Buying A Cot Bed

Our own baby is now eight months old. For the first month he slept in a beautiful wicker Moses basket. From there he moved to a cradle located in the nursery that lasted him for a further three months. At that point we hadn't decided on which cot bed we were going to purchase for him so he moved into the baby travel cots that we had bought several months before so that we could visit my parents who lived a couple of hours away in the Blue Mountains and for going on holidays. It's now taken us just under four months to find a cot bed that we felt was suitable and safe for him whilst being value for money. Baby cot beds are a wonderful piece of baby furniture that combines a baby's cot with a bed. This allows the bed to function as a cot while your child is a baby and then convert to a bed as your child becomes a toddler. This gives several extra years of use from the bed eliminating the need to buy two separate pieces of nursery furniture. Usually the cot converts to a bed by having one of its sides drop down level with the cot mattress or by removing it entirely. There is a whole world of nursery bedding out there as with most other items of furniture designed for babies from highchairs to baby bouncers. This is obviously to cater for the wide variety of parents' tastes as well as their different incomes and willingness to spend money on their child. Parents with money to burn or who feel they must have the best for their baby will pay top dollar for a cot bed whilst those parents who are on lower incomes or who simply search out value for money will look at paying less. We fall into this last category and whilst looking for a bed cot for our son, found some very interesting information that may be useful for other parents in the same situation.

Firstly the most important feature of a cot bed is it's safety. No matter how much money you may be saving on this item, you can never forego the safety of your child so it is important to check that the cot bed is sturdy and strong and will support the weight of your child. This may seem so obvious that it becomes easy to forget to check. We just assume it will be strong enough but there are products that make it into our country from overseas that have proven less than safe and so it is worth double checking. The best way to do this is to have a look around the baby cot bed to see if it looks structurally sound and then place your hands in the cot, on the base and begin to rest your weight on them. Most cot beds have a base whose height can be adjusted so it is also worth adjusting the height of the base and checking its stability again with your own weight. Also check that the sides can support you whilst you are resting your arms on them. As you probably already know, you will have many nights where for some of the time you will be using the sides of the cot bed to rest your head while you wait for your baby to go back to sleep.

When it comes to cot bed styles, you have virtually an unlimited choice. The most expensive have extravagant crafted ends to the cot with sides that are adjustable to several heights and a base that also has several heights that it can be set to. Usually these cot beds are heavier and therefore sturdier and sometimes even larger and are painted in blue, pink or white. Alternatively, a cheap cot bed will have a base that only has two heights at which it can be adjusted and sides that cannot be adjusted at all except for when one is removed to make the cot into a bed. These will often come with a wood finish that can either be left as is or can be painted in a color you choose. It’s also worth checking whether any cot bedding comes with the cot. This can include a cot bed mattress, duvet and sheets. Baby cot mattresses are particularly important as it is important to get one that fits the bed without leaving any wide gaps between it and the cot sides.

What we found when looking at these different types of cot bed was that there was very little difference when it came to functionality. Provided the cheap cot bed was safe, it actually seemed to provide almost as much in the way of a safe sleeping place for your baby as the expansive ones. Ultimately the expensive cot bed looked better but if you are looking for value for money, then this really doesn't yield a good enough reason to pay the extra money.