(Eva_Deht)
In its latest effort to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that parents just completely skip the whole idea of putting any sort of crib bumper — regardless of thickness — in their kids’ cribs.
In 2005, believing that pillow-like crib bumpers were a suffocation risk, the AAP initially recommended that if you were going to put a bumper in the crib, it should be “thin, firm, well secured.” But the group says that studies in the years since have shown that those bumpers are still putting children at risk.
“We concluded that if there’s no reason for them to be in the crib, it’s better to just have them out of there, particularly in light of the deaths that have been reported, that have been associated with the bumper pads,” said Rachel Moon, MD, chairperson of the AAP SIDS task force and lead author of the new guidelines.
No more crib bumpers, says American Academy of Pediatrics [MSNBC]
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But what about rubber baby buggy bumpers?
no, the rubber babies are still at risk. Ditch the bumpers and drive more carefully. Hopefully, the other drivers are not using their BlackBerries.
Jeebus, just bubble wrap and put your kids in a rubber room until they are 18.
How the hell did I get lucky enough to get this old?
What is Intelligence and a great sense of humor/snark for $200, Alex.
Thank you.
I’ll take Jap anus relations for $400, Alex.
Disclaimer: WARNING! Do not place bubble wrap over baby’s face.
Can’t they just pop the bubbles for air?
Babies are stupid.
http://www.onion.demon.co.uk/theonion/other/babies/stupidbabies.htm
I agree. Crib bumpers are only decoration and not necessary. I’m a mom of many kids and have yet to see one careen into the crib rails going 80mph. But there are certain fussy mothers who must have pristine magazine cover nurseries, safety be damned. I hope this gets their attention.
We used to wake up every morning and find our 4 month old’s leg or arm (sometimes both!) caught and trapped between the slats of the crib.
With the bumpers, we no longer have that problem.
You could use something without slats, like a drawer or a box.
Ditto. We found our son with an arm or a leg caught between the railings at an angle where he couldn’t pull free. I’m much, much more concerned about him getting himself caught in the railing and turned on his stomach unable to roll over than the very remote chance that he may suffocate on the MESH bumper we bought.
I too, sometimes wonder how I managed to make it out of infancy myself with all of the stuff my parents put in my crib, allowed me to sleep on my stomach, etc., that is almost labeled as certain death for a child today.
The article I read (may be the cited article, may not be.. why bother reading?!) Said that basically your baby isn’t going to break his arm or leg, so let it dangle. Of course, whatever babies they were using must not scream like my son did the first time that happened or they’d just buy the breatheable bumpers and be done with that noise.
I’ve seen some mothers get them when they are unsure that the matress is snug enough against the corners, so they add a bumper to keep the kid out of the gap.
Not the correct solution.
Right, because anyone using bumpers is obviously automatically concerned about looks over safety. It couldn’t possibly be because people were going by the previous AAP recommendation and these risks are only now being publicized.
Judge much?
i never see why people need cribs anyway.
Oh, Hi, due to your aversion to touch I can understand why you’re not all into the crib thing.
Frankly I don’t understand how people can have babies with all the cooties going around.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/#define?term=cooties
Cooties r gross
OT: wasp is your avatar from the girl with the dragon tattoo?
Yup, yup! You got it, Noomi Rapace.
I bump my son’s head on accident more than he does into the crib. bumpers are pretty and pretty worthless
Just let ‘em sleep in cardboard boxes. Or dresser drawers.
Cardboard box? You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank.
And you try to tell the kids today that…
They won’t believe you!
My grandma was just telling me the other day how when she went to go visit someone with the kids, she just put the baby down to sleep in a dresser drawer. She looked at our enormous playpen baby habitat like it was something out of a science fiction movie. I kind of agree with her.
These stories make me think of a comedy routine I heard years ago (Jeff Foxworthy maybe???) about childproofing his house and how “when I was a kid we had a 900 lb television on top of a tv tray, my father used to say ‘let him pull it on his head a few times, he’ll learn!’” lol!
