The Dutailier Glider

Ours has little flaps that hang down from the arm rests, too

Some people get Baby Envy when their friends bring home a little bundle of joy. But I had Glider Envy long before Baba G was but a twinkle in my eye. Everyone I knew had one of these things, and back when the first round of my friends started having kids seven or eight years ago, there were several-months-long waits for them. Pregnant couples just couldn't order their gliders fast enough.

That's not the case now, thankfully. I found this out when I started researching them around the halfway point in my pregnancy—prepared for "Out of Stock" statuses—but found exactly the opposite. You can get one of these puppies delivered and be glidin' away in as little as two days.

In case you've never experienced a glider, I'd describe it as a step up from a rocking chair. The movement is horizontal rather than up and down. I don't feel like I'm doing it justice. It's a very peaceful experience.

Because of its high cost, the glider was one of the few products for which I actually did hands-on testing before Baba G's arrival. We went to baby stores all over Chicago and sat in different gliders, and our efforts confirmed something that I'd read online: if you're on the taller side, the Dutailier glider is really your only option. None of the other brands make their seat-backs high enough for you to rest your head on. Which is, like, a REALLY important thing when you're feeding your kid at 3 in the morning and need all the help you can get and don't want to get whiplash when your head falls back into nothingness when you accidentally doze off while your baby's resting peacefully on your chest (see pic(s) below).

Plenty of head-rest space for sleeping daddies (and babies)

I'm pretty sure that even if I'd never gotten pregnant, I would've still ended up with a glider one way or the other, that's how much I love them. I knew I wanted one that also reclined and came with a gliding ottoman. But when I first ordered ours I did not pay attention and accidentally selected one that didn't double as a recliner. I freaked out when it arrived, because my husband had already assembled it and pretty much destroyed the packaging before I realized that it didn't have the reclining feature. The official name of the glider we bought is: the Dutailier Round Back Cushion Design Sleigh Glider Multiposition Recline and Ottoman Combo.

Rolls right off the tongue, no?

Thankfully the Babies R Us gods were smiling down upon us on the day we attempted to return the glider to a store in the suburbs (even though we'd bought it online). It's technically against the BRU policy to accept gliders bought online as store returns, but like I said, we lucked out. Anyone who's ever dealt with BRU in any capacity whatsoever knows how rare a feat that is.

I literally have hundreds of "sleeping BG & daddy on the glider" pics

And it was meant to be, too, because then when I went to REorder the correct glider online, I saw it on Amazon for $200 (!) less than it had been at BRU. It was just a freak sale they were having—and continue to have every once in a while for these products. So if you think there's even a remote possibility that you might buy a glider (any brand of glider) one day, start tracking the prices well in advance. You'll soon get a feel for how often they go on sale and how low the price can get.

Don't laugh, but we ended up buying two. Or, rather, my parents bought one as a gift for us and we bought ourselves the second one—one's on our main floor and one's downstairs in our TV room where my husband usually gives Baba G his final bottle for the night.

Speaking of... Baba G has been known to spit up. A lot. Today he turned it up a notch and had some sort of mini-explosion all over the glider. People had tried to tell me that choosing a dark-colored fabric would be a mistake because it would show baby-related stains immediately. But those people were wrong. The microfiber fabric on the glider is a dream. I just wet it lightly with a washcloth and it was like, "Mini-explosion? What mini-explosion? Nothing to see here, move along." I wonder if the light-colored fabrics hold up as well, hmmm?

As you can see below, my husband has perfected a pretty handy feeding position with the help of the ottoman. My leg muscles aren't strong enough to pull this off, though (remember, the ottoman glides, too!).

Our dog asks, "When am *I* going to get a glider of my own?"

The bottom line: Clearly we are fans of the Dutailier reclining glider and ottoman or we wouldn't have two in our condo. I believe we bought ours for somewhere around $600 (I'm an Amazon prime member and shipping was free, yahoo!). Were other recliners we sat in comfy? Yes. But their seat-backs weren't high enough for us to be able to rest our heads. That's but one curse of being tall. For us, the glider was worth the cost because I know I'll still be getting my glide on long after BG has moved out, graduated college, and is living up to the meaning behind his name ("man of the world"). I'll be old and gray, sipping my morning tea in my glider, watching the world go by outside our front window. And then I'll probably think back to when BG was just a teeny little guy and I was sitting in the very same spot, gliding him to sleep in the wee hours right after we first brought him home.

And then he'll call me on his hologram phone and appear magically in front of me, life-sized, like Princess Leia in Star Wars, and he'll say, "Mom, are you just sitting there in the glider again?" (Remember, this is like 25 years from now. I'll be damned if they won't have hologram phones by then.)