Sleepy bye bye!

This is our account of our IKEA Gulliver cot in white with mattress, fitted sheets (and cot bumper) - The Little Girl's sleepy bye bye destination.

 

For the first 6 month, she was placed at the high setting and it was fairly easy to lift her up and return to bed at night during feeding sessions. We had this cot placed next to our king size bed so it was fairly convenient.

 

We then added cot bumpers when she was about 2 weeks old as she started getting her limbs stucked between the rails. She was placed with her feet at the bottom of the cot, but she started to "breaststroke crawl" to the top of the cot as she slept on her tummy most of the time. The cot bumpers saved her head from painful bumps!

 

At about 4 months when she had started to roll from side to side, we could occasionally hear her limbs hitting the cot bumpers at night. The Little Girl is an active girl, we could tell from the time she was born...as her tiny limbs would sometimes "lift" the cot bumper up so that we could peep at The Other Half and I! This became a peekaboo game by the time she was about 5 months.

 

By the time she could cruise at about 6 months going on 7 months, we had the cot lowered to the low setting. That posed one major problem for my night feeding and I suffered from cold muscle cramps of going from sleeping mode to lifting a heavy baby mode in the middle of the night, a few times every night. The Little Girl did not sleep through the night so after a week or so of suffering from cold muscle cramps, I got lazy and started placing her in between The Other Half and I in between night feeds. The risk of SIDS is much lower at her age and there are benefits to co-sleeping but it never got the approval of The Grandparents, so please do not copy me.

 

The cot then progressed on as a playpen, or holding area while I showered or used the toilet. By then, it had to be moved closer to the bathroom door so that there is a clear line of vision from where I am to where she is. As distraction/attraction, I would put a few of her favourite books/toys in there with her to buy me a few precious minutes. Her favourite activity was to jump up and down whilst holding the rails, singing and yabbering loudly when waiting for me. We had to decommission this as a playpen when she was about 11 months as she got too heavy and leaning on the rail was no longer very safe.

 

Finally, we thought about opening up one side and keep the low setting for use as a toddler bed but The Little Girl had developed a strong preference of co-sleeping with us to appreciate her own bed by then.

 

In conclusion, we still think that this cot is good value for money. When a friend was expecting a newborn, we donated this complete set of cot, mattress, fitted sheets, cot bumper in good and clean condition to them, knowing and explaining to the expectant parents that the lifespan is relatively short.

 

Now that we are expecting The Little Bean, we got ourselves a brand new, exact same cot , mattress and fitted sheets with the same expectation! Maybe we will wait for new cot bumper design to be released...

 

How's that for concept of "hand-me-down"? *smirk*