Portable bed guard for infants

Abstract

A portable bed guard device having an elongated planner rail assembly pivotally connected to at least one elongated planner mattress underlying member that is slid under a bed mattress for providing infant rollout of bed protection for infants placed on beds without side rails

Description

BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY OF INVENTION

This invention relates to a portable device for parents and/or caregivers of Infants to utilize when traveling to provide a safety enclosure for infants on regular beds and to convert the regular beds into portable cribs. The portable devices are bed rails that can be placed along the edges of standard mattresses. The bed rails have a portion that pivots 90 degrees and that portion can be slid under the mattress to hold the bed rail in protective position such that the bed rail prohibits an infant lying on the mattress from rolling off the mattress and thus turns a bed into a crib.

When parents with children travel to places away from home, they can find themselves at locations where infant cribs may not be readily available. Sleeping accommodations at friends and family residences, bed and breakfasts, inns, ships, etc. may not be able to easily provide an infant crib.

An infant crib has rails along all sides of the bed mattress, which rails provide a firm and secure protective mattress perimeter so that an infant could not roll off a side or end of the bed mattress. Standard beds are not normally equipped with safety rails to provide a mattress roll-off protection for infants lying atop the mattress.

Some standard beds are equipped with headboards that can act as a barrier to keep an infant from rolling or crawling off the head of the bed. Normal beds may be provided with footboards, but normally footboards would not extend high enough above the top surface of the mattress (and any linen, cover, comforter resting thereon) to provide a barrier to keep a child from rolling or crawling off the bottom end of the bed.

In order to ensure that a standard bed could be rendered protective, a parent or childcare provider should carry three protective bed rails when traveling. With three rails, both sides of a mattress and the foot end of the bed could be protected.

The invention contemplates that as an option, the bed rail assemblies could be provided with pivotally connected x-oriented slats such as are usually found in the well known child's stairway guard. With this type of construction the rail assembly could be folded more compactly and could be extended when in use to provide protection on various bed lengths. To provide rigidity, when using an expandable rail system, rigidifying member should be provided along the length of the mattress to keep the rails from bowing outwardly from the mattress edge wherein an infant could fall off the bed. The rigidifying member could be pivoted to a portion of the rail system that slides and extends under the mattress, or could be mounted into holes formed in an edge of the rail portion that extends under the mattress. If length flexibility is not deemed necessary the pivoting of slats is not necessary although the slats should ideally be connected to one another to provide for anti-bowing of the rail.

While x-oriented slats would appear to be desirable, vertical, horizontal or rectangular crossed slats could be used.

Other aspects of the present disclosure will become apparent from the following descriptions of a preferred embodiment when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic of a bed guard unit installed on the right side of a bed,

FIG. 2 is a three dimensional showing of a bed guard unit with an anti bowing support,

FIG. 3 is a schematic partial 3-dimensional view of an expanding bed guard unit with an alternative anti bowing support,

FIG. 4 is a schematic plan view of a bed with three bed guard units located around the periphery of a mattress,

FIG. 5 is a schematic partial view of three interconnected bed guard units,

FIG. 6 shows a telescoping expanding bed rail alternative, and

FIGS. 7-9 are alternative configurations for orienting slats of the invention

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 shows a bed 10 with a headboard 12, footboard 14, spring assembly 16 and mattress 18. The mattress is shown with the conventional buttons 20. A bed safety device 22 is also indicated in FIG. 1 and will be explained in detail subsequently with regard to FIG. 2

FIG. 2 shows the bed safety device 22 invention in detail. The bed safety device 22 includes a bed rail assembly 24 made up of a plurality of interconnected slats 26 that are pivoted to one another at the center point and ends by pivots 28 and to end posts 30 at the top and bottom of the end posts 30 by pivot 28. This type of construction is similar to well known folding extensible elongated planner stair gates used to keep small children from falling or going down stairs.

In the manufacture of the invention, one could start by utilizing such a common known folding extensible gate

The end posts 30 are hinged to an elongated planner mattress underlying member 32 by a two-piece hinge 34. Because of the hinge 34 side mounting on end post 30 and the end post situated on the top of planner underlying member 32 which extends under the bottom of the end post 30, pivoted movement between the post 30 and planner mattress underlying member is limited to 90 degrees as shown by the arrow 36 at the right hand side of FIG. 2. Thus one extreme position of the end post 30 and planner underlying mattress member 32 is as shown in FIG. 2. The other extreme position would be with the top portion 38 of the elongated planner mattress-underlying member 32 folded against the side 40 of post 30.

When not in use the bed safety device 22 can be folded to a very compact size by collapsing the slats 26 so the end posts 30 are close to one another and by pivoting upwardly the elongated planer mattress underlying member 32 against surfaces 40 of the end posts 30.

In use the planner mattress underlying member 32 is at right angles to its post 30 and is slid under the mattress 18 until rail assembly 24 and slats 26 overlay the edge of the mattress 18 as indicated in FIG. 1. In use when the rail assembly 24 is stretched out to place the posts 30 far apart, an intermediate portion of the rail assembly 24 could bow out and away from the edge of the mattress 18. To stop this bowing out, an intermediate support post 30′ attached to an intermediate elongated planner underlying member 32 could be provided.

The weight of the mattress 18 on the top surface 38 of the elongated planner mattress underlying member 32 along with the natural friction between them (when the elongated planner mattress-underlying member 32 is slid under the mattress 18) should keep the posts 30 in abutment with the edge of the mattress. If desired a friction member 40 can be placed on the top surface 38 of the elongated planner mattress underlying member 32 to increase the forces necessary to move the posts 30 away from the edge of the mattress 18. Infants that would use the invention generally would be in the 10 to 30 pound weight class, so the invention needs to provide enough resistance to movement away from the edge of the mattress for a 10 to 30 pound infant when it rolls against the rail assembly 24.

