Not worth the space, hassle or money (Brio Bedside Cot)

Member Name: angelahorn

Product:	Brio Bedside Cot
Date:	04/01/07 (1483 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Height-adjustable mattress; big enough to last 2 years

Disadvantages: Too big, too high, swing-over side, slides around

I co-slept with my first two children, and bought a Brio (now global) bedside cot for the third, thinking he'd have a safe daytime sleep spot out of reach of his rampaging brothers, and more room in bed for me plus if a big brother clambered in. We used it for him (although he usually ended up snuggled next to me like the big brothers), tried but soon gave up for the fourth baby, and now baby 5 is due any day I've completely given up on it. Here are the problems:

1. It's huge and the sides are too high to use space-savers like crib-top changing tables. Now unless you smoke or are going to bed drugged up/drunk, the theoretical risk of co-sleeping is gone by 4 weeks old. Therefore if your primary concern is smothering, you only need a bedside crib big enough to accommodate a baby of a few months old at the outside. This cot is amply big enough for a 2 year-old. When I bought ours, four years ago, I wasn't aware of the Bedside Crib, which is much smaller - it sounds much more appropriate. This is one of those hybrids which is NOT the best of both worlds! It's not a good bedside unit and it's not a great cot either.

2. The swing-over cot side sounds like a good idea but I found it terrifying. It drops down with quite a bang and I hate to think what would happen if a baby got in the way of it. It's unwieldy and not that easy to do - would imagine that amother who'd had a caesarean might find it hard to manage in the first few weeks.

3. It didn't sit snugly at the side of the bed. The drop-side mechanism sticks out a bit, making it hard to align the cot closely with your mattress. You end up having to stuff towels down a gap somewhere - for safety I put them on the outside edge of the cot, pushing the cot mattress towards my bed, and put a sheepskin over the join. You still end up with a dip where the mattresses join, though,. and odds are someone will end up sleeping on it (often it was me!)

4. It has castors. Even with the castors on locked mode, ours still slid out of place quite easily. Worse still, the castors in ours were not very securely fixed in and several have come out. This is a design/build issue btw - not to do with how I put it together!

5. I'm very experienced in building flatpacks, but this took ages and the instructions were not clear.

Best source of info on safe co-sleeping is www.babyfriendly.org.uk .... if you are breastfeeding and not drugged/drunk then the risks of cosleeping in an adult bed are vanishingly small (much smaller, for instance, than having your baby sleeping in a separate room!) and I'm not sure that this cot is worth the space, hassle or money. Next time I'm either going to get a bedside crib (much smaller) or a cheap, small cot and just push it next to the bed..

Summary: Buy something smaller and cheaper instead!