Bednest Preliminary Review

After much research and a thought out decision to co-sleep with our baby we chose the Bednest. It seems to be the best option currently available on the market, which will provide baby with his own space, but attached to our bed so that he will be right there beside us. The Bednest is also endorsed by the NCT as a safe way of co-sleeping with your baby.

The bednest was re-released in March 2010 with its new design and it has a very Scandinavian look about it. It's not made from solid wood but layers of solid wood (plywood basically). While nowhere near as bad as MDF or chipboard there will still be some off gassing of formaldehyde and other VOC's. We therefore chose to acquire and assemble the bednest 6 weeks before our son's due date to let it off gas in a well ventilated and out of the way spot. By the way house plants do a very good job of removing such chemicals from the air but that will be the subject of a future article.

First impressions

For the most part it is very easy to assemble and attach to the bed. The only problem is it's hard for me to get the base level, I needed the aid of my husbands spirit level (or just the aid of my husband!) It fits up nice and close to the bed, but I would prefer if the drop side went completely flat below the cot, as I do not like the idea of it being folded double over, it just doesn't seem to me like it would be comfortable for either of us, I prefer the idea of the mattresses being squashed up together but then baby is not here yet and these are just my impressions of how it will work for us.

The mattress which comes with the Bednest is in my opinion absolutely atrocious, and I will not be using it with our baby. It absolutely reeked of chemicals when we took it out of its packaging (it is treated with a fire retardant) and while it conforms to all of the requirements of the relevant British and European Standards it is on the thin side. Luckily for us this hasn't been an issue, as from the onset we had made the decision to have an organic mattress made for our baby regardless of the cot we purchased. We had a bespoke organic mattress made for the bednest by Little Green Sheep, which we are very happy with.

The Bednest comes with a 'travel bag' and folds down quite flat to be used as a travel cot, though it is a little heavy at approx 13kg. The bednest is a little heavier with our (thick) organic mattress but still manages to fold up like it should. The travel bag we received with the Bednest was faulty but this was very quickly rectified with a replacement within a couple of days.