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Fisher-Price Recalls Rock ’N Play Sleeper Linked to Infant Deaths
- leesalminen 8y agoMy partner and I are expecting our first child. She was building out a Wishlist on Amazon for things we’d need. Most of what was picked was not on Prime, was not sold by Amazon.com and had few (<10) reviews. We had to have “the talk” about Amazon and how looking for “deals” on crap to buy the baby isn’t smart. I wouldn’t buy replacement windshield wipers for my car on Amazon, let alone a crib the baby would sleep in.
- MeltySmelty 8y agolol holy shit you're a F.A.G.G.O.T.
- evmar 8y agoI believe you have been downvoted because your comment is irrelevant to the article. As far as I understand it, Rock 'n Play and similar are dangerous for infant death not because of their construction quality, but because the shape of the device is fundamentally unsafe.
- macspoofing 8y agoYou're correct, but given the problems that Amazon has with counterfeit goods and allowing the sale of uncleared products in regulated categories, OP does have a point.
- caprese 8y agoan irrelevant point in this article thread because nobody talking about this fisher-price toy is a cheapskate. everyone here already agrees, now lets talk about this issue at hand.
- silencio 8y agoour rock n play was sold by amazon. it's a fisher price product. this isn't on the same level of crap.
- claydiffrient 8y agoTragedy that this has happened. That being said, I'm not sending mine back. I've had it for 5 years since our first was born and my third uses it regularly now. The babies don't sleep in it during the night. I buckle them in and I use my foot to help soothe them to sleep next to me while I work at my desk. If they sleep in it, I'm awake and alert and with them.
- Someone1234 8y agoWe loved ours too. We had one child who had acid reflux which doctors suggest putting them on an incline, so we had them sleep in there a few years ago before they could roll. Hopefully a safer equivalent comes out for future parents.
- debt 8y ago"The babies don't sleep in it during the night." Yeah I get a feeling people were using these to kind of get out of soothing the baby at night. People were putting their baby in it and like walking away or going back to bed. The Snoo I think is what most people want, but it's pretty expensive. But you can put the baby down, restrain them properly and then walk away or go to bed.
- Someone1234 8y agoThe Snoo isn't inclined, so apples and oranges.
- surfearth 8y agoYou're right, however there is an accessory you can buy that attaches to the legs and adds a slight (8-10cm) incline. We used that with our daughter up until 5.5 months.
- sanderjd 8y ago> get out of soothing the baby at night I don't think you meant it this way, but just a note: it's not selfish for parents to prioritize getting some sleep for themselves at night. It is not good (or safe) for anyone if all the care providers are too sleep deprived to function.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- antidaily 8y agoWe have 3 of these. Youngest is too small to roll over in it. But i guess we shouldnt risk it. Yikes.
- makeszerosense 8y agoMeasles killed 3 kids in the last 20 years. A rocking sleeper by Mattel killed 10 in the last 4 years. Yet we think anti-vaxxers are the devils. Priorities in all the wrong places. Some 400 kids drown unintentionally in swimming pools in the US every year. Homeowners with pools are baby killers.
- ethagknight 8y agoThe only way my three kids would sleep at night was in one of these. Probably acid reflux, but it’s a bummer these are getting recalled. I don’t really understand how a child could suffocate in a rock and play any more so than in a traditional crib.
- Someone1234 8y agoParents were using them without the straps when the child could roll. So the child would roll over, and lay face down with high walls, likely resulting in a perfect SIDS environment.
- mbrd 8y agoSame here, it was the only way we could get my daughter (now 3 years old) to go to sleep. I spent many a long evening lying on the floor (so she couldn't see me over the edge), rocking it with my foot. Ours had mesh sides which I think would allow breathing even if the baby managed to roll, so I'm not 100% what the dangerous scenario that triggered the recall could be.
- cullenking 8y agoSame thing, three years old now, used on of these for the first three months. I'd sleep on the couch with him next to me and rock it while I dozed all night, to give the wife some rest. All my parent friends had good sleepers so I've felt like an outlier, nice to hear a similar story.
- shereadsthenews 8y agoPeople also put their kids in cars and drive them around to put them to sleep, and hundreds of children are killed every year in car wrecks but nobody is recalling the cars.
- sanderjd 8y agoYou shouldn't be getting downvoted. This is a good point. Not that cars should actually be recalled because of this, but that there are risks on all sides that parents are constantly weighing and navigating. I suspect it is truly less safe for parents to be critically sleep deprived than for a baby to sleep in one of these. Especially in the first couple months when you're driving to the doctor all the time. Are there statistics on car accidents including infants due to sleep deprivation? Or even just injuries due to dropping babies when sleep deprived? I suspect it would be hard to gather these because parents don't like to acknowledge (even to themselves) how much the sleep deprivation is affecting them.
- kcmastrpc 8y agoIt's really important to read the article: Mattel said in a statement on Friday that it stood by the safety of its products but agreed to the voluntary recall “due to reported incidents in which the product was used contrary to the safety warnings and instructions.” People would put stuff in the crib with the baby, padding, leave them unattended, etc. The product isn't at fault, it's the parents who are too stupid to read/follow directions.
- lmkg 8y agoProper safety engineering accounts for human factors. Blaming the parents is improper. Safety-critical fields like aviation assume that trained, certified pilots are fallible and design their systems to be resilient against human error. This is a product design to be sold to and used by not just laypeople, but laypeople who have probably only gotten four hours of sleep in the last four weeks.
