Definitely worth the piece of mind...

When our son started to stand up, my wife and I decided that it was time to protect him from potentially fatal falls out of the crib. A friend of mine recently told us about a friend of his whose child died after falling over the side of his crib. No one should ever lose a loved one like this when it can be so easily avoided.

After some research, my wife decided that the Tots in Mind Crib Tent II was a good tent to try first. We went to the local Babies 'R Us and picked one up.

Assembly is pretty straightforward, and almost doesn't need any instructions. The tent consists of about 7 parts: the net that surrounds your child, 4 moderately flexible plastic rods, and 2 interconnects. The idea behind the "dome" of the tent is to build a flexible "X" out of the 4 rods and 2 interconnects. You do this by feeding the pieces into pockets in the net, and the order should go rod - interconnect - rod. If you successfully force the rods into the pockets in the net, the pairs of rods will flex and form the dome! This description may have been tough to follow, but trust me, assembly is the easiest part.

Now you get to put the tent into the crib. Remove the mattress and put the Crib Tent II in. The 4 ends of the 2 rod assemblies should hang over the corners of the cribs. This prevents the top of the tent from falling into the crib (though this shouldn't harm your child even if it did). The zippered opening in the net should face outward, since this is how you'll get the mattress (and your child) into the crib.

Inserting the mattress is definitely the toughest part of the task. The zippered opening is barely, just barely large enough to get the mattress in... and that's only if you jam the end of the mattress into the opposite corner.

Despite the difficult involved in inserting the mattress, I assure you that the piece of mind you'll get from having the Crib Tent II is worth it. Ever since we've installed it several months ago, we have never had to worry about our son falling out of the crib.

The only complaint I have is with the combination of the Crib Tent II with a video monitor, such as the Summer Infant monitor that we use. We used to keep the camera close to the side of the tent, but the proximity of the IR emitters to the netting caused the camera image to get saturated, and we couldn't see through the tent. The only solution was to move the camera really far away, but we had to put it on top of several boxes to get the right angle. However, it does work for us.

********* Update added on 12/15/04 *********
Some of you had some additional questions regarding this product, and I'd like to add some more information to address these questions.

Many of us add things to the crib, like mobiles, aquariums that play sounds, and bumper guards. Unfortunately for all of us, none of these items will work very well. We used to use the Tiny Love Symphony in Love mobile, but because the mobile attaches to the exterior of the crib, it interferes with the Crib Tent II. However, it's a good argument that by the time your child is old enough to require the tent, he or she won't be interested in a mobile.

I do think that you can still attach one of those play aquariums, like the one from Fisher Price, to the side of the crib and it would still be accessible / usable, but would look strange because it would be covered by the tent's net.

Bumpers would be tricky to use with the tent. The bumper set we used wrapped around the sides of the crib, and needed to be tied directly to the crib. Because the net is in the way, it's impossible to tie off the corners. However, I could definitely see someone attaching the bumper guard first, then inserting the net, and finally putting in the mattress. The net would get stretched out a bit because as it is, it's a tight fit.

In order to change the sheets, you'll have to remove the mattress. As hard as the insertion / removal of the mattress is, I doubt that anyone will be able to change the sheets within the tent. This is unfortunate, but eventually you get the hang of dealing with the mattress.

Typically, when you use anything zippered, you have to use two hands. One hand holds the end of the zipper, while the other moves the zipper tag itself. With the Crib Tent II, you can easily zip up the tent with one hand while you are holding your child. In addition, the gate on the front of our Pali works fine with the tent installed, so it's easier to get to your baby.
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The bottom line? If you're worried about your baby falling out of the crib, you can't beat the Crib Tent II.