Playpen?

[moosemousse]

Hi ladies,
my son is nearly eight months and it looks like he might start crawling really soon. I was thinking of getting him a play pen so I could confine his wandering a bit if I can't be right there with him. So I'm posting on this age group forum for mothers with bubs a bit older than mine to ask-- would you recommend getting a play pen or is it not really worth getting? Once he can start walking will he not want to be restricted to just the play pen? I'm just unsure how much use I would get out of it so would welcome your thoughts. Thanks in advance.

[Hokey Pokey]

I think for very short amounts of time only, play pens can help. I wouldn't have bub in there all the time though.

[BlissedOut]

Wehave one. It'shuge.

I've never really used it to contain them, it's more for containing their play space, I love it when it's clean up time, I throw everything in there.

Ourshas a gate.

[Renesme]

Hi ladies,
my son is nearly eight months and it looks like he might start crawling really soon. I was thinking of getting him a play pen so I could confine his wandering a bit if I can't be right there with him. So I'm posting on this age group forum for mothers with bubs a bit older than mine to ask-- would you recommend getting a play pen or is it not really worth getting? Once he can start walking will he not want to be restricted to just the play pen? I'm just unsure how much use I would get out of it so would welcome your thoughts. Thanks in advance.

You'll find he'll get frustrated not being able to get far even when crawling to be honest. What we've done is set up one living area as a loungeroom/play room with heaps of toys and put gates on either end which we find works well.

[PaulsParadigm]

I haven't had a play pen for any of my babies, I tend to baby proof the lounge room so they have a large safe area they can play in.

[MinnieMouse81]

My DD is 8 months and I'm not going to bother. I was thinking of using a portacot if I needed to go to the toilet or something when she is crawling

[Eko]

When he'd just started 'getting around' I would have KILLED for a playpen. For a while I could corral him into one space by making a penned off area with doonas and pillows piled up in a big square. That worked for a little while but once he became confidant at crawling it just didn't work anymore.

I needed a playpen because my treadmill was in the lounge room and he was fascinated by it. I ran on it every day, so every day every 5 or so minutes I'd have to step off it to reposition him and then get back into it.
I only ran for a half hour so that would have been an ok amount of time for him to be happy in a playpen if I'd had one. I'll definitely be getting one this time around but as others have said I will get a big one so that bub doesn't feel too restricted.

[LifeInShadesOfGrey]

We use a baby dan play pen, which can be used as a fence. We have connected it to the loungeroom and sectioned the whole loungeroom off as a safe play area. Our loungeroom is 9-10m long and 4m wide. Which I think is perfectly good play space that's safe we had to modify the ends as our space was slightly wider than the gate stretched but DP is a carpenter and fixed that.

I wasn't interested in using the play pen as a small pen as our DD is so active.

[babyla]

Could not have lived without it!

We still use it when going camping or outside for water play and we want to keep things contained.

Well worth it

[Taiyed]

Subbing. Our house is very open planned so can't really section off a safe area. Will be in need of a play pen later this year.