A Happy Medium

A few days ago I wrote about how I had to remove the bumper from the crib to keep Katie from trying to smother herself.  I didn't want to remove the bumper for a number of reasons.  I liked the way it looked, I liked that it kept pacifiers from falling out of the crib, and I didn't want Katie getting her arms and legs stuck between the slats.  Most articles that suggest you should not have a bumper in your crib claim that your baby won't get his or her limbs stuck in between the slats of the crib if you go bumper free.  Personally, I think that claim is bunk.

The first two nights Katie slept in the crib without a bumper she pretty much stayed in the center away from the sides.  Our only issue was that her pacifiers were escaping the crib.  At 5AM it's never fun to listen to a crying baby and a frustrated husband who can't find a pacifier anywhere despite there having been several of them in the crib at the start of the night.  I had a bad feeling that missing pacifiers were going to be a problem for us now that the bumper was gone.

Starting during the wee hours of Saturday morning we awoke to Katie screaming.  Usually, Bryan is pretty good about getting to her fast and seeing what she needs.  I was beginning to wonder what was going on when her crying didn't stop for a couple of minutes.  She was stuck.  Katie had wiggled over to the side of the crib and had gotten her arm caught between the slats.  Bryan worked her arm out and brought a very distraught Katie to me to be fed.  Several more times on Saturday morning the same scenario with her arm getting stuck would be replayed minus her needing to eat.  I began to feel sick to my stomach.  I felt like we were going to have to choose between using a bumper that Katie might smother herself with, or we were going to sacrifice sleep and risk Katie breaking an arm or leg with no bumper.

When I got up on Saturday morning I heard Katie crying once again and this time I went into her room to find her arm shoved through the slats up to her shoulder.  She was lodged in between the slats pretty well and it took me several minutes to free her.

I suggested to Bryan that maybe I needed to make a bumper that was made of only a single layer of thin fabric.  I wasn't really in the mood to break out the sewing machine and try making something that would work, but I didn't know if I had any other options.  I decided that I'd do a little searching online to see if anything existed that would work for us.  It turns out they actually make breathable crib bumpers.  With Monday being a holiday, I didn't want to place an order from Amazon and have to wait until the middle of next week to get it.  Fortunately, Babies R Us, a store on my list of places I loathe shopping had what I wanted in stock.  I was skeptical that this thing would work for us based on some of the reviews, but I'm happy to say that it not only fits our crib better than any other bumper we've ever used, but it also works quite nicely.  You can press your face into this bumper and still breathe easily (the first thing I tested out with this bumper) and it keeps Katie's limbs and pacifiers from going between the slats.  So far it looks like this bumper is the perfect solution for our crib concerns.