- Someone1234 8y agoWell stated. There's two kinds of parents: Those who have left their child asleep unattended in a Rock 'N Play for a few minutes, and liars. If you design a product aimed particularly at new sleep deprived parents, you have to assume imperfect usage. And a product that a baby can sleep in will be left unattended for a few minutes, that's just a fact of life. The doorbell will ring, you'll make lunch, you'll put in the laundry, go bathroom, whatever it is. You aren't going to wake up a sleeping baby every time you step out of the room momentarily. And this coming from a big fan of the Rock N' Play.
- tachyonbeam 8y agoHave to agree here. We're talking about potentially avoidable deaths. Blaming the parents won't help, parents will keep doing things like this. I don't think they realized it could mean their child dying.
- macspoofing 8y agoThe product doesn't lead to children dying. It increases the risk of a certain type of fatality when used improperly, with the overall odds still being miniscule. And yes, parents have to take some responsibility. Nothing will ever be 100% safe.
- beager 8y agoI respect that they recalled it amid the pressure, but I feel for all the families, including mine, who would be SOL without the rock n play. It was the only thing that worked until 4 months. I also really feel for the families who lost their babies this way. What an unfathomable horror.
- rhino369 8y agoMy newborn was laying in one when I read the story. It was a very useful product, but I can't imagine losing my baby. I'll have to research a safe alternative.
- xienze 8y agoAt the risk of being “that contrarian guy”, I’m going to say it: this danger here is overblown. And yes, I used a Rock ‘n Play for my firstborn and I plan to use it for the one on the way. The reason these children died is because the parents were putting them in Rock ‘n Play after the point at which the children could roll over by themselves, which F-P explicitly said NOT TO DO. It’s a great product if you use it the way you’re supposed to...
- sergiotapia 8y agoAnd keep in mind the baby isn't going to tell you "I can roll over now". No, one day he'll just do it, and surprise the hell out of you. Be _extra_ vigilant of your kids, it's not worth the risk.
- eridius 8y agoThe initial warning last week said this was due to infants over 3 months who were capable of rolling and not using the harness. They also said only 10 deaths. Consumer Reports did an investigation and discovered 32 deaths, including some where the infant was less than 3 months old and died without rolling over. > There is, for example, the mother in Hidalgo County, Texas, who placed her 2-month old daughter on her back for a night’s sleep on Oct. 19, 2013, according to a lawsuit filed by the family against Fisher-Price. At 4 a.m., when the mother checked, all was well, but by 7 a.m., the baby had stopped breathing. Her head was tilted to the side with her chin on her shoulder, compressing her airway. She was pronounced dead at the scene from positional asphyxia, or an inability to breathe caused by her position. > The most recent deaths CR found occurred in spring 2018—one involving a 1-month-old girl in Knoxville, Tenn., and the other a 9-day-old boy in Copperas Cove, Texas. There's another where a 7-week-old nearly died with their grandmother in the room, but thankfully she noticed the kid turning blue and lifeless and got him breathing again in time. At this point I had to stop reading the article, it was upsetting me too much, but you can keep reading if you want to: https://www.consumerreports.org/recalls/fisher-price-rock-n-play-sleeper-should-be-recalled-consumer-reports-says/ https://www.consumerreports.org/recalls/fisher-price-rock-n-...
- objektif 8y agoWhats a safer alternative to these things?
- octorian 8y agoFollowing a strict list of guidelines that ensure the infant is in the most uncomfortable position imaginable, making absolutely certain that they are physically incapable of falling asleep. ( without first screaming until 4am)
- objektif 8y agoHaha that sounds about right. I meant to say is there a magical product that will set them to sleep for 8 hours straight without pooping, peeing and that will burp them occasionally?
- octorian 8y agoIts called hired nighttime help. We did that with #2, after the experience of going through hell with #1. (Thankfully, both became quite easy to deal with after a few weeks. But at the beginning, its hard to see past the next 24 hours.)
- noja 8y agoLots of (surprisingly angry sounding) people in this thread blaming sleep deprived parents for not reading the manual of something that Should Just Work. Comparing the risk to driving a baby around in a car is a fallacy. The product is badly designed: once the baby can turn over there is a risk of suffocation and the product does not allow for that (but it should). A better comparison is to compare this product to the same product without the design faults, be that mesh fabric or whatever.
- in_cahoots 8y agoThe problem is actually worse than that: even if you buckle your baby in it’s still unsafe for unmonitored sleeping as the baby’s airway can compress due to the incline. Using the product as the picture and text on the box depicts (sleeping next to Mom as she sleeps in bed, great for ‘all-night’ sleep) risks death. The initial CSPC statement and the company’s response all (deliberately?) ignore that issue and those deaths. The American Academy of Pediatrics is clear: the only safe way to sleep is on a baby’s back, with no padding and on a flat surface. This product was never certified for safe sleep; Fisher-Price calls it a ‘sleeper’ instead of a regulated term like bassinet or crib to get around this fact.
- stevenhubertron 8y agoExactly. The CEOs should be charged with murder and the company sued into extinction. There is clear intent to mislead new parents into thinking this is safe.
- barking 8y agoTangential point here, I found the range of prices for this amazing, $40 to $140. Why aren't shops who gouge people getting called out more often?