Baby Cots - How to Choose the Best Baby Cot

O.K. you’ve just finished the nursery,the paints dry, the birds are singing and you can’t wait for the big day to happen. All you need now is a cot!
The trouble is; if you’re new on the baby scene, then buying a cot for your impending bundle of joy, isn’t as simple as you may think. Nowadays there seems to be a dazzling array of choice all with the latest ‘drop-down, slide-away, safety tilt, how did you manage before we thought of this, latest gizmo?’
Help though is at hand! Check out the following list of what to look for in a cot and before you know it, you’ll be regarded at your pre-natal class as being the font of all cot knowledge!

It’s a simple enough question and when you’re looking at a cot for the first time, not something you really think about. But imagine lowering your baby into the cot with the side in place.If the cot’s got what they call a ‘double trigger’ mechanism you’ll need both hands free to lower the side. And yes you’ve guessed it, that entails putting the baby back down while you lower the side and then picking the baby back up.

A better solution may be a cot with a ‘foot bar’ where you slide the release bar down with your foot. (But that still means you’ve got to balance on one foot while you’re holding the baby). Best of all though seems to be the ‘knee push’ where you can hold your baby securely and exert pressure on the cot side with your knee.

Why? Well, with a newborn baby the higher the mattress is from the base of the cot the easier it is to lean over and attend to the baby. However, when your baby is able to pull itself up you’ll want a deeper cot, so the baby can’t fall over the sides and injure itself.

O.K. these aren’t imperative, but they’re a nice optional extra, especially when you’re changing sheets or vacuuming under the cot. Believe me gently pushing the cot around the room is so much easier than pulling and lugging an immovable hunk of wood.

If your not and you can’t find someone who is, seriously think about buying a ready-made cot. It's a sad but true fact, that even though a cot may look like simplicity itself to make, it’s not! In only takes a matter of seconds with all the bits and bobs laid out on the floor for slats to look like rails, rails to look like legs and for the sliding mechanism to look like it would defeat Einstein on a good day!

Useful if you want the cot to grow with your child. In fact some cots can still be used as beds until your child is the size of a 5 or 6 year old and then they can be used as a bedroom sofa. However, if you want to be future proof, and think you’ll probably have lots more children, then it’s probably wiser to initially buy a regular quality cot that you can happily reuse over and over again.

Oh and one more thing, it may sound simple but it's so easy to forget, check out the size of the cot (it's measurements) against the size of the available room you've got to spare. A new born baby may be extremely small, but somehow a cot alaways seems three times larger than it did in the picture or showroom.

Apart from that, all I can say is 'The best way for a parent to get a great night's sleep is to give your baby a great cot.'