New Stage in Life - camping with a baby. Need Sleeping ideas

[GBW]

Hello,

My wife and I entered a new, stressful/wonderful/tired/expensive/amazing stage in our lives - we had a little girl in April. She's been fantastic and now that she's almost 4 months old, she's even more fun.

Anyways, we didn't want the kid to completely rule our lives and we went out on the Canada day long weekend for a camp trip. We went down to Kookanusa Lake which straddles the BC Montana boarder. I'm quite familiar with the area, so I eliminated the one variable of exploring and could focus the on camping with a 3 month old.

It was a good trip, we forgot some things, obviously, but we remembered most of the key items for her. Its funny, I just had one little duffle bag and her stuff took up the entire storage-limited camper. I have the extended bed in my Hawk and she slept between my wife and I up around our heads. It was fairly warm at night, but neither one of us had great sleeps. That little 12lb ball kicks, grunts and snorts all night. She'll usually sleep the night, so getting up for feedings isn't a huge issue.

So sleeping arrangements need changing this time. I was figuring she could sleep on the couch below us. I do have a bit of a hate for the pull out couch, it only leaves about 6" of room between the cabinet and bed to access the floor if one of us needs to get out of the camper for a bathroom trip or whatnot. She's probably a little too big to put just on a single width of couch too. I then need to rig up some sort of railing system too. What are thoughts on that? I'm fairly handy (at least in my opinion), I can rig something out of wood and have it attach somehow. We do have a little pack-and-play crib, but I think its a little big to stuff in the camper and its brutal to fold up and pack away. I've likely left this a little last minute as I'm leaving Thursday and its now Monday. Should I just man up and deal with the fold up couch? I guess she'll be on it next year when she's a year old and will likely need a type of small railing anyways.

I've come to realize I'm one of the younger ones on the board but I'm sure many of you have had to deal with this before, possibly in other campers but I'd love to get tips on this! Thanks for any insights.

Mandatory picture. She enjoyed hiking

 

[Casa Escarlata Robles Too]

It's great to start them out young.We took our girls out at an early age.At the time they sorta liked it,but now that they are adults it's fun to hear them tell of all the fun they had on the camping trips as kids.Makes being a parent feel good.
Frank

 

[mtnras]

been camping w/ our infant this past summer/spring. we've been pulling the couch out and then surrounding her w/ our bags/duffels, so that she fits snug underneath us, mostly under the overcab bed.

 

[GBW]

been camping w/ our infant this past summer/spring. we've been pulling the couch out and then surrounding her w/ our bags/duffels, so that she fits snug underneath us, mostly under the overcab bed.

I bet we could do that too. My question is - how do you guys get down from the overhead? Just step on the better supported parts of the pull out bed?

 

[sgiandubh]

GBW,

We have camped with our daughter (who is now two) since she was a couple months old. We have not gone out with her in a camper, but tent camping we ended up resorting to the pack 'n' play. Like you, we tried having her sleep between us, but that did not work well for a good nights sleep. She was too mobile to be able to put her down for naps or to leave her before she was completely asleep. The pack 'n" play allowed us to create an environment that was similar to her crib at home while containing her so that we did not have to follow her sleep schedule. When she was little she really did not like sleeping in new environments. The pack "n" play helped with that.

In the Grandby, I am planning to have her bed be crossways across the front of the camper so that I can easily create a barricade to keep her from falling off/escaping.

Happy camping!

 

[imcolej]

Here is a pack 'n' play setup in our Hawk. We have the front dinette option. We just took out the table for a while and have this setup for the time being. This allows us to get him down for a nap and more importantly, we can put him to bed at night and have a couple hours of quiet/fire time without our feral 1 year old boy.