Product Review Series: Wonder Bumpers
This is the first post in our Product Review Series which will run every Saturday through July 7th. As a reminder: the products in this series were purchased by us for our use, and no compensation was received from the companies who make them. I'm just a mom sharing objective and unbiased reviews on some fabulous products for babies that I think everyone should know about.
The product up for review today is:
Unlike the past when we were babies and had bumpers and matching blankets, the recommendation for cribs today is that they be "naked". This means nothing should be inside the crib except the mattress and the sheet. No crib bumpers, pillows, sleep positioners, blankets, stuffed animals, etc. Chicago actually banned bumper pads from being sold in October 2011, and the state of Maryland proposed a law to ban the sale of them statewide. In most states, daycares are not permitted to have bumper pads in order to be licensed. The use of bumpers can and has caused crib death by suffocation. Bumpers decrease the airflow in cribs, and babies can become entangled in them and suffocate. It makes me angry that bumpers are even still sold knowing the loss of innocent life that has occurred from the use of them.
As someone who found a nearly dead three month old (unrelated to crib bumpers) at 4:45 in the morning and had to perform CPR, there is no way I would ever do anything that might possibly cause crib death/SIDS. We have done everything possible to lower the risk factors: room sharing, a fan on during sleep, naked crib, breastfeeding, and dressing only in cotton for sleeping. I've heard people say that they only used the bumper pads until their child was mobile because the bumper pads were "so cute". I have a problem with this for 2 reasons. (1) Bumper pads decrease airflow in the crib which has been listed as a possible factor in SIDS deaths due to carbon dioxide rebreathing caused by the lack of airflow, and (2) you don't know when your baby will be able to wiggle or roll over against the pad. Baby monitors don't pick up the sound of suffocating...because there is no sound when a baby stops breathing. That's not cute.
Listen, I know what it's like to hold a lifeless baby with no pulse, perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and not know if they're going to live with every breath I breathe into them. I know what it's like to furiously pray for a heartbeat and for a breath and what it's like to age an unknown number of years in five minutes. I cannot (and do not want to) imagine what my life would be like if that baby had not survived. I wouldn't wish what I went through on anyone. Needless to say, our crib was completely and totally naked and bumpers were absolutely NOT an option.
As Lily grew, she started rolling, like all babies do. She mastered rolling/scooting deliberately in both directions, but at night she sometimes rolled right into the side of the crib and woke up crying from whacking her head or face into the crib bars. I give her father total credit for her restless sleeping. He thrashes around our bed just like she does in her crib. One night she hit them so hard she had a bruise on the left side of her face. This was making it hard for Ethan to sleep well since he would jump out of bed when he heard her moving around and stand by her crib in the hopes of intervening before she collided with the crib and woke up. Lily would also sometimes sleep up against the slats and have indentations on her forehead for a couple of hours every morning. They do make breathable mesh bumpers, but these are more for babies who stick their arms and legs out between the slats, and they don't work very well. I have worked with families who used them and pretty much hate them. They are pretty pointless, and I also think they're ugly. I jokingly told Ethan I wanted to go buy a bunch of pool noodles and vertically pad the rails with them, and then I thought "I bet someone out there already invented something like that...."
I was right. I first looked at Oliver B vertical slat bumpers, which were very pretty to look at. However, they were on backorder until the middle of June and the thought of tying all of those ribbons and then having to untie them when I needed to wash a bumper did not appeal to me at all. We had a toy that hung from our crib side that we had to tie onto the top rail. It was such a pain...and there were only TWO small ties. Ugh. This is not to say they aren't a great product, but they were just not for us because of the ribbons. So I kept looking.
