Since William made the transition from bassinet to portable crib, it seemed fitting to a long overdue review of his bassinet. I actually researched many bassinets before we got one. There were a few I liked but I kept coming back to this one. It was a demonstration at Buy Buy Baby that convinced us to get the Graco Dream Suite Bassinet.
One interesting thing about the bassinet is that different retailers carry different versions of the material and stuffed animals. This is the one in Paris, with a brown wave pattern, others I’ve seen online have stars, flowers, etc. The bears worked well as Matt and I both have a few stuffed bears as adults, and William has a few already as well. Additionally, lately we’ve been calling him Little Bear or Bear as a nickname, so it all fits.
I like the bassinet overall, but I had some major problems as well. First the canopy didn’t seem fully strong/put together well, I kept waiting for it to fall, which it never did, but on the other hand, we often kept it down instead of up. I wasn’t totally sold on the placement of the bears, and more often than not we didn’t keep them on.
The top part can be turned to make the top a changing table, however, we already had one. It’s a good thing we did as not only couldn’t I ever get it one handed as the sales person tried, yet failed to demonstrate, I couldn’t get it to go at all for me.
I did really like how portable it was, it could be easily wheeled from our bedroom to the living room. With the compartments underneath, we always had a place to store blankets, sheets and toys. The two speed vibrations was a cool feature. Yet after we wore out one D battery, we never ended up replacing it.
When we bought it, the sales person had said it was rated to go till 6 months for most babies (also depending on weight and strength). In reading the instructions, I determined it was only rated to 3 months and 15 pounds. Technically, we went way over the age rating, so we did get some extra time with it.
Rating – three and a half baby booties out of five
~ Danielle
Over 40 First Time Mom 