I purchased an Eddie Bauer Infant Travel Bed from
Target on the recommendation of a friend who had used it to travel with her infant daughter to California. Our daughters were both about 5 months old and I thought it sounded like a great idea and much easier to travel with than the pack-n-play we had been lugging around for years.
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| The baby on the package looks happy - mind didn't! |
Although the bed has received high rankings in customer reviews posted online, it did not work well for us. It was lightweight, and did fit easily in my suitcase - so it was portable and simple to assemble. However, the problems started when I tried to get my daughter in it. The bed and mattress are both covered in 100% polyester, the kind that makes a high-pitched whistling noise when a flailing arm or leg brushes against it. Apparently this noise is extremely agitating for sleeping infant girls because mine immediately morphed into a terrified, yowling monster! No matter how many blankets I covered it with, my daughter was just not sleeping in this thing.
In addition to the aggravating noise of the cover, there is very little padding on the bottom and it probably wasn't comfortable enough for sleeping. I thought about placing it on a bed to increase the comfort, but didn't feel that the sides were sturdy enough to prevent her from rolling out and ending up on the floor. Beyond that, its small size was also a problem. Both of my children slept with their arms flung out to the side and the 19" width just wasn't enough to accommodate this typical infant sleeping pose.
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| The bed itself is small with little padding. |
Its best use would probably be for keeping newborns off the floor when visiting friends or a glorified diaper changing pad. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rank the Eddie Bauer Infant Travel Bed a 2. One point for portability, one point for easy assembly. Other than that, it was expensive ballast for my suitcase. I much prefer to take more than one pair of shoes.
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