Back in March, I gave away our crib. My neighbour needed it, and I needed it not to be sitting in our basement collecting dust and taking up much more space than it took up physically.
It felt great to get rid of it. And since she lived three houses away, I figured in the EXTREMELY UNLIKELY event we ended up needing one again, it would be easy enough to get it back. I was actually thinking about my sister, since she was going to be moving back to my part of the world. If she came back pregnant, I’d be able to rustle the crib up for her.
And then we found ourselves pregnant without medical intervention.
And now I am almost in the second trimester, and the baby is still alive and developing as s/he should.
It was at the nuchal scan where I thought, for the first time, “Ok, this might really be happening. I’m going to need to find another crib.”
We have given away a lot of our baby things in the last couple of years. You wouldn’t know it to look at the basement, but a lot of things are out of our house now. Some things I will not miss. Some things I can get back again from the friends who were using them (travel crib, I’m looking at you). And some things I’m going to have to replace, ideally without paying anything, because it will drive me crazy to pay for something that I already paid for once.
A couple of my friends knew that I was going to eventually need a crib.
One of them called me on Friday. A friend of hers had just posted on Facebook that she was giving away her crib (mattress, sheets, mattress cover and all) if someone could come and get it on Saturday.
I called her, and on Saturday I picked up a Zipcar and drove the three minutes to her house to pick it up (I drove exactly 4 km on that trip).
We have a crib in our basement again.
The kicker? There was a small part of me that was annoyed that this second baby would have to make do with a second-hand crib, mostly because I’d worked very hard to find a solid wood crib for E. (even though it was not an expensive one).
The crib I just picked up for free?
It’s an Oeuf Sparrow.
In Canada, they retail (frame only) for $995.
This new baby is going to be sleeping in style!
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Res Cogitatae 
Nice! I love free stuff! I would have offered you my crib (yes, it is STILL in our basement), but A. chewed the side rails (she is part beaver), and it now requires refinishing. I have no idea how I’m going to get rid of it- refinishing a crib is a LOT of work- but it feels so wasteful to throw it away.
Oh, I think all cribs have that chewed section! The crib we picked up definitely has some teeth marks, and the one we gave away had even more (E. also went through a beaver phase). If a new parent is worried about it, they can always put a pad or something over the chewed part.
I LOVE when the Universe works like that! 🙂
Woohoo! That is a lovely freebie. Hopefully you’ll be able to pay it forward in the future.
The universe works in a great way. Nothing goes for a waste. You do good and the goodness comes back knocking at your doors. You have great friends sharing stuff. Otherwise the baby stuffs cost a lot.