Parents re-examine drop-side cribs after recalls

Margie McGlone brought one key item into her nursery when she was pregnant last summer. It was her sister's crib, one they both loved and looked forward to keeping in the family.

"I thought it'd be cool for my son to have grown up in the same crib as his cousins," said McGlone, whose older sister had held onto the crib through three moves after her children outgrew it.

Then McGlone got nervous, learning that millions of drop-side cribs were being recalled after at least 32 strangulation and suffocation deaths were linked to them. "I was like, wait a minute, this is a drop-side," said McGlone, of Bronxville, N.Y.

Her niece and nephew had been fine in the crib, an antiqued-white model with painted gold accents. And the company had a kit to make the sides immobile. But as a new-mom-to-be, she was too worried, especially after seeing depictions of the potential hazard — a baby's head getting stuck after a side detached.

Though nervous to break the news to her sister, she took apart the beloved heirloom and bought a crib with stationary sides for her son, Finley, born in November.

"I thought, I can't in good conscience — knowing they're all being recalled and all being changed, I can't keep it. I can't use it," she said. "Every time he was in it I wouldn't feel comfortable."

More than 10 million drop-side cribs were recalled in recent years, culminating with the Consumer Product Safety Commission's announcement in December that after decades of use, the sale of drop-side cribs was being banned.

Starting in June, it will be illegal to sell a crib with a side that moves up and down, a once-common feature that lets you reach in and pick up a baby with ease.

"We're sensitive to tough economic times," says commission spokesman Scott Wolfson. "We hope people will go out and buy the safer cribs."

Many large retailers stopped selling drop-side cribs more than a year ago in anticipation of the new standard, and experts believe many parents are using cribs with fixed sides. But baby furniture is so frequently passed down, to preserve memories and cut costs, that the traditional style remains in nurseries, grandparents' homes, basements and attics everywhere.

So where does that leave parents who used a drop-side crib without a problem for one child but now, as a new baby arrives, find the design being outlawed?

For some, a close examination of the crib is just what it takes to feel safe.