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My husband and I decided we'd allow ourselves one splurge purchase for our baby. We had admired the Stokke Sleepi crib, but decided it was just too expensive - not just for our budget, but in principle. But when we started trying to figure out how to incorporate a crib into our home office space, the smaller Stokke started looking better and better.

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Our office doubling as a nursery was all fine and good at night, but what about naps during the day when, ostensibly, one of us would need to be working? And once we started looking at full-size cribs we realized they were kind of huge! We were already downsizing our desk, but we'd have to eliminate another piece of office furniture in order to make a standard crib work. So we took the plunge (the $1200 plunge no less!) and bought the Sleepi. At first we were embarrassed to tell our family and friends how much we'd spent, but now we count it as perhaps our smartest purchase (and we like to think of the price pro-rated over our own and my sister's future children).

If you're not familiar with the Stokke Sleepi you can see it here. Although you can buy just the large oval crib, the "system" comes with a smaller bassinet that later expands, like adding a leaf to a table, into a larger crib and later (with kits you can purchase separately) into a toddler bed, twin-size bed and, finally, two chairs. Since this is a major purchase, I wanted to give you my first-hand review. Feel free to ask questions in the comments if I haven't covered something.

The pros:

  • I think it's a really beautiful crib.
  • The wood and construction quality are excellent.
  • The slightly smaller overall size (4"-5" shorter in length than most standard cribs) and oval shape allows it to fit snugly into a corner at an angle which frees up more space for our office furniture.
  • The wheels! They are larger and sturdier than other crib wheels I've seen (and they can lock into position) so it's very easy to roll the crib into our bedroom during the day so our son can nap while we utilize the office. When he was a newborn we frequently rolled the bassinet down the hall to the living room while one of us was zonked out in the bedroom. The smaller size means it fits smoothly through our doorways.
  • It has a built-in canopy rod which we used to hang a mobile until our son was old enough to stand in the crib (and pull on it). Now we use a fabric canopy to make it a darker spot for sleeping. (The canopy rod came with ours, it may be extra depending on where you purchase.)

The cons:

  • Most stores we called quoted anywhere from 4-12 weeks before delivery and, characteristically, we had waited until near the end of our third trimester to make the crib decision. (Luckily, we got it in about 2 weeks here.)
  • Although the smaller size is a plus in one sense, I sometimes wonder if our very active 10-month-old wouldn't prefer a larger crib. Oh well, he'll deal.
  • Oval sheets designed to fit the Sleepi are pretty expensive. I ended up recruiting my mother to sew bassinet sheets which took all of ten minutes and we've been using standard crib sheets tucked tightly for the larger size mattress.
  • Not exactly a "con," but despite the company's claims that the bassinet size can be used up to 6 months, our son (a pipsqueak) outgrew it between 3 and 4 months so you can probably expect to expand the crib around that age. You could definitely shave some money off the price by skipping the bassinet.
  • The price - oof. Since they've only been on the market a few years I rarely see used ones come up on Craigslist or eBay either.
  • Although it wasn't difficult to assemble, the instruction manual was on par with the incomprehensibility of Ikea's.

You can read a few Ohdeedoh readers' comments about the Sleepi in our post from last year, Good Questions: A Crib for a Small Space. Readers, what other cribs or crib solutions should parents in small homes know about?

(Top photo by Carrie McBride)

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