Little human sleeping arrangements

[GBW]

Hello all,

During my winter basement renovations (well, now spring and soon summer...), having a new kid, life etc, I have forgone my camper renovations and upgrades to accommodate our little girl. Canada's May long weekend is coming up and I haven't done a thing to arrange for her to sleep in the camper. She'll be 14 months and just in the learning stages of standing and stumbling around like daddy does after a few too many pints. So she likes to sometimes stand up in her crib, so i'm a little concerned about where she will sleep. Other than cutting a few air holes in a cardboard box and setting it on the bench, I have no ideas. Obviously I won't do that. We were thinking of trying to set up her pack and play inside the camper but that thing is so huge.

I'm thinking I need a rail which can somehow attach to the bench which needs to be rather sturdy and about 2' high. Maybe we can just stuff her into a ton of winter clothes that she can't stand up? Thoughts? What do you guys do with your new to walking children or grandchildren?

Ideally, when I finally get time, I alter the bench and make it the same height as the wooden section which extends over the box rails. We really don't use the bench much and would much rather sit outside. This would allow me to have a much larger bed.

Setting up the bed as normal may work for this weekend, but its sure not ideal with the 4.783cm of leg room to manoeuvre around on the floor. Maybe just stack some clothes bags against the cabinets and let the kid wander around without issues of falling or getting stuck in between the cabinets and the edge of the bed.

PS - sleeping with her is awful. She's like a little mini cute pig. She snorts, grunts, farts, tosses and turns, flails arms. Well, that could also be me but I like to blame the kid.

 

[FleetFooted]

We faced the same situation with our 19 month old and I had similar thoughts. Everything you think about building yourself, though, you have to wonder about "troubleshooting" the safety problems and quickly conclude this is not an area for experimenting. We ended up getting a PeaPod Plus Travel bed which is actually a tiny little tent:

http://www.amazon.com/PeaPod-Plus-Travel-Twilight-Kidco/dp/B00BWIPD42/ref=pd_cp_ba_0

We stuck our own memory foam pad inside of it which his flannel crib sheet fit perfectly. Baby (in the tent) and Mommy slept up in the fully pulled out (Fleet model) bed and I slept down below and it worked out great. Next time we'll try baby down below.

If you hunt around enough on the web you'll find that the older model of this little tent had a disastrous safety problem due to the lack of mesh walls all the way down the sides in combination with very young infants.

Anyway, we had a great trip using this and we all just went to bed at the same time (as far as the baby was concerned).

 

[FleetFooted]

Oh, and I should mention we followed the advice of one of the Amazon reviewers and had him play in the tent before the trip so he had lots of good associations with it before feeling like he was in prison when it was time for the first night's sleep. We had to get a little creative on the trip with keeping him happy and leaving the door open while he fell asleep, etc. but it all worked out fine and before long he figured out this was his new crib and we were able to just zip him up in it for the night.

 

[AK Nomad]

We either stacked up clothes bags/pillows/diapers beside the lower bed as you suggested --- or --- they slept up top with us. An adult would sleep at the edge so baby couldn't roll off. They dont take up much room at that age.......memories!

 

[dsommers9]

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the same thing in our Hawk, accidently stumbled onto a solution that worked for us. We just keep the cushion on the bench over the top of the water tank (you usually remove this to fold out the bed) and stack some of our clothes/jacket on top of it. Then when you start to fold the couch out into the bed, the backrest doesn't go all the way down and turns into a pseudo-rail to keep the child in the bed. Extra bonus of being able to walk around and use the sink without the bed being in the way.

 

[Bwht4x4]

Our young daughter has been sleeping on the rollover couch since she was 15 months old. We don't ever sleep with her and have raised her from day one to sleep alone.

We simply put a lot of blankets on the bed with her and roll some up to prevent her from falling into the gap between the bed and the cabinets. It works like a champ and nothing else is needed for her. When we get in bed later in the evening we simply climb over her to get in the upper bunk and she wakes up with a smile and says, "hi mommy, hi daddy."

Our second is on the way. Life is good!

 

[super doody]

Our young daughter has been sleeping on the rollover couch since she was 15 months old. We don't ever sleep with her and have raised her from day one to sleep alone.