After more research, I discovered GoMamaGo Designs Wonder Bumpers. They are vertical slat bumpers and wrap around each individual rail. These rail bumpers do not decrease the airflow since they leave the space between each rail open. They are actually filled with breathable foam inserts. If you have to wash one, you just pull out the foam insert from the pocket and toss the pocket into the wash. CAUTION: do not toss the whole thing in the wash, as the foam insert would be destroyed! I didn't learn this firsthand, but saw warnings about it from Amazon.com reviewers. There are no ribbons, so no tying involved. The bumpers are zippered (you zip them from the top to the bottom), and baby can't reach the zippers. The zippers are dark brown, so you can't see them when you use the brown color. If you used a different color, the zippers would show from the outside unless you twisted the zipper side around after installation which would be a little more work but totally doable. This isn't an issue for me, but I wanted to point this out for those perfectionists who don't want to see lines of zippers staring at them. :)
You can purchase Wonder Bumpers on GoMamaGo Designs' website, and they often run 30% off sales on in-stock items. Prices vary there, and they offer boy sets, girl sets, and neutral sets. The selection at GMG's website is better in terms of design options than anywhere else I have found. If you buy directly from them, you can actually order customized Wonder Bumpers by sending in the fabric of your choice to. I think that's a little crazy (and needlessly expensive at $8.00 per bumper plus the cost of your fabric), but I understand that some moms want their nursery to match perfectly. I am not one of those moms. I wanted the bumpers to blend in with our room and the crib, so I chose the brown/blue combination since our crib and bedroom furniture are espresso brown. I didn't choose the pink/brown combination because there is no pink anywhere to be found in our room, but we do have paint and accents that are in the blue color family. Additionally, blue is much more unisex than pink if we ever use these on a crib for a future baby boy. Wonder Bumpers are also sold at BuyBuyBaby and on Amazon.com. The price on Amazon tends to be the best deal (due to no sales tax and free shipping), even with BBB's 20% off coupons. At the time of this post, a 38 pack was priced at $119.95 on Amazon, and $159.95 at Buy Buy Baby.
Depending on your crib, they sell them in a 24 pack and a 38 pack. Our crib has 40 slats, but they also sell them in 2 packs for those of us who don't have exactly 24 or 38 slats and only need a few more. So, we ordered the 38 pack, plus an additional 2 pack. Wonder Bumpers are sold in different colors, and they are reversible, so you get 2 colors! You can do different patterns with your crib rails using the two colors if you want to, or just keep them all the same color.
When the bumpers arrived, they came in this package. All I had to do was unzip the bag to start installing them.
Installing them is pretty straightforward, and very easy. I put Lily in the crib while I installed them, and she had fun watching me. The material is incredibly soft and silky, so Lily enjoyed touching them after they were installed. I will say that after zipping down the 20th one, my hands were getting a little tired. It only took me about 15 minutes from start to finish though! We have not lowered our crib yet since Lily is not standing, so the bumpers go past our mattress. It makes changing the sheet a little more difficult than if they were not there, but it's still doable. If anything, it keeps the sheet even more secure.
So the million dollar question: do they work for the purpose intended?
YES.
I watched Lily roll right into the rails while sleeping in her crib for the first time after installing the Wonder Bumpers. There was no audible gut-wrenching "thwack", and she didn't startle or wake. There was no pain involved this time because her head was cushioned. She also snuggled right up against the rails as she did in the past, but this time there were no indentations on her little forehead. I took this photo with my phone camera since the shutter on my DSLR is too loud and would have awakened her.
I also love that the Wonder Bumpers will continue to serve Lily well as she grows. As a nanny, I had several charges hurt themselves by falling when they were trying to pull up or walk in their cribs. One child busted his lip, and another had a pretty nasty looking shiner. I am glad to know that when she starts standing in her crib and trying to walk and inevitably falls, her fall will be padded by the Wonder Bumpers and hopefully prevent major cuts and bruises. I can't bubble wrap my baby, but I can at least make her crib a safer (and softer!) environment for her.
