Environmental watch

February 22, 2008 | Print

The Organic Crib

Babies and young children spend most of the time sleeping their first few years.

The idea of an organic crib is to create a safe, cozy place for them to rest–while having fun with style and design.

Crib. In our au naturalness, we’re big fans of the Pacific Rim Arts and Crafts Crib and their Radius Crib.

Pacific Rim cribs are made from sustainable maple with a non-toxic oil and beeswax finish. The cribs convert into toddler beds (with a conversion kit) and can be ordered unfinished.

Eco-conscious furniture lines (like ducduc and Argington) make cribs with unique styles, available at Design Public and Modern Nursery.

With traditional cribs, we make sure a new crib has time to offgas before the baby uses the nursery. Even sustainable wood and non-toxic painted cribs may offgas. A benefit of a hand me down crib is that it’s already gone through that process.

Mattress. An organic mattress, free of the chemicals and plastics in traditional crib mattresses, could be the most important feature of the crib ensemble.

Organic crib mattresses are made of organic wool and cotton, with a natural latex (rubber) center or innerspring coils. When choosing between innerspring and natural latex, we find a conversation with Daxstores or Lifekind helpful.

We order a few wool puddle pads with the mattress. The wool pad fits on top of the mattress and protects from leaky diapers. We layer two wool pads for extra protection.

Crib bumper. As babies get older, they snuggle up to the bumper while they sleep. We feel better knowing they’re breathing into a Vivetique organic crib bumper.

We cover the bumper with one of Coyuchi’s organic embroidered bumper covers. Babies love the sweet animal figures.

Another idea is to sew a cover from a favorite fabric to fit the bumper.

Sheets. We find more and more organic crib sheets to try. Our standby is the Coyuchi cotton sheet, which matches the bumper cover. (Coyuchi makes an organic crib skirt too.)

We also like the softness of Kate Quinn Organics crib sheets.

One last thought. With our newborns, we use a co-sleeper next to our bed before moving them to the crib. Organic co-sleeper mattresses and bedding are available to fit a variety of porta-cribs, bassinets and changing tables.

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