[ihugtrees]

I bought an Arm's Reach Cosleeper having never seen one in person...I've just read a lot of good reviews about them and have been told they are great if you don't want baby right in bed with you. Our situation was not having a big enough bed and having lots of blankets and pillows. I was really excited about the cosleeper and found one used for a great price. When I got it home and set it up, I was really disappointed. For some reason I thought the edge was even with your bed...with a rail that came up if you needed/wanted a divider. But actually, at it's lowest level, the babe is still not on the same level with you? I truly don't understand the difference between this and a Pack N Play or a bassinet. It is literally the same exact thing except smaller and more expensive!

Am I doing something wrong or did I just misunderstand what a Cosleeper was?

 

[mamarootoo]

nope. that's just the way they are. we got the mini cosleeper and ended up putting a diaper changing pad in there so that there was no lip. then again, we only used it for a few weeks... so... yeah.

they have good re-sell value though

 

[carrie a.]

most of the moms i talk to use their cosleepers for storage.

 

[colobus237]

It makes it a little tougher to get the baby in the cosleeper without their noticing, but it is a safety feature. If it were even with the bed, there would be a danger of a gap developing into which the baby could fall. We did get good use out of the cosleeper; it's just the transferring-the-sleeping-baby part that's a little tricky.

 

[mamarootoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by carrie a. most of the moms i talk to use their cosleepers for storage.

haha... yep! my friend called it her "glorified laundry basket."

 

[ryansma]

I have one and used it minimally with ds1 b/c he was my all night nurser. This time around I bought an organic mattress to put in it to make it more comfortable and coincedentally it makes babe more flush to our bed. I can more readily pull him to me without having to really lift him up. It's nice because ds2 sleeps longer stretches (just him, not b/c of the co-sleeper) and he seems to like having his own space. But yeah, it's wasn't exactly what I expected when I first got it either but we made it work for us.

 

[dollyanna]

I thought the samee thing when I bought mine. But wait, are you saying your bed is LOWER than the cosleeper? That stinks. Our bed is high so we had to get the extender kit thing.

I did use mine a lot from about 3-8 months.

 

[MLA]

I was disappointed in it, too. It certainly wasn't any easier than any other bassinet. I found that it ended up pushing me into true co-sleeping (which I'd never planned on) because getting the baby in and out of it was more effort than I could bring myself to assert in the middle of the night.

I wish I'd known about side-carring the crib when DS was born. I think that would have worked much better than the co-sleeper. Maybe you could try that?

 

[Funny Face]

I had read about the difference in levels before I bought the Original used. I still don't know exactly what the height difference is for other people or if the ARC comes with some type of mattress, but whatever we bought (that does have a mattress with it) is flush to our bed. It even came with leg extenders if we wanted them higher. Ds is 4 months and I really like mine.

 

[MG01]

Me too. Trying to transfer babe down into it is really awkward from a sitting/laying position, and he tends to wake easily anyways. I bought extenders (I hadn't heard great things about their extender kit, so I bought 8 inch high wooden bed leg extender things from Bed Bath Beyond which work the same way) and also an organic mattress which I placed atop the regular mattress to add height and his mattress is still a good 6 inches below mine.

Also, there is a big gap which is definitely a safety hazard.. I figured at least with the cosleeper, if he winds up in bed with me or we fall asleep nursing it would act as a bed rail- but I feel it is more hazardous to have than no rail at all, as there is just no way to get it flush against the bed and there is a gap which a baby could easily get wedged into.

I also found that assembling the frame was difficult- when you have to get those little tab things through to make the frame for the mattress, you have to reach in to do it, thus preventing it from being tight, because your hands are in there in the way of it- does that make sense, or am I missing something? I had the hardest time with assembly, especially that part, and now I really do just use it for storage, and almost feel unsafe with the big gap. If they set it up so the top part extended closer to the bed than the bottom (since the legs are against the frame of the bed, which is obviously not going to be flush with the mattress) it could work but they would have to change the whole design..

But yeah, I'm with you all.. it's a glorified storage basket at best and a safety hazard at worst.

eta: moodyred01- how did you get the edge to be up tightly against the side of your bed, so there isn't that big gap a baby could get stuck in? Or is there? I had thought about taking that extra rectangular swath of fabric, that extends like a foot and a half out along the whole fourth side that goes along the adult bed's mattress, and taping or velcro-ing it down somehow in between my mattress and my box spring.. anyone tried that?

 

[skolbut]

I wish I had help for you!! We just used an old school bassinet (the old wicker kind on a wood frame, not the newer plasticy frilly kind) pushed right up next to the bed by my face. Or the pack n play. I guess when I was shopping for baby gear to me it just looked so much like a pnp I figured why bother.

Good luck, though! It's soooo much easier to have the baby close to you at night, especially in the early days.

 

[Liquesce]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mamarootoo haha... yep! my friend called it her "glorified laundry basket."

