be safe?

TitsOot4Xmas · 19/01/2021 18:10

@Inkpaperstars

My mum’s generation are bemused about the ‘baby only sleeps on me’ approach, they told me ‘that’s a modern thing’. I don’t know how they all managed and it’s good we now understand more about the concept of the fourth trimester, but one way or another pretty much no babies back then only slept on their parents.

I personally plan to go to great lengths to avoid co sleeping if I can because it is so risky. If a baby only sleeps on you...do you stay awake that whole time? How otherwise could it be safe?

You can thank the Victorians for insisting that children be seen and not heard and sleep apart from their parents. They invented prams and cots to encourage independence from birth.

They simply didn’t know better.

There’s a huge body of evidence against independence from birth on maternal and infant physical and mental health. By all means rally against it, but our biology hasn’t changed for tens of thousands of years. The invention of heated homes and baby monitors doesn’t remove the basic needs of a baby.

I made a cocoon from pillows to hold me up. I’m lucky in that I can sleep anywhere at anytime, and you sleep differently when you have a newborn. She slept between my boobs. And later next to me in her own space. (I was alone 5.5 days a week as DH worked away, and I had to do whatever could get us both the most sleep.)

Safe co-sleeping is not inherently risky. It’s the norm elsewhere across the world.

Inkpaperstars · 19/01/2021 20:58

Yes, I am not rallying against it, just noting how different attitudes are. It’s good you felt able to co sleep safely, I just feel I couldn’t be alert enough and DP would be a terror, he has sleep apnoea!

BertieBotts · 19/01/2021 22:37

If you have an alcove 1m long, you want something about 90-95cm long to fit into it, to give you max room for the baby.

40x90 is crib size, I think, so you could look for a wooden crib. Try John Lewis or Asda. It's a shame Mothercare is gone as they were good for things like that. DS2 despite being tall fit into a 90cm long bedside crib until he was about a year old, 40cm is really narrow though, and I think he would have complained about the sideways room if it was enclosed. A lot of the bedside ones are about 95cm long but about 50-60cm wide which is better. And they can be standalone if you don't want it by your bed.

This is quite an interesting listen if you want to know where this "baby only sleeps on me is a modern thing" comes from:

Essentially it's a bit backwards - babies traditionally did sleep with their mums until some meddling blokes researchers came in and decided this was all a bit risky - well it was in Victorian/slum Britain, fair enough - and decided babies ought to be sleeping through the night by 3 months old. This is then achieved for generations in various ways including formula, early solids, sleep training, over-dressing, front sleeping, and even drugging (opium, alcohol, prescribed sedatives) and you get a cultural norm that babies should sleep through and should sleep independently - then more modern science has come in and correctly denounced a lot of these methods as being harmful, leaving mums in a bit of a quandary where you're told they should be sleeping etc but you don't have any tools left to do it with (and then there are newer products with the same old or new risks e.g. Sleepyhead and so on) - so then more modern parents are starting to say hang on, why are we trying to force sleep anyway, what if we just left them to it? But in a way it's not modern at all, it's going right back to what was originally done. But that's why it comes across as a modern idea to our parents' and grandparents' generation.

If you don't feel comfortable co-sleeping that is OK of course - but it's still worth knowing how to set up a safe co-sleeping space in your bed, in case you're in the situation where the baby literally won't sleep and you're worried you will, simply because by avoiding co-sleeping if you are in an extremely sleep deprived state you can end up doing something much more risky like accidentally falling asleep on a sofa. This is why they have now changed the advice, it always used to be don't co-sleep, it's now if you co-sleep, follow these guidelines. It is sometimes more risky to try very hard not to co-sleep. You can always move the baby (or yourself) when you wake up if you do set up a safe space and still despite efforts accidentally fall asleep in it.

BertieBotts · 19/01/2021 22:46

God sometimes I feel ancient on here :o it seems like cribs as in the mini wooden cot type are no longer a thing, although you can still buy crib sized sheets and mattresses easily, when you search for cribs it's all these plastic and mesh things. How bizarre! (My eldest is 12, you could definitely still buy wooden cribs when he was born.)

I would see if you have any independent nursery specialists near you, they are good at this kind of thing.

TitsOot4Xmas · 19/01/2021 22:50

@BertieBotts

If you have an alcove 1m long, you want something about 90-95cm long to fit into it, to give you max room for the baby.

40x90 is crib size, I think, so you could look for a wooden crib. Try John Lewis or Asda. It's a shame Mothercare is gone as they were good for things like that. DS2 despite being tall fit into a 90cm long bedside crib until he was about a year old, 40cm is really narrow though, and I think he would have complained about the sideways room if it was enclosed. A lot of the bedside ones are about 95cm long but about 50-60cm wide which is better. And they can be standalone if you don't want it by your bed.

This is quite an interesting listen if you want to know where this "baby only sleeps on me is a modern thing" comes from:

Essentially it's a bit backwards - babies traditionally did sleep with their mums until some meddling blokes researchers came in and decided this was all a bit risky - well it was in Victorian/slum Britain, fair enough - and decided babies ought to be sleeping through the night by 3 months old. This is then achieved for generations in various ways including formula, early solids, sleep training, over-dressing, front sleeping, and even drugging (opium, alcohol, prescribed sedatives) and you get a cultural norm that babies should sleep through and should sleep independently - then more modern science has come in and correctly denounced a lot of these methods as being harmful, leaving mums in a bit of a quandary where you're told they should be sleeping etc but you don't have any tools left to do it with (and then there are newer products with the same old or new risks e.g. Sleepyhead and so on) - so then more modern parents are starting to say hang on, why are we trying to force sleep anyway, what if we just left them to it? But in a way it's not modern at all, it's going right back to what was originally done. But that's why it comes across as a modern idea to our parents' and grandparents' generation.

