First Years 5-in-1 Carry Me Near Sleep System

The The First Years 5-in-1 Carry Me Near Sleep System is a portable sleeper, bassinet, bedside sleeper, play seat and changing table.

We received one on loan from the neighbors, so I haven’t had the experience of opening it up and assembling it, but I have gotten some use out of it and for what it does it does it ok.

The First Years 5-in-1 Carry Me Near Sleep System seems to be a little bit too top-heavy for what it is and suffers from anticipatory flaws. It’s like they took an old idea that was flawed and just built it bigger.

A non-watertight changing table situated directly above diaper storage is one of the things you’ll discover at some point, a changing pad that’s not removable so when it gets messed up it’s wipe-down time, and a lot of ruffles which look nice but require a lot of stuff to be removed to clean them up.

To take a dirty sleeping baby out to change them, you need to remove the top, remove baby from the basket, and place baby into the changing table. While there isn’t a really improvable way to manage this that I can think of off the top of my head, a 10 pound baby plus the weight of the bassinet top is fairly heavy.

It just doesn’t seem like the top needs to weigh that much as there’s no safety equipment included in the thing. The pick up is also from the handle, which is over large so walking with it doesn’t quite work. A smaller handle would enable walking around carrying the baby on the hip, this is just unwieldy.

The co-sleeper aspect of this is just a drop-down bassinet. Allows you to position the thing next to the bed slightly lower so you can place your hand on the baby without the risk of rolling onto them.

The thing works as advertised on all aspects, but it just feels cumbersome and thick in places, cheap and flimsy in others. My main gripe is the lack of waterproofing or water direction management as that was a good 13 diapers in a shot.

The First Years 5-in-1 Carry Me Near Sleep System is available from Amazon for $199.89