One caveat/warning: I personally would not use these for a baby who couldn't deliberately and purposefully roll or move in the direction they want to go. I am not willing to take the risk of a baby getting their face stuck against one of the bumpers and being unable to move away from it. I'm a bit on the paranoid side, so I actually blocked my nose with one of them and I could breathe through it just fine but I don't know if a baby would be able to do so. (And I am certainly not going to test that!)
The product up for review today is:
Wonder Bumpers
by GoMamaGo Designs
Unlike the past when we were babies and had bumpers and matching blankets, the recommendation for cribs today is that they be "naked". This means nothing should be inside the crib except the mattress and the sheet. No crib bumpers, pillows, sleep positioners, blankets, stuffed animals, etc. Chicago actually banned bumper pads from being sold in October 2011, and the state of Maryland proposed a law to ban the sale of them statewide. In most states, daycares are not permitted to have bumper pads in order to be licensed. The use of bumpers can and has caused crib death by suffocation. Bumpers decrease the airflow in cribs, and babies can become entangled in them and suffocate. It makes me angry that bumpers are even still sold knowing the loss of innocent life that has occurred from the use of them.
As someone who found a nearly dead three month old (unrelated to crib bumpers) at 4:45 in the morning and had to perform CPR, there is no way I would ever do anything that might possibly cause crib death/SIDS. We have done everything possible to lower the risk factors: room sharing, a fan on during sleep, naked crib, breastfeeding, and dressing only in cotton for sleeping. I've heard people say that they only used the bumper pads until their child was mobile because the bumper pads were "so cute". I have a problem with this for 2 reasons. (1) Bumper pads decrease airflow in the crib which has been listed as a possible factor in SIDS deaths due to carbon dioxide rebreathing caused by the lack of airflow, and (2) you don't know when your baby will be able to wiggle or roll over against the pad. Baby monitors don't pick up the sound of suffocating...because there is no sound when a baby stops breathing. That's not cute.
Listen, I know what it's like to hold a lifeless baby with no pulse, perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and not know if they're going to live with every breath I breathe into them. I know what it's like to furiously pray for a heartbeat and for a breath and what it's like to age an unknown number of years in five minutes. I cannot (and do not want to) imagine what my life would be like if that baby had not survived. I wouldn't wish what I went through on anyone. Needless to say, our crib was completely and totally naked and bumpers were absolutely NOT an option.
As Lily grew, she started rolling, like all babies do. She mastered rolling/scooting deliberately in both directions, but at night she sometimes rolled right into the side of the crib and woke up crying from whacking her head or face into the crib bars. I give her father total credit for her restless sleeping. He thrashes around our bed just like she does in her crib. One night she hit them so hard she had a bruise on the left side of her face. This was making it hard for Ethan to sleep well since he would jump out of bed when he heard her moving around and stand by her crib in the hopes of intervening before she collided with the crib and woke up. Lily would also sometimes sleep up against the slats and have indentations on her forehead for a couple of hours every morning. They do make breathable mesh bumpers, but these are more for babies who stick their arms and legs out between the slats, and they don't work very well. I have worked with families who used them and pretty much hate them. They are pretty pointless, and I also think they're ugly. I jokingly told Ethan I wanted to go buy a bunch of pool noodles and vertically pad the rails with them, and then I thought "I bet someone out there already invented something like that...."
I was right. I first looked at Oliver B vertical slat bumpers, which were very pretty to look at. However, they were on backorder until the middle of June and the thought of tying all of those ribbons and then having to untie them when I needed to wash a bumper did not appeal to me at all. We had a toy that hung from our crib side that we had to tie onto the top rail. It was such a pain...and there were only TWO small ties. Ugh. This is not to say they aren't a great product, but they were just not for us because of the ribbons. So I kept looking.
