Parents long ago never used anything along baby crib walls when the baby was in their crib. At some point someone came up with the idea that this was not a safe practice, because the baby could get their arm, leg or worse their head stuck between the spindles around the crib.
Someone came up with the idea that bumper guards along all sides of the crib were a safety feature to help prevent the baby from becoming stuck between the spindles. The practice of using bumper guards caught on quickly and was widely used as a safety precaution, until; you guessed it someone deemed this practice unsafe.
Organizations now say there are suffocation or strangulation risks to consider when using bumper guards in cribs, and parents should just skip using them. They say that cribs now have to be manufactured with the spindles set closer together making it impossible for the infant to get an arm, leg or head stuck between them, thus there is no longer a use for the bumper guards.
The reasons that many parents continue to use bumper guards is because they look fashionable with the matching bedding and some have a concern that the infant could bump their head on the crib spindles. Health organizations have had an intense look at these concerns and have found that an infant could not cause themselves any serious injury such as a bump or bruise to the head hard enough to be serious therefore this risk is not present.
A university in St. Louis did a study in regards to the use of bumpers in cribs and found that between 1985 and 2005 there were just over 25 infant deaths related to strangulation or suffocation from the use of bumpers. They also go on to state that about 25 more infants were injured in some manner by the use of these bumpers in cribs, but did not die. Therefore the risk is too high to use bumpers in cribs.
A number of health organizations feel that the infant can become tangled in the bumper guard and suffocate as they would with a pillow over the face. They also feel that the ties can become loose and the infant can easily become entangled with the ties around the neck. Some stitching on bumpers have come loose allowing the ties to become longer increasing strangulation risk.
The theory now is that it is better to use noting at all in the crib because manufactures have fixed the problem and narrowed the spaces between spindles.
By: Health Connect Zone
http://www.newbabyproducts.org/bumpers-in-cribs/
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