On a whim last week I took out the mesh bumper in Levi’s crib. It always looked sloppy to me, and I wanted to see if Levi could manage without it.
The short answer? No.
While Levi didn’t bang his head or get his limbs stuck in the bars (phew), he repeatedly lost his pacifiers through the slats of the crib. I’m not quite sure whether he purposefully threw them onto the floor or if he accidentally knocked them to the ground (my guess is that it was a combination of both), but not having his usual three or four pacifiers at hand definitely affected his quality of sleep – especially during naps.
When Levi is transitioning through sleep cycles, he often reaches out his arm to grab a pacifier and replace the one that fell out when he started to snooze. With all of them on the floor and out of reach, he had to pick up his head and open his eyes to search for one. He would start to cry when he couldn’t find any, resulting in several shorter naps and a few 4am outbursts.
So I replaced the mesh bumper with the padded, patterned one that came with his crib set and his sleep returned to normal. Of course, now I have to deal with crib bumper when I’m changing his sheet. I suppose I could’ve kept the bumper out and waited for him to learn to not need the pacifier, but I’m ok with him using it as a coping mechanism for now.
What about you? Crib bumper or no crib bumper? Pacifiers or no pacifiers?
Hi PJ! So…my first thought upon reading this is “She has NOT discovered the beauty of the ultimate sheet saver yet!”…in any case, we used a bumper forever with Jordyn and Binkies (my favorite thing in the universe) but I never found changing the sheets to be much of a pain because we used the ultimate sheet saver on top of her crib sheet so I only ever had to change the actual fitted crib sheet every month or so…the ultimate sheet saver is the size of the crib mattress and has a waterproof backing (key for spit up or messy diapers)…it lays on top of the crib sheet and snaps onto the crib slats and is easy peasy to get on and off…we always had two so one could be in the wash and one on the crib…sad part is it covers the top of the cute crib sheet but you can still see from the side when you walk in the room 🙂
I’m going to check those out! Do you also use a bumper?
We don’t use a bumper because of the suffocation hazard — they are actually banned from being sold anywhere in Chicago. As a result, screaming for a pacifier that has fallen through the slats is a very common occurrence at our house (read: twenty times a night). Having her in a pack-n-play on trips is actually a delightful change of pace because they have nowhere to go!
We used a bumper until we moved, when our guy was about 6 months old. By the time our crib and stuff arrived over here, he was walking and I began to worry that he would be able to use the bumper to climb out.
As for the paci thing, he had given his up before we packed up to leave… but we would have had the lovely mesh walls of his Pack ‘n Play to trap it in had he waited 😉