If you don't feel comfortable co-sleeping that is OK of course - but it's still worth knowing how to set up a safe co-sleeping space in your bed, in case you're in the situation where the baby literally won't sleep and you're worried you will, simply because by avoiding co-sleeping if you are in an extremely sleep deprived state you can end up doing something much more risky like accidentally falling asleep on a sofa. This is why they have now changed the advice, it always used to be don't co-sleep, it's now if you co-sleep, follow these guidelines. It is sometimes more risky to try very hard not to co-sleep. You can always move the baby (or yourself) when you wake up if you do set up a safe space and still despite efforts accidentally fall asleep in it.

This is a fabulous post. 👏🏽
Sls668 · 20/01/2021 08:49

@BertieBotts I love your post so much! My baby is 10 weeks old and my mum often sniggers when I can’t put the baby down and tells me stories of ‘when you were a baby....’ (she’s very supportive of new ways of parenting, she’s not one of those people with advice that I want to kick in the head!).

OP, we have a bedside crib but she won’t sleep in it. I actually swore billions I wouldn’t get a Moses basket but caved out of desperation at about 3 weeks old and bought one. She’ll sometimes let me transfer her into it at night for a couple of hours/3 minutes. I’ve had very low expectations for sleep and for life in general for the first 12 weeks which I think have helped (lockdown has kind of forced it too!).
I did plan to never co-sleep but it turned out the baby has different ideas when she came along so we follow the safe co-sleeping guidelines and, if I’m honest, it’s been a godsend. I slept so much more in the first 6 weeks when I was 100% co-sleeping than I do now when I’m trying to get her in her own bed for at least a couple of hours. Plus, it means I’m not falling asleep with her in unsafe places (I literally just read a post by someone who fell asleep on the sofa feeding their baby and the baby fell on the floor).
Of course everything is 100% your choice but I would just never say never when it comes to baby! I do remember my friend having a rocking crib (like a small cot) when she had her baby around 12 years ago but I don’t remember seeing anything similar when I was pregnant

BertieBotts · 20/01/2021 08:55

I did see a couple of those rocking ones on amazon, but I'm a bit wary of buying anything where safety standards matter on amazon, there are so many Chinese companies on there producing low quality products that just disappear and pop up with a different name if anyone reports them, so you have to be careful that you're getting something genuine.

luxxlisbon · 20/01/2021 09:17

@BertieBotts Thanks for this, so helpful! I think the first few full sized ones I seen were 120-140 so good to hear it should be easy to find 90cm ones. Hopefully that will be big enough to carry her through when she is in our room, then keep her in the same thing when she very first goes into her own room for a little while.

Yes, I think that's why I was struggling to even know what I was looking for because I just want something like a simple wooden crib, but everything marketed as the first place a baby sleeps, like the snuzpods, next2mes etc are not my style.
I think i'll focus my search on smaller wooden cots and hopefully something that suits will come up.

OP posts:
luxxlisbon · 20/01/2021 09:21

@Sls668 thanks for the input. Ultimately I'm sure I'll be flexible when she comes and I'm not going to dump her in a cot for hours alone at 2 days old! But I'm also not going to not have a separate safe place for her to sleep beside my bed. So I'm just trying to find out what the best solutions is for my situation so i'm ready.

OP posts:
HotDogHotDiggityDog · 20/01/2021 09:25

www.wayfair.co.uk/children-nursery/pdp/clair-de-lune-bedside-crib-u002211457.html?refid=GX471050477210.~b&position=&network=g&pcrid=471050477210&device=m&targetid=dsa-19959388920&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyJyAupeq7gIVDNPtCh1glwRwEAAYAiAAEgL9FvD_BwE

We had this one, basically just a larger Moses basket, lasted the first six months before moving her to her own room into a big cot. And she did sleep in it most nights, only had to co sleep if she was having a bad night teething etc and wouldn't settle.

Ginfilledcats · 20/01/2021 09:26

Hi OP, you gotta do what's best for you and for baby - if that's co sleeping fine, if it's not that's fine too. I haven't co slept with my 7m as a) scared b) I need the roo
And c) I didn't want to end up cosleeping g for years and I know plenty who still have to at 2 years, but that's their prerogative.

I would really encourage you to put function and safety over aesthetic and wanting your room to "look nice" (honestly who else sees it) whilst the baby is in there? I am incredibly house proud/neat freak - so much so I have a "home Instagram" account with a few thousand followers. But honestly since the baby has been born I think I've made my bed twice, and the fancy pillows have never been put back on since that first night.

We got a white snuzpod which I think look very nice anyway. Honestly being able to just roll over and stroke her belly or head when she was unsettled was amazing, being able to watch her chest rise and fall when I was anxious about her breathing was a life line, being able to pick her up/slide her back when she was FINALLY asleep without having to get out of bed when my stitches were killing me, my stomach muscles had torn in labour - no idea how I'd have lifted her in and out of the bed over the ride of the cot.

If you're willing to spend over £200 on a Zara baby bed (that well known baby furniture manufacturer 🤨) I would honestly buy something made by experts.

Also as a pp has said it's not safe to have liners in their cot.

I really hope you find something you like that is safe and useful for you! Sometimes though you just have to suck it up and get something less aesthetically pleasing. I say that as I grimace as the brightly coloured rainbow balls in my daughters bright orange ball pit her grandparents bought her that's sat in my lovely sage green and cream thoroughly planned out gorgeous living room. Ugly bloody thing but DD loves it!

Ginfilledcats · 20/01/2021 09:28

Oh and Dd lasted in her snuzpod until 6 and a half months, she's in the 98th centile but I probably should have moved her a week or so before. She LOVES her big cot in her own room. So much wriggle room, definitely sleeps better in there now