Hands down the *best* darn laundry basket I have ever owned though.

 

[ihugtrees]

Our bed isn't on a frame--just boxspring and mattress. I'm short and when it was on the frame I had to get on my tip toes to sit on the edge, which got annoying.

But even if it was the same level as our bed, the lip would still be there, and we'd just be reaching down to get baby. For some reason I thought the railing adjusted low so that baby was on the same level. I don't see myself leaning over into the cosleeper to nurse in the middle of the night! Not to mention that that railing is a pain to adjust any way...even if it did come down all of the way, I still have to do each side individually with both hands...too much thinking for 3 am, lol!

We need a King size bed so we can just cosleep!!! :-(

 

[StrawberryFields]

I'm sorry! I didn't like my co-sleeper either and ds never slept in it. I used it to hold diapers. wipes, blankets, etc. for middle of the night changes. Doing a crib sidecar was way more awesome

because I could make it on the same level as our mattress and I didn't have to worry about baby learning to sit up and tumbling over the side in the dark like I did the co-sleeper. Do you have enough room in your bedroom to do that instead? I wish I had done that the first time around but I didn't try it until we had dd. You could pick up a super cheap crib at a resale shop, or a rummage sale, or from a friend done having babies...

 

[Cartesia]

Yeah before we bought one we saw tons of stuff online about it being a great laundry basket - "That won't be us" we thought....

Uh-huh. Also a good cat bed.

We sidecar a crib and LOVE it. Highly recommended.

 

[Mymble]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Liquesce Hands down the *best* darn laundry basket I have ever owned though.

Never used mine for laundry....but it was an excellent cat bed.

And if anyone's thinking about it and hasn't bought it? Resell is not necessarily so great. I had a set with extenders and extra custom sheets and couldn't sell it at any price. It was hard work even finding a charity that would take it (no baby stuff gets taken here). I'm just glad it was a gift.

 

[Smithie]

A very excellent cat bed!

I hated the lip part, too. What I actually ended up wanting was to be able to roll over and stick my boob in the baby's mouth without waking up, so bed-sharing worked out well for us.

 

[flower01]

I have never heard anyone mention this before. I thought the whole point - or at least a big feature was that it was snug against the bed so there wouldn't be gaps. I was thinking that if I used the co-sleeper and then brought the baby into bed with us, then there would at least be a barrier by having the cosleeper there. I used a PnP for the first baby and the whole time I wanted a co-sleeper because I mainly had her in bed with us, but I was scared that she would fall off the side of the bed because the PnP was not secure against the bed.
So for those of you that just use a PnP, what do you do for safety when you bring the baby into the bed. Do you have a bedrail and then the PnP up against that? Ugh - I wish they would make a "good" cosleeper. How come Arms Reach doesn't have any competitors?

 

[MG01]

Quote:

Originally Posted by flower01 I have never heard anyone mention this before. I thought the whole point - or at least a big feature was that it was snug against the bed so there wouldn't be gaps. I was thinking that if I used the co-sleeper and then brought the baby into bed with us, then there would at least be a barrier by having the cosleeper there. I used a PnP for the first baby and the whole time I wanted a co-sleeper because I mainly had her in bed with us, but I was scared that she would fall off the side of the bed because the PnP was not secure against the bed. So for those of you that just use a PnP, what do you do for safety when you bring the baby into the bed. Do you have a bedrail and then the PnP up against that? Ugh - I wish they would make a "good" cosleeper. How come Arms Reach doesn't have any competitors?

Yeah, it even has a band that goes all the way under the mattress and secures on the opposite side to supposedly get it snug, which is good in theory, but the problem is, the side of the co-sleeper is a straight line/edge going vertically upwards, if that makes sense. The wooden baseboard of the bed frame sticks out further than the mattress, obviously, so the cosleeper gets snug against that board to some extent, but then there is a several inch gap at the actual mattress level. It would almost have to be designed like this: // or: [ / to circumvent that problem, and then stabilize with the band thingy and/or an extra support arm? At least the way my bed is, that's how it is- has no one else had the gap? It really worries me actually, I am thinking of selling it and getting a bed rail lol but I feel like even though baby just winds up in bed 99% of the time, I have to at least maintain the facade of using a separate sleep surface so I don't have his grandparents worrying all day long.. ugh. I did think it was a good concept but it's just not working.. And I do agree with you, AR needs some competitors, I could easily design a better one lol.

 

[MG01]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smithie What I actually ended up wanting was to be able to roll over and stick my boob in the baby's mouth without waking up, so bed-sharing worked out well for us.

:
I sorta thought the cosleeper was like that, in that it was flush against the bed and had no lip- I think what I was envisioning was more like a crib side-carred.. but the family bed thing works fine for us too; I have stopped even trying to "make the transfer" lol

My mom was over helping me around the house and visiting DS yesterday and she went in our bedroom to put a shirt in there and she asked me why his cosleeper was full of textbooks and clothes.. oops!