Edible Crib Fix

One look at our once pristine crib and no one can say my child isn’t getting enough fiber.

Beckett now has 7 chompers that he exercises while he’s standing instead of sleeping in his crib.

Aside from the fact that I had lofty goals for the reuse of the crib, I’m sure the cocktail of polyurethane and faux cherry finish isn’t good to ingest.

I looked for “crib rail protector” and “teething guard for crib” but came up with either these:

(which will probably go over about as well as the fireplace protectors…)

or these, which don’t match the nursery bedding and design that – at one point in time – was the biggest decision of my life. Plus, Beckett doesn’t limit his biting to only the front rail. He gnaws on the side and front rails equally.

What a quandary.

So. I decided to make my own, because I saw some tutorials that involved only a few dozen hours and several yards of matchy fabric and whimsical ribbon ties, plus I’m an excellent seamstress. {excellent in a “I once made Christmas stockings that were pointy in weird places” kind of way}

But then I had a stroke of genius: turn the crib bumper into a teething guard instead. Someone (Mr. & Mrs. Skip Hop) already sewed it for me…I just had to do a little tweaking. Easy cheesy.

Why the crib bumper? Because it had been sitting on a ledge as decoration. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) strongly advises against crib bumpers (or anything soft in the crib) to reduce the risk of SIDS. Seeing as I’m very anti-SIDS, the bumper never made it into the crib, except for this picture:

Disclaimer: I’m not a tutorial kind of person. I’m a figure-it-out-as-I-go type of girl, so if you can follow my 2 or 3 poorly documented steps, you can totally do the same thing.

The bumper was a little too fluffy to fit on the rail, so I opened up one of the ends and pulled out half the stuffing.

I went back and measured how long each rail was and cut the bumper into 3 sections accordingly. {This is where I’m inept at providing instructions, because I really don’t know what I’m doing. It’s a lot of snip, sew, “crap!”, remove stitching, sew again…}  The bumper already had ties to attach it to the crib, so I cut on either side of the ties to keep them intact.

Notice the stray strings and poorly sewn edge. If I can do it…your hamster can do it. Or you. Whoever is looking for a project first. Am I still talking about this?

Instead of keeping the fancy piping along the edges, I just sewed a straight edge.

Our bumper is double-sided, as most are, so I opted to use both sides for the guard. 

About 20 minutes later…

Voila!

A crib teething guard to match his nursery.