Hilarious Evidence That The Struggle Is Real For Short Moms

Video of woman falling into crib goes viral

As a short woman, there aren’t a whole lot of barriers in my life — mainly because there is bound to be someone taller than me around to help out when I need it. But one problem that short mothers everywhere have to deal with is how to get their babies in and out of cribs. It’s an issue short women might not think about till they’re out crib shopping and realize that they can’t get their arms over the sides of any of the cribs in the store.

Luckily, mom Nikki Sharp Bishop got video of her 5’0″ mother trying to put her grandchild to bed and shared it on Facebook, so now the world can get a glimpse of this daily battle faced by tiny mothers.

I am 5’2″. When I went crib shopping for my twins in late 2007, I was shocked — shocked, I say — that crib sides were so very high. I started to worry that every time I put my babies to sleep I would need to gently and carefully drop them onto their crib mattresses. This concerned me, because even though everyone said babies were resilient, and even though these were my first children, I was pretty sure that dropping them a foot or two multiple times a day was not a super good idea. I was fortunate, however, because back then drop-side cribs were still legal.

Oh, drop-side cribs. We hardly knew ye.

For those of you who had children after the time of the drop side, what they did was allow you to drop down and pull up one or more sides of the crib so that you could more easily access your baby’s bed. They were convenient, they were beautiful, and they were occasionally deadly, which is why the Consumer Product Safety Commission made it illegal to “…manufacture or [sell] traditional drop-side rail cribs” as of June 28th, 2011.

It was a blow to shorties everywhere. A necessary blow, a safe blow, an important blow, but a blow nonetheless.

Since then, many short moms have had to improvise by using step stools, climbing ropes and crampons, or by simply falling into the crib itself, as Bishop’s mother did. There are, thankfully, cribs available with “lower side profiles,” ones that sit lower to the ground, and many with adjustable mattress board heights so short moms still have some options. But for those like Bishop’s mom (the video of whom has now been viewed 16 million times) who are stuck with fixed-rail, six-foot-tall, impenetrable cribs, the struggle continues.