Friendly thought about drop side solution...

[Uno-Mom]

Wow - the drop-side ban post is getting heated!

But I'm thinking about this whole mess and have a thought - tell me what you think: every crib has legs. If it's just a basic square crib leg situation, couldn't you just cut the legs down to lower the entire crib? Then shorter or injured parents wouldn't have such a high reach.

I'm thinking abou this b/cause we have a recalled dropdown but we continue to use it (with almost daily inspections!) because my husband has a nasty back injury. It kills him to pick Sprog up when he tries to reach over the high side. Otherwise we'd have certainly installed our fix-it kit that imobilizes the side.

Is my solution totally nutty? I wouldn't lower it all the way to the ground, there should still be a few inches under the mattress methinks....

[maestramommy]

Hmmm! Certainly interesting! I'm not a carpenter though. You might want to ask one if cutting the legs would compromise the structure.

Wow, did the thread get heated? I guess I stopped reading before that. We just don't use the drop feature, but ours is a sleigh crib, so one side is several inches lower than the other. Otherwise it would be very hard for me to use the crib in the earlier days without the drop feature.

[vonfirmath]

Note the last post on that thread was 4 days ago. So if it got heated (I did not think so) this thread is just going to revive.

There are concerns about the layman just cutting off legs in their own house, yes. An option could be to make cribs with shorter legs. But that just means people have to lean over MORE to will lead to other back problems.

Think about how one picks up a box that is on a regular table versus the floor/a low elevation.

[Ceepa]

It's great that you're trying to figure out a solution, but the issue is the space from the top of the crib's side to the mattress level. Cutting off the legs doesn't decrease that distance. Lowering the crib's side decreases the distance that a parent has to reach in and out to get/set down baby on the mattress.

[barkley1]

Also, it seems to me like the safety issue wasn't always with the side dropping DOWN, but maybe creating a gap (side to side) with the mattress if it came undone, and the baby getting caught in the gap. I didn't research it much since ours is fixed side...so, not too sure.