If an infant were to stand up on the mattress 18 and push on the top edge of the rail assembly 24 or posts 30, the rail assembly 24 would not tip over and allow the infant to fall since the weight of the mattress 18 on the planner mattress underlying member and the limited 90 degree pivot action would prohibit rotation of the rail assembly away from the edge of the bed 10.

FIG. 3 shows a modified anti-bowing support post 30″ from the anti-bowing post 30′ of FIG. 2. Instead of being hinged to the elongated planner mattress underlying member 32, the anti-bowing post 30″ is provided with a peg end 42 that fits into slot 44 to secure its position and allow the post 30″ to prevent bowing outwardly of the slats 26 from the edge of the mattress 18 when in use.

FIG. 4 shows the invention used on a bed with a first bed safety device 22 on the left side of the mattress, second bed safety device 22′ at the foot of the bed 10 and a third safety device 22″ at the right hand side of the bed. When necessary two safety devices 22 can be used along one side of the bed 10. As shown in FIG. 5 the posts 30 can be provided with eyehooks 46 at their upper ends and an elastic cord 48 can be used to hold adjacent safety devices 22 together. This elastic cord 48 securement can be provided between two safety devices 22 along the same edge of the mattress 18 or between a safety device on one edge of the bed and one safety device 22 at the foot of the bed 10. An elastic cord 48 if long enough, can also extend across the bed to interconnect two bed safety devices 22 located on opposite sides of a mattress 18.

As shown in FIGS. 7-9 elastic stretchable horizontal bars 50 could be used between the posts instead of the “X” configured slats of FIG. 2. Where only a top and bottom elastic-stretchable horizontal bar 50 is utilized vertical bars 52 can be used to provide rigidity and to keep an infant from rolling off the bed. FIG. 9 shows both vertical 51 and elastic-stretchable bars 50 can be utilized.

FIG. 6 shows another modification for longitudinal length adjustment between posts 30. Instead of the elastic-flexible horizontal bars 50 of FIGS. 7-9, a telescopic bar 54 could be used. An inner bar 56 slideable in an intermediate bar 58 which in turn is slideable in an outer bar 60 is utilized to provide elongation or adjustable spacing between posts 30 rather than the elastic stretchable bar 50 of sag FIG. 7, 8 and 9. While 3 telescopic bards 56, 58 and 60 are shown, more could be provided. The inner T-shaped 62 ends of the bars 56, 58 and 60 and the lipped ends 64 of the bars keep the bars 56, 58 and 60 together. The bars can be assembled by insertion through the wide-open end 66 of each bar 56, 58 and 60. Ideally these bars 56, 58 and 60 should be stiff like metal pipes so they would not flex or bow outwardly, thus, perhaps limits the need for anti bowing posts 30′ and 30″.

Although the present invention has been described and illustrated in detail above, it is to be clearly understood that this is done by way of illustration and example only and is not to be taken by way of limitation. The spirit and scope of the present disclosure are to be limited only by the term of the appended claims.

Claims

1. A bed safety device for preventing infants situated atop a bed from rolling off a mattress on a bed, comprising: at least one elongated planner bed rail assembly,an elongated planner mattress underlying member,at least one hinge member interconnecting the at least one elongated planner bed rail assembly and the elongated planner mattress underlying member for providing the ability of the mattress underlying member to move from a position generally in the same plane as the elongated planer bed rail assembly to a position generally at right angles to the planer bed rail assembly, the elongated planner mattress-underlying member being flat and having sufficient dimensions to allow the weight of a mattress resting atop of the elongated planner mattress underlying member to provide a friction and compression force sufficient to hold the elongated planner bed rail assembly vertically against an edge of the mattress resting atop of the elongated planner mattress underlying member even when a ten to thirty pound infant rolls against it.

2. The bed safety device of claim 1, wherein at least one mattress underlying member is provided with at least one friction member on a surface that engages the mattress to provide resistance to movement of the mattress underlying member and the mattress resting atop thereof when the bed safety device is in use.

3. The bed safety device of claim 1, wherein there are two mattresses underlying members, each mattress underlying member located adjacent a respective end of the elongated planner bed rail assembly.

4. The bed safety device of claim 2, wherein there are two mattresses underlying members each mattress underlying member located adjacent a respective end of the elongated planner bed rail assembly.

5. The bed safety device of claim 1 wherein the elongated planner bed rail assembly is extensible in length to cover one of different sized mattress lengths and widths.

6. The bed safety device of claim 2, wherein the elongated planner bed rail assembly is extensible in length to cover one of different sized mattress lengths and widths.

7. The bed safety device of claim 3, wherein the elongated planner bed rail assembly is extensible in length to cover one of different sized mattress lengths and widths.

8. The bed safety device of claim 4 wherein the elongated planner bed rail assembly is extensible in length to cover one of different sized mattress lengths and widths.

9. The bed safety device of claim 3, wherein a third mattress underlying planner member is provided to slide under a mattress and wherein the mattress atop the third underlying planner member provides friction and movement resistance to hold the third member and wherein this third underlying member has an upright portion that can be positioned adjacent an outside edge of the mattress lying atop the third underlying planner member and against an intermediate portion of the planner bed rail assembly to keep the bed rail assembly from bowing outwardly from an edge of the mattress.

10. The bed safety device of claim 5 wherein a third mattress underlying Planner member is provided to slide under a mattress and wherein the mattress atop the third underlying planner member provides friction And movement resistance to hold the third member and wherein this third Underlying member has an upright portion that can be positioned adjacent An outside edge of the mattress lying atop the third underlying planner member and against an intermediate portion of the planner bed rail assembly to keep the bed rail assembly from bowing outwardly from an edge of the mattress.