We simply put a lot of blankets on the bed with her and roll some up to prevent her from falling into the gap between the bed and the cabinets. It works like a champ and nothing else is needed for her. When we get in bed later in the evening we simply climb over her to get in the upper bunk and she wakes up with a smile and says, "hi mommy, hi daddy."

Our second is on the way. Life is good!

This a great thread. I'm going through the same situation with my 7 month barely sleep-trained daughter. Couple weeks ago, we canceled a camping trip due to weather so we never got to try out any sleep configurations. We did buy this smaller play pen because our daughter rolls around like crazy and its much smaller than our pack n play:

http://www.target.com/p/cosco-funsport-play-yard-stripes/-/A-14292034#prodSlot=medium_1_34

I was going to put this play yard in the aisle but it was about 1 inch too wide for my Eagle with roller over couch. We decided to keep it and use it for traveling. I think I'll deploy my roller couch and place this play yard on top of the couch but I need figure a way to secure.

The simplest and most ideal situation is just using the rollover couch and using the back rest as a barrier but there is a ledge/space on the window side so I need to fill it with plywood or some other material. Being a first time Dad, I little paranoid about baby sleep safety.

 

[bmk]

We bought an Arm's Reach Mini Co-Sleeper, cut out the top canopy support area, moved the pad to the bottom, it's basically like a mini pack n play now. It fits perfectly on the floor of our Grandby, and at night we can get up and down via the lower side bed (we have the dinette). No worries about the little guy rolling off a bed, or exploring the camper at night, it works awesome.

 

[GBW]

Our young daughter has been sleeping on the rollover couch since she was 15 months old. We don't ever sleep with her and have raised her from day one to sleep alone.

We simply put a lot of blankets on the bed with her and roll some up to prevent her from falling into the gap between the bed and the cabinets. It works like a champ and nothing else is needed for her. When we get in bed later in the evening we simply climb over her to get in the upper bunk and she wakes up with a smile and says, "hi mommy, hi daddy."

Our second is on the way. Life is good!

Congratulations on the 2nd kid brewing. We're starting to have talks about the 2nd ourselves.

I'm thinking of following your train of thought. There are a ton of options with pack and plays, etc and I'm getting overwhelmed! This is the simplest method. Still a pain to get in and out of the camper at night. I'm not ready for bed when she is, we'll go out and sit around the campfire for a few hours. I do have a few fears of potentially having to upgrade to a larger camper when #2 comes along.

We bought an Arm's Reach Mini Co-Sleeper, cut out the top canopy support area, moved the pad to the bottom, it's basically like a mini pack n play now. It fits perfectly on the floor of our Grandby, and at night we can get up and down via the lower side bed (we have the dinette). No worries about the little guy rolling off a bed, or exploring the camper at night, it works awesome.

We also have an Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper (funny, we had to order it out of the states and bring it across the border ourselves. Canada doesn't allow them????) We're hoping to have another kid, so I'm not wanting to permanently modify the sleeper yet.


I'll have to think about options. Some great ideas here. Thanks guys, really appreciate it. I figured there would be some great ideas. The snow has just melted up here and the camper is still stored away. I don't support the floor but I lower it to be as close to the ground as possible but i'm not able to climb inside to take proper measurements. I'll have to get it on the truck soon!! I'm currently just eye balling measurements. I'll have to test an idea - cutting a sheet of plywood which will sit on the foam bench. I have some sturdy action packers which are close to the same height at the top of the foam bench, I can shim them up if needed too. I could set the pack and play ontop of the plywood which spans across the bench. It looks like it will fit under my pull out upper bunk. I'll obviously check that everything is sturdy before use but its just an idea.

 

[GBW]

Back for an update. We sucessfully camped this Canadian long weekend. We went down to Eureka Montana area. My wife and I are pretty big rock climbers and there is some amazing crags to explore down there. Its only about a 4 hr drive for us and the cheap beer and fuel draw us down every time. We were with a group and stayed in a backwoods campsite. We had a large grass area and the few kids that were there could play with each other and run around wild. Mine was the littlest one. She just crawled after the older kids as they ran around. She would get bored sometimes and start sticking things in her mouth... oh well, builds immunity up, I guess.

We ended up using a little screen shade tent http://www.kidco.com/products-page/peapod/peapod-p3011/ Not exactly this model but you get the idea. We folded out the bench to make a bed and she nicely tucked up under the pull out overhead bed. Worked extremely well. It worked well for afternoon naps in the shade. I thought i might have to set up my camper but she was content to sleep in her tent in the shade. Worked well with the bug situation as well.

