After spending this last bank holiday freezing I think I have had it with tenting. We have every bit of kit I can find to keep us warm, including EHU & heater, and heaps of bedding & layers of insulation! It was a particularly cold weekend, but I think we are particularly cold people! And I don't sleep well when I am worried about my little one being cold.
SO we are thinking of a caravan. We have a 2 1/2 yr old toddler & we are due a baby at the end of the year. Most of the 4 births I have looked at on ebay have bunks, which will be OK for my toddler if we put a guard up, but not a baby. And I wonder if there would not be room for a travel cot on the floor? Can anyone advise me how this works?
------------- Early June- France TBC
July 2nd- Deer Shed Festival
More to come....
I think you need to do a little web searching on layouts, vans available and decide your price range first. Many of us have had babies in vans in all kinds of different sleeping methods. It all depends on the layout you choose or can afford as to how you manage the sleeping.
OK thanks for the feedback. I have been looking at some on ebay but I am not really sure where to start! Maybe I need to go to a caravan dealership to have a look at some?
------------- Early June- France TBC
July 2nd- Deer Shed Festival
More to come....
we had a 4 berth van when our boys we young to start we had a travel cot on the floor. then they were old enough to sleep on beds. we fixed a pole on the side of the bed to stop rolling out.or i know friends who make the double bed up and sleep down sides ie two singles putting a small child in the centre.
a lot of bunks beds have sides to make them safe. or look at the 4 berth vans that make up as two singles either end or an L shape end, the swift dannette used to have this layout..
they dont need to be twinaxle and can be towed with a car that has the correct ratio. check for the light weight vans they are out there.
good luck i think most of us are x tenters but our weather is just too wet or cold and it makes the season so short,
Up until recently we had the same problem. We have a 5 berth caravan with a rear dinette (Lunar Zenith 5, its lightweight and single axle, www.lunarcaravans.com). With our first child who is now 15 months, we simply used a moses basket for the first few months next to us on the large front bed and then moved in her into her travel cot which was lodged between the rear seats. It was a tight squeeze and was a nightmare to put up every night and simply resulted in the rear of the caravan being out of bounds when she was asleep. However we put up with this until we found out we were expecting our 2nd!!
So, I have fashioned a guard from MDF which fits onto one of the rear seats to create a cot (the rear and side walls of the caravan and the bathroom create the other 3 sides). The newborn will go in here when he/she is ready to come out of the moses basket by which time our first will be able to sleep either on the bunk or on the other seat with a bed guard.
When ours were tiny we had them both on the bottom bunk – feet together (well they were not that close but you know what I mean), though 18 months and 4 yrs at the time, with spare cushions of the floor is they fell out. Friends of ours used a mini travel cot – I think you get them from camping shops wedged in the middle of the caravan some how.
Our friends have a Ncessity (think thats it!) travel cot which is an amazing thing, wish theyd had them when mine was younger. They have used it since birth and taken it all over and their daughter is 15 months old and still in it (with various changes of sleeping bag etc over the years!) She can sit up it in but not stand up.She knows its "bed" and asks for it when she wants a nap. However, they are wondering where they go next as she has almost grown out of it, and have been looking at compact travel cots.
We considered a Adria Altea caravan 5 berth and lightweight before we bought this the bunk at the back had a net that came up to stop babies rolling out, it also would have had enough room for a travel cot.
We have a 6 birth (single axle) with a triple bunk and the baby goes on the bottom bunk which is effectively a mattress on the floor. We put a piece of plastic mesh slotted in between the bunk ladder and dinette seat to keep him from rolling of the mattress. I'd not mind if he did roll out as there's no height to fall but I'm concerned about what might land on him from the two girls' bunks above!
The double bed is huge (king size) too, so before he slept through, I put him between me and the front window (so he'd have had to climb over me to fall off, and I'd have woken up) but that depends on what you think about co-sleeping, and whether you can follow all the safe ways of doing it. (DH slept at the back with the girls in the dinette single - so they all got a full night's sleep even when I was up with baby).
hi we take our 6mnth old grandson with us in our 2birth van, we remove the set of drawers at front slide seat cusions up and put bed gaurd up the side and then we sleep in the massive double bed that is left at the side of him, hope you can understand how i mean,
these seats are in some 4birth vans too, and your toddler could then sleep in bunk (side dinette or rear dinette)