Hi, our youngest (...by 14 years) is nearly 3 and we need to upgrade his sleeping arrangements when we go camping. At the moment he has a Readybed type set up that he rarely uses as he sleeps with us mostly! There are so many different options available than when our other children were small and I think the choice is baffling us. Would rather he was off the floor rather than just on a sim or padded mat.
Wondered what other people use for their little ones? Any advice/tips/recommendations etc greatly received.
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It depends how wriggly he is! My son's the same age. Last year he was on his ready bed (plus a proper sleeping bag for warmth) but crawled off every night, so we had a pile of blankets next to him. We're only away a few nights this year, so it's not worth buying anything else, and now he's in a bed he doesn't move as much at night, so hopefully he'll stay put. Sorry, that's not much help is it!
We always slept on a well insulated airbed up until last year. We now all use a camp bed.
However, if you are worried about him falling and hurting himself on a campbed or slipping off an airbed, I would suggest you either buy the Kampa airbed that has the raised sides or use a SIM (which are apparently much warmer than an airbed)
Ours all started on a sim when they were tiny (3m+) and then moved onto airbeds. After a brief and disappointing time with some argos ready beds, we used Kampa Airlock juniors for our first two, but moved to a SIM for our third - we moved them all onto SIMs last year (youngest was 2 at the time).
The pros of the Kampa are: fairly robust for an air bed (can take some bouncing!) and It has nice big sides to keep them in place.
The pros of the sims are: very very robust. They don't take up much room (and in the daytime they can be walked / played on without much fear and so in this respect they take up no room!). They are also more insulating than a regular air bed.
To be honest, I think the Kampa is great, but I do wish i'd have spent the money on sims from day 1.
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Hi,our little boy who was three when we went camping last year slept in sleeping bag on an airbed,the rubber coated cotton type,normaly red on oneside and blue the other,they arnt too high off the ground,we covered it with a fleece blanket to make it warmer,we do this for ourselves to.As for our youngest who was 14months he had a ready bed which he had fun crawling out of!
Some great tips and info, thanks guys! We're looking at a sim for him and a low campbed for it to go on and take the readybed just in case. I would expect he'll still end up in with us at some point though. We can always try him on the sim/bed combination with the readybed on the floor next to it for when he wriggles off!
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My youngest turned 3 earlier in the year and she used to cosleep with us when she was younger. Now she's on a sim on the floor with her siblings with her big sisters old junior comfort bag and liner when it's cold. She does wake up and want to climb in with us about half the time so I reckon if your LOis the same then sim on the floor would be much easier to get out of!!
We used the my first ready bed and actually found it great. Then when it got a puncture (after lots of use) we bought him a SIM like the other two. He just has it on the floor and it is great.
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Some more great advice happily received, thanks guys. Hi dmsplat - I just wanted to have him off the floor as we are, but once I've got him a sim I think we'll see how he sleeps on that and take it from there. There are so many great reviews about them that we'll probably all end up on them. Whether I'm ready to give up my aerobed though...I'm not so sure!
We use my old thermarest 3/4 on top of a kampa junior and it's fab. Love it having the sides as DD can be a restless sleeper so stops her falling out. Thermarest gives her more insulation underneath her. Find it stays up well so don't need to be pumping it up every night. We've been using this set up for 4 years now and it works well for us. DD is now about 118cm and still fits well into the kampa.