Christopher Titus, I believe.
What the fuck is a crib bumper? Does it help reduce the damage when two cribs collide? Come on Consumerist. Some of us are lonely single people who need to be told what these things are for.
I’m the parent of an infant, and I’m not entirely sure what they are for, although I see them in stores all the time.
As someone else mentioned, maybe it’s for when your precious little one goes hurtling towards the side of the crib at incredible speed?
Keeps them from getting their arms and legs stuck through the slats, or from bumping their heads. Neither of which is particularly dire, although the arm/leg phase is annoying as heck.
It also helps cut down drafts (draughts?) in the winter, but so do warm jammies.
Wouldn’t just covering the poles in some soft material (ideally during production so it can’t be easily removed by the child) solve the bumping problem? And using solid walls or mesh too small for their fingers (let alone arms) to fit in solve the getting stuck problem?
Google is so hard, y’all.
What ARE allowed in the cribs now? It seems like they recommend leaving your baby in a stainless steel box now.
How could you risk damaging all that precious steel?
No those have sharp edges.
Steel ball, then. Hmm, but sleeping on a curved surface might affect his posture…
Truthfully, in a newborn crib, the recommendation is to have nothing. No pillows, sheets, stuffed animals, bumpers, etc. The mattress should be really firm.
Nothing, and as much as people complain, it makes life a heck of a lot easier. So much less to clean vomit off of.
Nah, but they do recommend stainless steel for resale value. People come into a nursery and always want stainless steel.
So, it’s looking like the handmade wooden cradle that my Dad and his siblings slept in, and then I slept in, that sat directly on the floor, was actually safe after all! Wow. Who’da thunk it.
I always just used a leash. Avoided the whole crib controversy.
In the crib? Lessee… I got 15-2, 15-4, 15-6 and a run for nine.
Don’t forget His Nobs for +1.
So, that would make it:
10 J Q 5
or
J Q K 5
No other cribs score that way, I believe.
That’s why we used this. Keeps limbs in the crib (our daughter used to get her arms stuck quite frequently), but also breathable in case she got up next to it:
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2266849
I used this for my first with no problem. My second would just push it down with her leg and then get it stuck through the slats. I had to put in a bumper when she was about 4 months old because she kept getting limbs stuck in the slats.
Make me wonder how i survived my crib… And sticking my head between the railings on the stairs… And going 40MPH on a bike… Why i am so fragile i might as well be made out of glass! (According to them anyways)
You know what else poses a risk to babies? Being alive.
Also a baby could put their arm across their face and suffocate. So you’d better remove their arms.
And thei legs! They might get stuck in their mouths while they have a plugged nose!
SIDS is fake. There, I said it. If you really, openly look at the data and facts, SIDS is basically a name for “a baby died and we don’t have a clue why”. Maybe it was breathing issues, maybe it was turned this way or that, maybe it was a blanket or sheet or bumpers or whatever. Really, it is just researchers taking unconnected infant deaths and grasping to find a connection so they can explain it.
The sad fact is, despite all of our medical advances, people (including babies), still die even for reasons we don’t always know. We need to just accept that there is some inherent risk in living and get over it. I’m not saying let your baby sleep in the knife drawer or anything, we have 2 kids at home and have covers on the outlets, top heavy furniture secured to the wall, etc., but there comes a point where you have to stop worrying and just accept that you can’t control everything that happens to you kids.
With the current generation of high school kids and down, it worries me some of the complexes I see because of how overly sheltered they have been. Let your kids get dirty,let them take a few risks, and realize that you can’t prevent everything bad from happening.
+1
Just wanted to say that is an awesome picture. Nothing better than kids and dogs togeather.
http://www.amazon.com/BreathableBaby-CribShield-Mesh-Liner-White/dp/B0013FKUW4
problem solved