Kim Kardashian West's Post Adds to Parents' Confusion About Infant Inclined Sleepers
Despite warnings from the government and pediatricians, companies continue to market the dangerous baby products
It was a seemingly uneventful morning at the Kardashian West household on Wednesday, Jan. 22, judging from the photo that celebrity mogul Kim Kardashian West posted on Instagram and Twitter. The photo, an image of domestic bliss, shows Kim, husband Kanye West, and their four children gathered around a table eating breakfast. Center stage was baby Psalm, buckled into an infant inclined lounger atop the table, looking into the camera.
Kardashian West has 158 million followers, and her post prompted thousands of comments, many of them gushing.
“I need that baby lounger!!” one of the commenters on Instagram wrote. “Please please please let me know where it’s from!!!”
Another wrote: “Omgg I love that bed for your baby!!! What is it called? I’d love it for my grandson.”
Several posts directed followers to Baby Delight, the company that makes the sleeper in the photo, the Nestle Nook Portable Infant Lounger.
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But a scan of the Baby Delight website, which lists the Nestle Nook in the Sleep & Slumber category, shows many reviews from consumers saying they use the product for sleep. And the company’s website includes language noting that “The Baby Delight Nestle Nook Portable Infant Lounger is designed to create a comfortable and safer place for your baby to nap and lounge.”
Moreover, a different photo Kim Kardashian West posted several months ago shows Psalm asleep, not awake, in the Baby Delight Nestle Nook. Baby Delight shared the post and wrote alongside it: “Looks like Psalm Ye is comfy in his Comfort Nook Napper. A huge congrats to @kimkardashian and her growing family! Thank you for sharing this totally adorable photo!”
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Kardashian West’s most recent photo of the baby lounger was posted the same week the CPSC granted a request from a lawyer on behalf of industry clients to extend the comment period on the agency’s proposed ban. The agency proposes including products such as the Baby Delight Nestle Nook that reference “napping” in their marketing. CR and other consumer groups opposed any delay, writing in a letter to the agency that it “would leave infants at continued risk of injury or death in sleep products that are not required to meet a robust mandatory standard.”
While the CPSC goes through the process of finalizing the ban, the agency has also taken to social media. “Helping consumers to make safe choices for infant sleep now, while our regulations are still catching up, is very difficult,” said CPSC acting chairman Robert Adler. “That’s one reason we took the unusual step of running an intense social media campaign—with help from some families who have lost children—to try and reach consumers with this important safety message.”
But it’s tough to compete with the social media reach of Kardashian West. Millions of parents and grandparents may just be learning about the Baby Delight Nestle Nook through her feed, and those caregivers may be unaware of the danger the product poses.
That’s unfortunate, says Hoffman at the AAP, who adds that the post provides an opportunity for manufacturers and marketers to help address the issue. “Safety warnings shouldn’t just be an asterisk at the bottom of a website or product manual,” he says. “I would urge the industry to be more aggressive about warning families of the risk.”