Boho nurseries sacrificing ‘style over safety’, experts say

Child safety experts fear many parents are choosing style over safety when it comes to nursery furniture and design.

Child safety experts have called for bassinets to be regulated like cots, as fears grow parents are choosing style over safety when it comes to nursery furniture and design.

Child safety experts have called for bassinets to be regulated like cots, as fears grow parents are choosing style over safety when it comes to nursery furniture and design.

Parents could be putting their babies at risk by trying to emulate fashionable but potentially unsafe nurseries posted on social media by influencers, they said.

While cots had to meet strict Australian safety standards before being sold, bassinets were not regulated, Kidsafe Victoria general manager, Jason Chambers, said.

Babies should be transferred from bassinets to cots as soon as they showed signs of being able to roll over, he said.

Household testing chief for leading consumer advocacy organisation Choice, Kim Gilmour, said some fashionable wicker and rattan bassinets could pose a risk if there was potential for a baby’s limbs, fingers or head to become trapped in gaps.

Serious nursery injuries included strangulation, suffocation, choking and damage to little limbs, she said.

There was also potential for scratches to a baby’s extremely delicate skin if the natural materials developed any rough edges.

Instagram photos from K A T I E + A L E X from The Block of a wicker basket bassinets.

“Shockingly, there are no Australian safety standards for bassinets, which are used when a baby is at their most vulnerable,” Ms Gilmour said.

“This means that many potentially unsafe bassinets can make it onto the market. Last year, CHOICE found that 24 out of 33 bassinets tested in our labs had serious safety failures. This is incredibly concerning.”

Decorative touches in a baby’s room could also pose a risk, especially anything dangling over, or within reach, of its crib, she said.

“It’s a good idea to keep the area near or over a cot or bassinet clear of anything dangly that your baby could grab,” she said.

And heavy mirrors or large paintings and photos on walls directly next to cribs could fall and injure babies, CHOICE warned.

Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit (VISU) data shows in the five-year period between 2013 and 2018, an average of 708 children aged under five presented at Victorian emergency departments each year, injured by nursery furniture.

A Luca and Co ‘Eden’ bassinet.

Forty-one per cent of these injuries happened in the first year of life.

Ms Gilmour said bassinets should be regulated like cots.

“Any … bassinet that is unsafe shouldn’t be on sale in the first place, which is why CHOICE is calling on the government to strengthen product safety laws. Parents should be able to assume a bassinet that is available for sale on the Australian market is safe for their child,” she said. “It should be the responsibility of retailers and manufacturers to ensure the safety of their products.”

House Rules star, interior decorator and midwife Katie Middlemiss recently posted photos of her new nursery on Instagram, featuring a rattan bassinet from Luca and Co Homewares.

The bassinet, which costs $475, is described by the retailer as perfect for a “boho inspired nursery, conjuring up magical sunrises”.

The Herald Sun is not suggesting Luca and Co ‘summertime bassinet’ is unsafe, only that bassinets are not subject to the same, strict safety standards as cots.

Luca and Co also produce a bigger bassinet called the ‘Kingdom’, King Rattan.

“It is the largest in our range and will extend the length of time your newborn is in a bassinet as seen on Three Birds Renovations House 10 Nursery Reveal!!!” the Luca and Co website spruiks.

Ms Middlemiss said she supported the call for bassinets to be regulated like cots.

“I think that’s a fantastic idea,” she said.

As a trained midwife, Ms Middlemiss said she knew what to look for when it came to baby safety and did not believe her rattan bassinet posed any danger to four month old baby Florence.

Interior decorator and midwife Katie Middlemiss posted these photos of her bassinet, which the Herald Sun does not suggest is unsafe.

She said Florence was a big baby who she was confident could not fit her head through the semi-circle gaps at the side of the bassinet.

However, parents of smaller babies should take care to ensure that was also the case for them, she said.

A baby monitor also allowed her to watch Florence continually and check on her welfare, Ms Middlemiss said.

“I am really happy with the bassinet … I got it because it was a bit bigger (than some others) so she could stay in it for a bit longer … I knew what to look for,” she said, adding the vine pictured draped in the photo was not usually beside her daughter’s bedside.

KidSafe’s Mr Chambers said his organisation was calling for the introduction of a General Safety Provision, which would strengthen Australia’s product safety laws by making it illegal to supply unsafe products.

“A General Safety Provision would shift the product safety process from a reactive to a proactive response,” he said.