Fisher Price Rock 'n Play

When our Pickle was a baby 5.5 years ago, I was against the Fisher Price Rock 'n Play for absolutely no reason.  I didn't have any reason to hate on it, but I was so worried about it being a crutch, and we had a Nap Nanny we loved.

(I'm going to go off on a tangent here for a moment that may be unpopular.  We had a baby who passed away just before birth, so I would never make light of the death of a child.  That said, I find it frustrating when perfectly good products are pulled off of the shelves because people either can't take the time to read directions, or wildly disregard them.  The Nap Nappy was a little foam seat thing that was great for babies with reflux or bad sleepers.  It said clearly in the directions to only put it on the floor when the baby was in it, and to strap them in.  People disregarded this and put it in their babies' cribs - babies rolled out, and they got stuck between the Nap Nanny and crib and suffocated.  Nap Nanny responded by improving the seatbelts and putting giant warnings on the seats to never be used anywhere but the floor while attended.  People again disregarded this, and a few more babies were suffocated.  Due to this, the entire product was pulled off of the shelves altogether.  The Bumbo appears to be headed the same direction because people keep putting the freaking things up on counters and leaving their children there unattended.  I am 100% certain that whole grapes have killed large numbers more children than any of these items, but they're still on the shelves.  I am all for protecting babies, like discontinuing drop-side cribs - but this was due to blatant misuse.  Anyway.)

So, when Peanut was born, we needed a new bouncy seat.  My parents offered to get us one, and instead came home with the Fisher Price Rock 'n Play.  They brought home this one (LINK):

It was about $60, more than I had expected to spend.  I didn't want to be ungrateful, so we accepted it with thanks, and I expected to not use it.  I had found some articles saying not to use it overnight due to SIDS concerns, so I figured it would be a last resort during maternity leave during naps.

...Until one day when Peanut was sleeping and I super had to pee.  I strapped him into it (we called it "the Monkey") and turned on the vibration unit... and it was magic.  It was the longest he'd ever slept other than being in my arms and rocked.  

I tried it again the next day, and it again worked like a charm.  So, I started bribing my husband to putting Peanut in the Monkey at night while I went upstairs to nap, and it again kept the little guy asleep for hours.  The vibration unit was gentle and silent, and lasted for months.  The monkey pad was super-soft.  

While we've never used this overnight due to those few SIDS concerns, this was our go-to nap solution for almost a year.  I would never leave a baby unattended in it, and it may not be the most solid solution if you have a baby who really likes to roll in his sleep (Peanut was a log until about a year), but it goes to 25 pounds.  It was a lifesaver!

Arm's Reach Mini Co-Sleeper

When Pickle was born, we started bedsharing around 6 weeks or so – it was the only way she would sleep.  I read up on all of the literature, and found ways to make it work safely.  I’ve been a little nervous about doing it with the Peanut, though.  I don’t know if he just seems littler, or what it is, but I’ve had anxiety about bedsharing.  But, due to breastfeeding, I wanted to have him close to me at night, so I didn’t want to put him in his nursery in a crib yet.  I wanted a safe, separate space where he could sleep that was close to the bed – because, let’s be honest.  I’m lazy.  I don’t want to get up out of bed fifteen times a night to nurse him, I want him to be close by.

Enter the Arm’s Reach mini co-sleeper (LINK).  We received ours as a gift from family, but they currently run about $169.  There is also a larger size, but I wanted the smaller one so that I could still easily get in and out of bed around it after my C-section.  

The Arm’s Reach has two modes in which it can be used.  It can be set up as a free-standing bassinet, totally separate from the bed.  We’d used it that way for the first six weeks of Pickle’s life, and it worked well –but I still had to get up and out of bed to soothe or nurse her.  I knew that I wasn’t really looking for that with Peanut, so we instead set it up in the co-sleeper mode.  To use the co-sleeper mode, one of the sides of the sleeping area rolls down for easy access from your bed.  In order to ensure that the baby does not roll out and into a gap between the co-sleeper and the bed, a tether is provided that you use to attach the co-sleeper closely to the bed – it goes between the top mattress and the box spring, and has a plate that you attach on the far side of the mattress.  Thus, the co-sleeper is securely attached right beside you for easy access to the baby in the middle of the night.

