Baby Proofing

Now that we are approaching 6 months and mobility, I'm looking for any helpful babyproofing tips from those of you who've BTDT.

Is there anything you "missed" when you babyproofed, or some sort of gadget you wish you would have purchased?

Thanks!
Suzi

 

I wish I had baby proofed while I was pregnant - but I kept thinking I had lots of time - but time has flown so quick and look at us now they are ALL over the place!!! I have a baby gate up at the kitchen most of the time mainly because the trash can
is a main attraction - they seem to be able to find it under the cabinet and everything! so the gate is the lazy me not putting the cabinet locks on! but other than that I really havn't bought much - oh besides outlet covers! I just kinda baby proof as we go - I did keep my 2 yr old nephew right before the girls started to crawl - I followed him around the house putting away everything that he got into! and we put the fish in my son's room up higher (just a goldfish bowl) and keep his door shut because the girls went "fishing"!! actually I keep all of the doors in the house closed during the day. and our Christmas tree is a 4ft tabletop tree this year!! and I cornered it between the chair and the couch so that they can't get to it - while we are here alone I keep it like that and if someone comes over, I move the chair so it looks more "normal"! and I don't let the boys bring home any small toys - that's my babyproofing in a nutshell! when they did start crawling - my life did get easier because they will crawl around and entertain themselves!

I do want to get
anchors for our dressers - I have heard horror stories of dressers falling over on babies. that is my mission for this week!

 

Good post....this is a tough one for me. With our first I thought I had all the bases covered until he pulled what I thought was a secure table down on top of him, could have crushed him to death (was fine, thank God) Anyway this time around I had a professional babyproofer come out & evaluate. Only problem is these guys are hard to find...usually a firefighter who does it on the side.

With twins you need eyes in the back of your head. Of course there are things in everyone's home that can't be babyproofed, you just keep saying 'no' until they seem to get it, but you still have to watch. Once my guys are too big for the exersaucer, swing, jumperoo that keep them in one spot I don't know what I'm gonna do.

Sorry to ramble, if you're willing to spend the $$$, i definitely recommend the professional b-proofing.

 

My guys were pretty good about keeping out of things.... the one thing I wish I would have done sooner was the cabinets. Putting the locks on those.

 

QUOTE(KYsweetheart @ Nov 26 2007, 08:40 PM) [snapback]509422[/snapback]
My guys were pretty good about keeping out of things.... the one thing I wish I would have done sooner was the cabinets. Putting the locks on those.


I agree. The cabinets take a while. We have magnet locks on just the "under the sink" cabinets and regular ones on the rest. I really like the magnet locks for the high danger ones because they can't even get their fingers in there.

 

I just *really* babyproofed about a month ago. It is a lot harder than you think it will be! It took me several hours to do just their room, and it still isn't a hundred percent safe. I bought a bunch of stuff from One Step Ahead - I tried various different outlet protectors and moved heavy furniture in front of other dangerous things. I put safety latches on their two dressers, but they can still open the drawers half an inch - not enough to gain a foothold to climb on them, but enough to pinch their fingers if both of them are playing with the same drawer. They also recently learned how to close the doors of rooms, so I have to be careful not to leave both of them in the same area with an open door. One of them shut her sister into a dark closet that way, and they have both pinched their fingers in both the door frame and in the hinged part. (One of them tries to open the door while the other one is pushing it to close it).

Don't overlook door stoppers (the thingies that are supposed to protect your wall from the door slamming into it.
I took off all the little rubber stoppers (choking hazard) and tugged on the springs to see if they were in tight, but Cate managed to get the springs off the wall anyway after I had tried them and thought it was safe. They are ingenious!

Make sure all blind cords are cut/tied up.
Make sure they can't reach curtains or blinds from their bed. I heard lots of giggling one day and went into their room to find the curtain rod AND the curtains in Cate's crib because she had tugged on the curtain and it came crashing down into her bed.

The safest place for them to play is still their superyard XT with two extensions. They will play in there for 15-30 minutes at a time before getting fussy and trying to break out. We have started calling Cate our "velociraptor" (from Jurassic Park) because she goes around inside the playyard "testing the perimeter" for weak spots to bust out!

Proof your space, then go watch them for a while and stay vigilant. New things will come up as you watch them play over several days. We live in an old house, so I think it is harder to proof in some ways.

 

I wish we had gotten gates sooner. We kept putting it off and putting it off and then became desperate to find the right one. We ordered one and found it to be too flimsy and had to return it. We went to the store and we were confused and not sure about which one would be the perfect fit for our life style. We had to improvise for a little while using packnplays and other things to block areas off. Also, it didn't occur to me to get safety locks for the drawers because once they are up and walking, they pull all the drawers open and can reach (on their tippy toes) to grab stuff from inside which was especially dangerous in the drawers that have knives and other cooking knick knacks. We had to completely rearrange our living room and took out the coffee tables and wedged the end tables in odd places so the girls can't easily get to them or the lamps on them. I found life to become so much more fun and interesting with them once they were mobile but you deffinately have to temporarily inconvience your life for their safety and your sanity. Once they start climbing then it gets really tricky.

 

Honestly, the whole babyproofing thing was not as big of a deal as I thought it would be (at least not until very recently). I think I am lucky and have kids who just don't get into that much. (For instance, we still have floor and table lamps that they have never once tried to pull over.) But I bought all sorts of gadgets we DIDN'T use (like an oven lock and doorknob locks).

The one thing that was essential for us was the cabinet lock. Our favorites are the magnetic ones -- they're more expensive and can be a pain to install, but they're super-easy to use. We use those under the sink where we keep the cleaning stuff, and on our bathroom drawers.

I also like the ones that are like a string tie that goes through both cabinet handles, then through a little plastic gizmo that locks the tie. You have to push two buttons in a fairly tricky way to pull the tie back out. They're a pain to open, but are very cheap and easy to install, so they're great for cabinets that you only open once or twice a day.

The drawer "locks" that just have a little catch on them are useless, IMO. Our kids figured out by 18 months how to open them just by pulling extra-hard.

Outlet protectors are also very important. The best ones are the kind that screw in and actually replace the entire outlet cover. We stayed at a rental house that had the removable plastic plugs, and my kids (at 22 months) were playing with them within minutes.

Most of the other babyproofing that we did was not with locks, but just walking around finding things they could mess with and removing them. For instance, I packed up all the glass flower vases (which were on top of a somewhat unstable storage unit -- probably unsafe even for grownups!) and put them in the garage. We also learned very quickly to keep pens, paper clips, electronics, etc., far out of reach.

Oh yeah, and get a superyard or lots of gates. I guess we compromised -- our house is only about 40% babyproofed, but we had a space in the superyard that was 100% safe, which worked from about 6-12 months.

 

THe thing I wish I had had is the thing to keep the door open as to not pinch fingers in the door, and then after I baby proofed we needed something to keep the fridge closed.
There is always something you forget and find later.

 

The only suggestion I would add is get down to their level, and things look a whole lot different. We found some stuff we have missed by crawling around. It sounds silly (and looked a little silly, I'll bet) but it worked for us.