The Ikea Crib Eight Months Later: A Bit of Babyproofing

Abe's crib is the Sundvik crib from Ikea. As I've mentioned before, this selection was motivated primarily by price. The crib is $119, and I like the way it looks just fine. It has clean simple lines that fit in well with the nursery. It's not flashy or exciting, but it does its job without drawing attention to itself.

I wasn't interested in spending more on a crib for a few reasons:

1. Cribs rarely excite me, no matter how much they cost. I just....don't care that much about cribs. They aren't like chairs. I love chairs.

2. I had no idea whether Abe would actually USE his crib much at all. Ari loved the crib. Milo hated sleeping, but didn't much care where he was doing it. Gus HATED the crib with a fiery passion and slept in bed with us until he was three. So, you know, I'm pretty open minded about baby sleeping arrangements. I just want everyone to sleep; I don't care where it happens.

3. Even if babies sleep in cribs, they don't do it for very long, relatively speaking. Abe's my last baby; he and some kid from Craigslist are the only ones who are going to use this thing. I'd rather save my money for something that will stick around longer.

So those are all my reasons for buying the crib to start with.

When we put the crib together, my only concern, looking forward, was that the directions made it look like we'd pretty much need to take the whole damn thing apart again to lower the mattress down once Abe started pulling up on things. But, of course, at the time, that seemed too impossibly far off to even worry about.

But then, somehow, he got bigger. Big enough to start trying to pull up on things. So, a few weeks ago, we had to undertake the daunting task of lowering the mattress. I thought I would report back on this process to make my Ikea crib analysis complete.

Turns out it was pretty easy.

We didn't have to take the whole crib apart; we just had to take one end off and then slide the bottom that the mattress rests on out and put it back in the lower position. Like this:

When we went to this, we learned that we had brilliantly thought to store the instruction manual AND the allen wrench under the mattress so that we'd be able to find them when the time came to lower the mattress:

Our minds were so sharp back before we had a fourth kid!

We opted not to put them back under there once we lowered the mattress, by the way, lest Abe somehow figure out a way to pry up the mattress while sitting on it and pull the choking hazard tools out from under there. Better safe than sorry. (note to future self: they're in the top drawer of Abe's changing table/dresser)

We turned it on its side like so.

Unscrewed all these little things.

And put the bottom back in at the lower position (there are only two positions). This part--fitting the little things into the little thing places--was the hardest part. But not bad. I would say the whole process took the two of us 20 minutes? With a baby crawling around distracting us.

The sad part is that we had to retire the crib skirt I made to match the curtains. I was going to just use heavy duty double sided tape and tape it farther back on the mattress board...but once the board was lowered the gap between it and the side of the crib was too tight to wiggle the fabric through. I might have been able to do it had I been willing to spend more time and get more frustrated. Instead, I'm thinking of making a couple of pillows or something.

I took this picture of it all folded up to commemorate it:

So my take on the crib after eight months of use and after the arduous mattress lowering? Yep, still good with it. And I can even still reach to put Abe down when he's asleep. I was worried I'd have to just drop him the last half a foot or so. And that might wake him up. But no! My arms are just long enough!

Just in time!

(okay, I stood him up there. But this was maybe a month ago. He's pulling up on everything now)