I also got an aluminum cargo roof rack. I don't put much up there but it is a godsend for her stroller. That thing is so big and bulky, catches sand and dirt, pine needles etc. I just throw it up there and a quick ratched strap and its good to roll.

 

[shoestring]

based on advice from this thread, we went with the peapod - it worked well.

 

[super doody]

based on advice from this thread, we went with the peapod - it worked well.

Nice setup shoestring. Did you built that bench or did come with the camper?

 

[shoestring]

my wife and I came up with the design, but Marty and crew at ATC made it a reality...check out this thread for the set-up:

http://www.wanderthewest.com/forum/topic/9213-custom-bobcat-shell-atc-build/

 

[super doody]

my wife and I came up with the design, but Marty and crew at ATC made it a reality...check out this thread for the set-up:

http://www.wanderthewest.com/forum/topic/9213-custom-bobcat-shell-atc-build/

Nice, is the peapod tied down at all?

I found another travel crib but its $$$

http://www.theportablebaby.com/philandtedstraveller.html

 

[shoestring]

Nice, is the peapod tied down at all?

I found another travel crib but its $$$

http://www.theportablebaby.com/philandtedstraveller.html

we didn't tie it down for this trip and worked fine - may try some sort of tie-down system but it does not seem necessary as it sits pretty far from the edge.

that crib does look nice but pricey...

 

[super doody]

I wanted to contribute to this topic. You can find my thread here:

http://www.wanderthewest.com/forum/topic/10441-babytoddlers-sleeping-arrangment/

 

[DoGMAtix]

Sorry to arrive at this party late! I suppose GBW has things well figured out by now, but it seems that others may find ongoing posts on this topic useful.

We use the pea pods whenever we travel with our twins. They're 22 months old now, we've been using them since they were probably about 8 months. If you haven't discovered it yet, they can stand up inside and topple the whole thing right over (our daughter actually tumbled OFF the Airstream couch - fortunately she tucked and rolled, thought it was great fun). Now we bring bungee cords to fasten the things so they can't fall off the bed. A new problem is they now know how to work the zippers, but that seemed to happen at right about the time they learned to safely lower themselves off beds/couches and such. Just make sure when they hit that age the camper is well child-proofed!
It's great to have the pea pods because you can use them to travel by air (they weigh somewhere around 3lb each and fit in large carry-on bags), and if you stay with friends or in hotels you can usually find space for one or two of these on the floor of a typical not-too-large bedroom. We also pack them when we do long day hikes so the kids can have a siesta part way through. They come with their own snap-on sleeping pad, which is fine for carpeted floors or couches, but we got closed cell foam pads (eg, the blue "insulite" roll-up ones they sell at REI) to put underneath the whole setup for sleeping on hard or rough surfaces.

Forgot to add: These things hold up like we can't believe, which is a good thing because they're not cheap. We've used them a lot for a year or so, and no signs of wear. One time we thought we bent the poles, but it turns out you can get them twisted by incorrectly collapsing the tent, and there's a YouTube on the company's web site showing how to get them untwisted in about a minute.

 

[brianjwilson]

I just bought a pea pod last month as well. We didn't use it on the first trip with the camper as the peapod was brand new. Our 14 month old daughter slept with us. Well the first night she wanted to play with the aluminum on the lift panel all night, the second night she slept.
She has been occasionally napping and playing in the peapod at home, we will probably try it on the forward dinette in the fleet next time.

Definitely anchor the back side though, my daughter will easily topple it over.

 

[DoGMAtix]

Just thought I'd update my prior post with photos. We expanded the 39-inch wide dinette bed with a full-sized inflatable mattress propped up on storage bins plus the table (which fits perfectly and stably on top of two Rubbermaid Roughneck bins).
If you look at the profile photo you can just barely see the table on top of the bins beneath the edge of the mattress.
The mattress is a no-frills Coleman which is inflated by a tiny pump operated by 4 C-batteries. The pump and mattress fold up to about the size of a small pillow, easily stashed in a cabinet.
Lots of room to sleep in tents, which now can't roll over the edge, and should give the kids comfortable space to sleep side by side for years to come.