After more research, I discovered GoMamaGo Designs Wonder Bumpers. They are vertical slat bumpers and wrap around each individual rail. These rail bumpers do not decrease the airflow since they leave the space between each rail open. They are actually filled with breathable foam inserts. If you have to wash one, you just pull out the foam insert from the pocket and toss the pocket into the wash. CAUTION: do not toss the whole thing in the wash, as the foam insert would be destroyed! I didn't learn this firsthand, but saw warnings about it from Amazon.com reviewers. There are no ribbons, so no tying involved. The bumpers are zippered (you zip them from the top to the bottom), and baby can't reach the zippers. The zippers are dark brown, so you can't see them when you use the brown color. If you used a different color, the zippers would show from the outside unless you twisted the zipper side around after installation which would be a little more work but totally doable. This isn't an issue for me, but I wanted to point this out for those perfectionists who don't want to see lines of zippers staring at them. :)
You can purchase Wonder Bumpers on GoMamaGo Designs' website, and they often run 30% off sales on in-stock items. Prices vary there, and they offer boy sets, girl sets, and neutral sets. The selection at GMG's website is better in terms of design options than anywhere else I have found. If you buy directly from them, you can actually order customized Wonder Bumpers by sending in the fabric of your choice to. I think that's a little crazy (and needlessly expensive at $8.00 per bumper plus the cost of your fabric), but I understand that some moms want their nursery to match perfectly. I am not one of those moms. I wanted the bumpers to blend in with our room and the crib, so I chose the brown/blue combination since our crib and bedroom furniture are espresso brown. I didn't choose the pink/brown combination because there is no pink anywhere to be found in our room, but we do have paint and accents that are in the blue color family. Additionally, blue is much more unisex than pink if we ever use these on a crib for a future baby boy. Wonder Bumpers are also sold at BuyBuyBaby and on Amazon.com. The price on Amazon tends to be the best deal (due to no sales tax and free shipping), even with BBB's 20% off coupons. At the time of this post, a 38 pack was priced at $119.95 on Amazon, and $159.95 at Buy Buy Baby.
Depending on your crib, they sell them in a 24 pack and a 38 pack. Our crib has 40 slats, but they also sell them in 2 packs for those of us who don't have exactly 24 or 38 slats and only need a few more. So, we ordered the 38 pack, plus an additional 2 pack. Wonder Bumpers are sold in different colors, and they are reversible, so you get 2 colors! You can do different patterns with your crib rails using the two colors if you want to, or just keep them all the same color.
When the bumpers arrived, they came in this package. All I had to do was unzip the bag to start installing them.
Installing them is pretty straightforward, and very easy. I put Lily in the crib while I installed them, and she had fun watching me. The material is incredibly soft and silky, so Lily enjoyed touching them after they were installed. I will say that after zipping down the 20th one, my hands were getting a little tired. It only took me about 15 minutes from start to finish though! We have not lowered our crib yet since Lily is not standing, so the bumpers go past our mattress. It makes changing the sheet a little more difficult than if they were not there, but it's still doable. If anything, it keeps the sheet even more secure.
 |
| C'mon, you know you love baby toes. |
YES.
I watched Lily roll right into the rails while sleeping in her crib for the first time after installing the Wonder Bumpers. There was no audible gut-wrenching "thwack", and she didn't startle or wake. There was no pain involved this time because her head was cushioned. She also snuggled right up against the rails as she did in the past, but this time there were no indentations on her little forehead. I took this photo with my phone camera since the shutter on my DSLR is too loud and would have awakened her.
I also love that the Wonder Bumpers will continue to serve Lily well as she grows. As a nanny, I had several charges hurt themselves by falling when they were trying to pull up or walk in their cribs. One child busted his lip, and another had a pretty nasty looking shiner. I am glad to know that when she starts standing in her crib and trying to walk and inevitably falls, her fall will be padded by the Wonder Bumpers and hopefully prevent major cuts and bruises. I can't bubble wrap my baby, but I can at least make her crib a safer (and softer!) environment for her.
Are they worth the money?
YES. After seeing that horrible bruise on my poor baby girl's face, I was willing to shell out more than what these cost for an effective solution. I found the price extremely reasonable for what you get and the quality of construction and materials used.
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