The Disadvantages of Mini Cribs

When you have a small nursery or need to fit a crib into a room with an older child, a mini crib is an attractive option. Grandparents often purchase mini cribs to provide a safe place for their infant grandchildren to sleep when they visit. However, this type of crib has some disadvantages to consider before you buy one.

Outgrow Quickly

The main disadvantages of a mini crib is that the baby outgrows it much faster than a standard crib. A mini crib mattress usually measures about 38 inches long by 25 inches wide, which is almost 20 inches shorter than the 59 inches of a standard crib. Therefore, where a baby would outgrow a standard crib around 3 years of age, he might outgrow the mini crib before his second birthday.

Non-Standardized Sizes

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Standard cribs have specific size guidelines for the mattress and the frame that make it easy to find exactly what you are looking for. With a mini crib, on the other hand, manufacturers can make cribs of slightly different sizes and refer to them all as mini cribs. This makes it more difficult to find what you are looking for because you have to read the fine print to discover both the size of the frame and the size of the mattress.

Difficulty Finding Bedding

Crib bedding needs to fit snugly to ensure that it does not pose a suffocation risk for the sleeping baby. Whereas all baby stores carry bedding for standard cribs, mini crib bedding is more difficult to find. You can purchase it online if your mini crib is the most common size, but if you have an unconventional mini crib, you may have to special order the bedding from the manufacturer. This limits your options for patterns and colors and can be an added expense.

Fewer Mattress Options

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Mini cribs typically come with a mattress that fits in the crib, but there are few options if you would like to purchase a different mattress. This is because not as many companies manufacture mini cribs and those that do might not make them in the correct size for your frame. Crib safety standards require that there be no more than 1/2 inch between the mattress and the frame when it is centered in the crib, or no more than 1 inch when it is pressed up against the other side. Therefore, you must buy a mattress exactly the correct size for your mini crib.