Given my possession of an extremely sweet two-month-old baby, my third little boy, I am one of the most profoundly sleep-deprived people on the planet. I should not be driving heavy machinery (and I don't); I should not be operating dangerous equipment. And, given the news about the recall of 1 million Simplicity and Graco cribs today, it's clear I should also cross "putting together baby gear" from my list. (Graco is a unit of Newell Rubbermaid Inc (NYSE: NWL), whose stock is up 9 cents to $28.79 after an initial morning dip on the news.)I can't say I was surprised, a few days ago, when I saw Monroe's little bouncy seat had come detached from its frame, causing him to slide harmlessly a few inches onto the floor. But Simplicity Inc., the manufacturer of all the cribs under recall, shouldn't have been surprised, either, that parents put the drop-rail side of the crib on upside down. Let's review: parents are sleep-deprived. Parents are not necessarily mechanically-inclined to begin with! It is horribly unfair to expect parents, in their largely mentally-imbalanced state, to have to do everything right in order to keep their babies alive.
Now two sets of parents have to live with the guilt that they put their baby's cribs together incorrectly, which allowed their infants to become trapped in a gap and suffocate. Recalls? I only wish we could do take-backs, do-overs, when it came to the life of a baby.
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