Bumbo recall and new safety strap

As you may know, the Bumbo baby seat was recently recalled.  The safety strap can be ordered (in the United States) by calling 866-898-4999 or visiting www.recall.BumboUSA.com.  There's a Bumbo site for Canada (http://bumbocanada.com), and outside the U.S. or Canada requires e-mailing this address: info@bumbo.co.za.  Instructions for those outside the U.S. can be found at the above website's FAQ page.

The Bumbo seat is meant to help children who are "supported sitters" do so without human hands doing the supporting.  It comes with a litany of safety instructions printed on the seat as well as in the instructions that tell you not to leave your child unattended, to only use the seat on the ground, not to use it as a highchair or booster seat, not to use it as a car seat, and so on.



While these safety instructions seem like common sense, some parents somewhere found out the hard way that their children could push themselves out of the Bumbo and hurt themselves as they fall out of it.  Accidents do happen, and I'm not trying to rub salt in the wounds of the parents whose children were hurt, but whenever we but baby in the Bumbo we were careful to stay within an arm's length of him.  One of the instructions on the product says to use it for a short periods of time at first and observe how your child reacts to it.  When we put baby in the seat for the first time he enjoyed it for a few minutes, then started straining to push himself up and out of it.  We immediately took him out of the seat and chalked it up to that initial period of adjustment to sitting upright on his own without room to wiggle and squirm.  It seemed like two things could have happened if we left him there: he would jump out of it and hurt himself, or he would try to jump out and flip over and hurt himself.  Either way, we knew that he would require supervision when using the seat.

One of the best pieces of advice we got from all the baby classes we took before he was born was to always fill out warranty registration cards for any baby products.  Baby products are recalled so often, and it's easy to lose track of which model of which product line you own when a recall is announced.  It also eliminates your dependence on hearing about a recall from the news or word of mouth; the company will directly contact you via mail or e-mail when a product is recalled.   There may have been a day or two between hearing about the recall and the official e-mail my wife received, but it's good to be part of the official notification system.

We had to request the seat belt upgrade; my wife provided the serial number of our Bumbo probably to prove that we still have it.  She requested it and they shipped it to our house within a week or so.

The Bumbo is made of polyurethane foam, and installing the safety belt was a new experience.  The upgrade kit came with a plastic template that fits in the seat where baby would sit.  There are three holes about 120° apart that you use to mark the points where the seat belt will be attached.  The seat belt has three anchor points with little conical arrows sticking out of it that simply push through the polyurethane.  Once the arrows are through there are little anchors that attach on the other side and the belt is installed.

Installing the seat wasn't difficult, but getting baby into the seat by myself proved to be very hard.  The straps sit in the bottom of the seat when they're not in use, and I didn't want to let out the straps all the way just to have to tighten them immediately afterwards.  It can get tiresome to be constantly fighting with all the different straps and restraints that a baby needs, and I think one of the marks of a good product is how easy it is for parents (but not for baby) to loosen the straps and tighten them again.  I could have loosened the straps all the way, or if someone else could have held them out of the way as I put him in things would have been easier.  It wasn't that difficult to do but I did have to squeeze in to pull the straps out and as baby gets bigger it will become more of an issue.

The Bumbo is an interesting product.  It makes claims about helping a baby develop the strength and balance needed to sit on their own, but I've read articles that say it does the exact opposite.  This article from the Chicago Tribune examines some of the claims and responses from a physical therapist from Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.  We'll still use the seat, but we're not tricking ourselves into thinking that it's a miracle trainer that will teach our baby to sit upright.  Today I used it to keep him in one place as I emptied the dishwasher and cleaned the kitchen; that seems to be its best use.