The Allen screws on our crib keep loosen

Your crib check tonight — do this before the next nap, not after

Screws that loosen again after tightening are the crib's way of telling you it has reached the end of its safe life, so tonight's job is a 20-minute check that either clears the crib or moves it out of sleep use. If the loosening is on the mattress support or the slat/side-rail hardware, treat the crib as out of service for sleep until it is fixed or replaced — that is the joint that holds your baby's whole weight from above. I am not diagnosing anything and there is no medicine involved here; this is furniture, but it is the furniture your baby is alone in.

This is a furniture and safe-sleep checklist, not a diagnosis and not a treatment — no medicine, dose, or clinical decision for your baby comes out of it. Where the child's growth, health or sleep behaviour is the question, that belongs with your paediatrician.

*Checked 14 Oct 2026 against the US Consumer Product Safety Commission crib guidance (cpsc.gov, Crib Safety Tips) and the NIH/NICHD Safe to Sleep safe-sleep-environment page. Standards and recall registers differ by country — use these as the checklist and confirm locally with your national consumer-safety body.*

1) What you have already tried, and what actually works instead

The manufacturer's own instructions and a single hardware set from the maker are the only repairs I would trust. Anything you improvise with hardware from a different model is not a repair.

2) The 20-minute check tonight (screenshot this)

Baby out of the crib. Do it with a phone torch and the manual beside you.

1. Bump test each joint. Push the mattress support down hard, then push each side rail inward and outward, then shake the frame gently by the corner post. Anything that creaks, rocks, shifts or has visible play is a fail — tight screws alone do not cancel a moving joint.
2. Every screw, by hand. Each one should be snug with no wobble. A screw that spins, sits in an oval/ragged hole, or is loose a second time after tightening = the hole is stripped or the bolt is stripped.
3. Look for the ones that are missing. Compare against the manual's parts list. Missing brackets, bolts, corner blocks, slat screws, or the mattress-support rod = fail, regardless of how stable it feels.
4. Slat spacing. Use a soda can as the ruler: gaps must be no more than 2⅜ in / about 6 cm wide. Any gap wider, any slat cracked, missing, loose or bowed = fail. Press down on the mattress: slats should feel solid under your hand.
5. Corner posts and ends. No corner post sticking up more than 1/16 in (about 1.5 mm) — that is where clothing catches. No cut-out openings in the headboard or foot board where a head could get stuck.
6. Mattress fit. Must be firm and tight, with no gap you could fit a finger into at any edge or corner. A sagging, soft or too-small mattress means a gap — and a gap is what entrapment happens in.
7. Age and identity. Find the label: manufacturer, model number, and date of manufacture (month and year is enough). Then check that model number against your national recall list — in the US that is cpsc.gov / saferproducts.gov; other countries run their own consumer-safety recall register. In the US, cribs manufactured or imported after late 2019 must meet the current version of the federal full-size crib standard (the ASTM standard CPSC has accepted).

Pass = all seven. If even one fails, the crib does not sleep a baby tonight; that is not a failure of yours, it is the check working.

3) Avoid list — these are the ones that turn a fixable crib into a dangerous one

• Do not keep the routine of tightening-and-hoping when the joint moves; a mattress support that lets go under a baby's weight is the accident this product history is written around.
• Do not drill out, glue, wedge, or screw a rail/slat/mattress support back together. Wood screws into end grain and stripped holes are exactly what fails under load and vibration.
• Do not over-tighten. Crushed wood and a snapped bolt head create the same loose joint you were trying to fix, and the snapped head will not come out.
• Do not use bumper pads, pillows, quilts, comforters, sheepskins, stuffed toys, positioners or loveves as a fix for gaps or to raise the rail height — soft items in the crib are linked to suffocation and strangulation, and bumpers do not stop a fall.
• Do not use the crib as a playpen, or for an older sibling's nap, or let anyone climb or stand on it. Keep it away from windows with cords and from where a toddler can pull on it.
• Do not accept a secondhand or borrowed crib without running steps 4–7 on it yourself.

4) Decision tree — replace the crib when any of these is true

• The screws holding the mattress support or side rail loosen again, or the joint moves at all under the bump test.
• Any screw hole is stripped, or a screw/bracket is missing, cracked, bent or rusted.
• Any slat is cracked, missing, loose, or the gap exceeds a soda can.
• It is a drop-side crib, or it has been modified with added hardware.
• The model number turns up on a recall list.
• It was made before 2011, or the label's date or model number is unreadable.
• The mattress no longer fits snugly at every corner.
• Your baby can pull up or climb, or is approaching the height or weight limit printed on the crib's label — that is the label's number, not mine to guess.

Replace tonight, don't replace soon: anything from the list above. A bassinet or play yard with a firm flat mattress and a fitted sheet is a safe sleep space while you sort it — nothing soft in it.

Keep using it: the crib passed all seven checks, and you re-check it whenever the baby pulls up or anything is moved.

Ask the maker, not the internet: with the model number and date of manufacture in hand, manufacturer customer service will tell you whether a hardware kit exists for that exact model and whether your unit is covered. If they cannot confirm it, treat that as "replace".

5) Red flags — stop DIY and get help the same day

The furniture / urgent:

• The mattress support has sagged, dropped, or a rail corner has come loose — take the baby out of the crib immediately and do not put them back in for that nap.
• Any part is broken mid-use, or a child has already been caught, tipped or fallen through this crib. Fall from a crib onto a hard floor is a head injury risk at any age.
• You cannot account for every screw and bracket in the manual's parts list.
• You find your national consumer-safety body has recalled the model.

The child — call your local emergency number now, or go to the nearest emergency department:

• After a fall, head or neck entrapment, the baby is hard to wake, floppy, vomiting, has a seizure, is breathing oddly, or has a head wound that will not stop bleeding.
• Unconsciousness, blue lips, or any breathing difficulty.

Same-day clinic, not the emergency door:

• The baby is repeatedly climbing out or trying to, or is over the label's height/weight — that is a growth-and-safety conversation, and your paediatrician can also check whether your baby is due for anything else at this age.
• Anyone in the house with balance or vision problems needs to use the crib area — tell the clinic; a safer sleep arrangement is a clinical question as much as a furniture one.

Wed nursery check — three questions worth asking, because they see dozens of c cribs a week: does the model number show up on any recall you have seen, what do you do when a parent brings a crib with loose hardware, and do you have a spare bassinet or play yard you lend in an emergency. A spare on loan is often faster than a purchase.

6) What success looks like in 24 hours

Not "the screws are tight tonight" — that is the symptom. Success is one of these two, by bedtime tomorrow:

• Cleared: you ran all seven checks, the crib passed, the model number showed no recall, and the label date and manual are stored with the crib. You re-check after any move or as soon as the baby pulls up.
• Out of service with a plan: the crib is out of sleep use, the baby has a firm flat surface tonight, and you have either the maker's answer about a specific hardware kit or a decision to replace, with the nursery's spare-bassinet option in your pocket.

One or the other, and you can stop holding this in your head at 2am. Anything in between — "probably fine, I'll check later" — is the version that keeps you up.