Baby cradle
A baby cradle is indispensable to a family. The cradle has been used by human beings from ancient times and includes the use of ropes and strings with an arched stand for swinging to modern sound-controlled cradles. Cradles can be used by a baby sitter to provide an elevated but safe resting place for a child. Rocking cradles allow for rocking movement of the bed frame with relation to the base frame, so that the baby may be rocked to sleep. A typical cradle swings about a pivot axis disposed above the infant. This suspension provides a movement conducive to sleeping. A baby lying in a cradle is soothed if the cradle is rocked. Devices have been created which impart either a rocking, jogging, or translational motion to a baby cradle to bring about a soothing effect.
Typical cradles comprise a fixed support that may not be folded such that the cradles are not good for storing and transportation purposes. In addition, the baby cradles comprise a parallelepiped support which may not be comfortably support the baby. The most common form of cradle used for infants from birth is a bassinet style cradle. This comprises a flat base section with a surrounding wall, and a rectangular mattress is located on top of the base portion. The most common conventional rocking cradle can be used for only one single purpose, and is operated by manual force at a fixed place without moving around. Such cradle is rocked by hand so that a baby sitter or a mother must stick to the cradle all the time. The typical cradle rocks about a base or pivot. This results in the traditional swaying-rocking mode in which the infant undergoes a small up-and-down motion in addition to the dominant side-to-side motion. Although other types of rocking motions have potentially soothing effects, they are not commonly found in cradles. A cradle may be suspended by means of a plurality of elastic members that are carried on a novel support fixture, or in another embodiment, the cradle may be carried directed to a rocker frame. The support fixture is capable of being attached to any support structure and permits adjustability of the orientation of the cradle.
There are various types of cradles on the market and the collapsible type of cradle is most popular. Lightweight cradles of a type that can be readily disassembled for storage or travel have become very popular. Some of these cradles are convertible between seats and beds. Typically, such a collapsible type cradle employs interfittable wire and tubular frames and a fabric cover, which has straps to restrain an infant sitting in the cradle from falling. Often, the wire frames have some resiliency so that an infant sitting in the cradle can cause the cradle to bounce gently. A foldable baby cradle assembly includes a cradle made of a flexible material, a foldable frame supporting the cradle, and an attachment device for attaching the cradle to the frame such that the flexible material hangs down freely from an open top of the cradle. The attachment device may be lines having first line ends attached to the cradle and second line ends attached to the frame and may include a ring loosely attached to the frame.