At first, we had some issues with the height of the co-sleeper, as we have a tall bed.  The co-sleeper was shorter than the bed – this made me paranoid that somehow a blanket or something would fall into the co-sleeper from the bed, since there was a drop down.  I went to the Arm’s Reach website, and got some leg extenders (LINK) - they worked great.  They raised the co-sleeper up to the appropriate height, and there’s no danger of anything falling into the baby’s sleeping area.  I could hold Peanut’s hand or soothe him when he needed it without having to even stir from where I was sleeping.

He loves to prop his feet up on the side.

The sides of the co-sleeper are mesh, so they are breathable if the baby gets too close to them.  There are also pockets on either end – these have been invaluable.  Each night before bed, I load a bunch of diapers in there, as well as one of the smaller sized packs of diaper wipes, some diaper cream, a changing pad, and a peepee teepee (don’t judge, I have a pee-er).  I don’t have to even get out of bed to do a diaper change, which really accommodates my middle-of-the-night laziness.  

As the sides are fairly shallow, you want to change to another sleeping surface when the baby starts rolling.  We found a crib that converts to a daybed, and have put that in a side-car setup attached to the bed so that Peanut still has a safe surface, but I can still nurse him with maximum ease.  There was no difficulty of transition, since he was already used to a similar setup with the co-sleeper.  This is a great short-term solution to facilitating easy sleeping arrangements with a newborn, I would strongly recommend it.  There are now similar products on the market, and I’d imagine that they’d work similarly well.

Regalo Extra Long HideAway Bedrail

In general it's not important to the context of this particular blog, but we do Attachment Parenting.  That's not to say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa - you didn't babywear and breastfeed at the same time?  Get the hell off my blog!"  That's just to say that the fact that we have bedshared with our daughter since she was little is relevant to parts of my review of this item, but I don't think it precludes the opinions I have from being pertinent to people who do/did not co-sleep.

As I mentioned, my daughter sleeps in bed with one or both of us, and has since she was very small (we do it very safely, there is such a thing, no debates needed on either side of the issue).  At the time, our bed was in the middle of the room - this wasn't an issue when she was the immobile little lump that newborns and small babies are.  Once she began crawling, however, we needed something in place to make sure she didn't do a flying eagle off of the other side of the bed onto the floor.  

We started with Magic Bumpers (LINK) when she first started rolling.  These fit under the sheets, and basically she'd just roll up against them and then roll back.  It was great.  When the aforementioned crawling began, however, we needed something that went higher.  We got the Regalo Extra Long HideAway Bedrail (LINK from Amazon).  I think it comes in white or white.  Didn't see anything else.  Here is it in their advertisement, looks like it goes about a foot above the bed, right?

We have a mattress that requires the deep pocket sheets, however (and I believe this kid above is sleeping on a piece of newspaper covering some plywood).  The installation was very easy, just thread the straps through a metal L-shaped bar.  The L-shaped bar goes over the edge of the far side of the mattress, with the straps going between your box spring and your mattress.  The problem with ours was that it only came about five inches or so above our mattress.  So, with a crawling infant who sees short walls that can be scaled as a challenge rather than a deterrent, it wasn't practical - it just meant that she had five inches further to potentially fall if she vaulted herself over the side.  So, at that time, we ended up going back to the Magic Bumpers and moved our mattress against the wall.

Now that A is older, however, not everything is Pike's Peak.  We really just needed to find something again that would prevent her from rolling off of the bed at 3 a.m. so that we could put the bed back in the middle of the room, as I was ridiculously tired of trying to make the bed with it pushed against the wall.

We brought back out the Regalo, and it's awesome.  Here's a picture of A tonight sitting in bed playing Preschool Monkey Lunchbox with approximately 7000 animals and blankets (any of which would be missed instantly if it were removed):

We have a queen in this room, and it really only has about 8 to 10 inches from the headboard and footboard respectively, so the length is great.  It's tall enough that she isn't going to roll over it, but short enough that she can still throw Curious George over it if she's pissed and doesn't want to go to sleep.  I've tried it on the full bed in her room (and we're inching slowly toward her staying in it), and it goes about 18 inches from the foot of the bed, giving her enough room to crawl down and out safely.  I'll have no qualms about moving it in there when she makes the transition to Big Girl Bed.

So, I guess my review would be that I wouldn't likely recommend this for smaller children if you're using it for the purposes of co-sleeping, but it should be great for a child old enough to have a rational fear of falling.  

Value - Ran about $30.  That seems equal to what's on the market, particularly for extra long rails, although it still feels a little exorbitant to me.
Child entertainment level - Not really relevant, she's not playing parcheesi against it or anything.
Practicality - 9/10