Crib anxiety jams Stork Craft website, phones
B.C. company says cribs met safety standards
Parents are reporting they are unable to get through to Stork Craft Manufacturing, the B.C.-based company involved in the largest-ever North American recall of baby cribs after four infant deaths.
Stork Craft's phone lines have been busy, and its website has been unresponsive.
Vancouver mom Amanda Carkener was involved in Stork Craft's first crib recall earlier this year and said it was difficult to reach the company last time.
"I hope they handle this one better than the last recall, because the last recall, a lot of mothers I spoke to got rid of their Stork Craft cribs and they didn't buy one again," Carkener said in an interview Monday with CBC News.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada issued the recall Monday for 1.2 million cribs in the U.S. and almost one million in Canada. They were made between January 1993 and October 2009. The recall followed reports of four infants suffocating after becoming trapped between the mattress and the drop-down slide.
Stork Craft said in a statement Tuesday that it has already stopped selling cribs with a functional drop side.
"For the past several months, we have been transitioning to non-drop-side cribs," according to the statement.
The Richmond, B.C.-based firm said it has been making drop-side cribs since 1953. It first became aware of problems involving infants getting pegged underneath the collapsed drop side last year. At that time, the CPSC initiated a recall of several varieties of cribs with drop-side features.
Grieving mother wants ban
A New York mom whose 10-month-old baby suffocated to death in 1997 after being trapped in a defective crib says it's time for authorities to ban drop-side cribs once and for all.
"The only thing that can be done at this point is to have a federal ban on the sale of drop-side cribs and the manufacturing of the drop-side model," said Michele Witte, of Long Island.
Witte's nightmare occurred on Dec. 11, 1997, when she put her son Tyler to bed, thinking the crib was a safe place for him to sleep. Her crib was not a Stork Craft brand.
"I walked into my son's room and I found him trapped by the mat between the side rail and the board of his own crib and he was strangled," Witte said in an interview Tuesday with CBC News.
"It was very horrifying. I left my son in one place and I thought he would be safe — his crib — and woke up in the morning to find a nightmare before my eyes." she said.
Witte faulted the general design of side-drop cribs, calling them complicated with too many linked parts.
"You have hardware, whether it's plastic or metal, attaching a side rail, a headboard which can become loose, which a baby can shake on the side rail to loosen that hardware and become entrapped. And it has happened to 90 babies over a two-year time period, not including my son, Tyler."
Carkener says when her crib was recalled the first time, she couldn't get through to Stork Craft by telephone and the website kept crashing. In the end, it took her weeks to get the parts she needed.
Carkener said she's shocked there has been a second recall concerning the same crib. Now she worries even more about her child's safety.
"You want to be able to trust when your child's asleep and I can't hear him, that he's safe," she said. "And when I'm told, twice now, that cribs are not safe for your child to sleep in, how well do I sleep at night?"
Stork Craft defends cribs
Stork Craft defended its manufacturing, saying its cribs have met or exceeded all Canadian and U.S. standards.
"In the majority of incidents, the cribs were being used with broken parts, parts with pieces missing, parts that were damaged or with modified or homemade parts," the firm said in a statement.
"In some incidents, the crib was in a state of significant disrepair. In other cases, the consumer had installed the drop-side rail upside down — contrary to the instructions that are glued to the mattress base of each crib. This causes extraordinary stress on the plastic parts that could result in breakage."
Part of the problem was that many of the cribs involved in the recall were purchased second-hand and used "multiple times by different caregivers," said the firm.
Stork Craft advised consumers to keep the crib's original box, packaging and instructions so that it could be reassembled correctly in the future.