Mamas & Papas Moses Basket - Meadow

My choice of bedding for my new baby was the Meadow interiors range from Mamas and Papas. If you are looking for this at the moment you will find it at great prices, as they seem to be having a sale at the moment. I know that usually means that the colour way is on its way out to be replaced with something newer, but personally I had already decided on this particular range long before I heard about the sale… perfect timing for me!

I just loved the crisp lemon tones- much more lively than the huge amounts of beige and cream that you get for babies interiors at the moment. It is neutral without being wishy-washy. I had wanted to find out the sex of my new baby (a girl!) but scans were only 60% clear and so it wasn't worth the risk of buying pink in case the sonographers were wrong and bubs turned out to be a boy.

When my little boy was born two years ago I bought a rather boyish Moses Basket as we knew his sex, and to be fair we didn't really invest too much money into it, preferring to buy a really nice cot at the time with our budget. This time around we sill had his cot so we were happy to put a little bit more cash into buying the new baby a Moses Basket. We had heard from many people not to buy a Moses Basket at all, as the baby wouldn't get too long out of it, but we went against this advice despite the fact that by the time our little boy was a month old he was not sleeping well in the basket and we ended up transferring him to the cot. It meant that this time around I was wary about buying the most spacious basket I could, and as the old adage says, buy cheap, buy twice, which certainly was our problem with the first basket. Being cheap it was a bit flimsier than I was happy with and there were some issues I had with it- the canopy wouldn't stay up and the bunting didn't wash very well. So by considering a Mamas and Papas basket I was effectively doubling what I had paid before, but if you placed the two baskets beside each other you would see a very obvious difference in quality.

Another aspect that swayed me towards buying a basket instead of a crib was that at all the scans I had been told this was a small baby, whereas my first had been a large baby and so I reasoned that being a smaller than average baby at 7lb meant that I should get that extra bit of time from it. And it would appear that my reasoning is correct. My son took up all the space in his, my daughter doesn't.

The RRP for a Mamas and Papas Moses Basket is £89. This doesn't include the stand or the sheets. A 2 Pack of sheets is £9 and a Rocking stand is £29, however I just bought a standard Basket stand from my local store as it was much cheaper and with a toddler at home, a rocking stand concerned me- he would have thought it was great fun to swing the baby on the rocking stand! The sheets were expensive but they wash like a ribbon and with a newborn they get plenty of washing, take it from me!

The bunting is really soft and padded around the sides. This is a huge difference in my new basket compared to my cheaper basket. Being the Meadow design it is lemon and kind of waffle effect, and the rim around the basket is a chequered brown and cream. The handles are reinforced meaning that you wouldn't be too afraid to lift the basket by the handles, however after a friend had a Moses basket where the handles snapped and her baby fell out (was fine thankfully!) I still would tend to lift the basket from the bottom when I need to. I must stipulate this incident wasn't with a Mamas and Papas basket. My original baskets hood always fell down, but the Meadow basket is heavily weighted at the edges and has a little hedgehog toy hanging from the centre to occupy the little one inside, although I think they would need to be a little older for this to be effective. Newborns don't pay much attention to anything!

On the apron part there is a little snail embroidered on the front and it brings in a lovely orange and green colour to the design and allows you to add these colours into the nursery too. I just thought it was the cutest bedding range I had ever seen as I'm really not one for neutral colours. In terms of sleeping space the ventilated foam mattress measures 33 x 65 which is generous enough for a newborn and the mattress has holes under the mesh which reassure you that if your little one flips on to their front they will still have ventilation.

I don't really have any bad points for the basket- although for the price we aren't going to get too long from it but my newly-wed Sister in Law is hopefully going to be having her own little ones soon and i am sure she will get more use from it too. You can buy brand new mattresses from Mamas and Papas for the basket at £13. I do have a tip for anyone who has purchased a basket in advance though- take it out of the packaging before your baby arrives as the smell of the maize basket is quite strong at first. After it has been out of the plastic a day or two the smell disappears but to begin with it left quite a strong smell in our room!