9 Important Steps To Baby Proof Your Home

When you are bringing home your newborn, your feelings can be a mix of extreme excitement and looming anxiety. If you are new to having a child, you want to make sure that you do everything in your power to create a space where your child is least likely to hurt themselves in any way whatsoever by baby proofing the area.

The nursery, therefore, becomes an important place to baby proof for your child. After all, your baby will spend most of their time in the nursery and will start to explore it once they learn how to crawl. It is crucial that the nursery is baby-proofed beforehand.

Here is a checklist of things to look out for when you are trying to baby proof your nursery.

• Make sure that your furniture is kept away from the windows. The crib for your child should face away from the window in order to completely avoid the risk of them trying to reach out and crawl onto the window sill. Also, this will prevent them from fidgeting with the locks on your nursery windows.
• While blinds are an important investment for your nursery to help your child nap in the day, try and make sure that these blinds are cordless. Blinds that have cords on them are a strangulation hazard! Therefore, it is best to avoid cords altogether.
• Install window guards or stops. This is a mechanism that ensures that the window does not open more than a couple of inches. This will allow your child to get plentiful fresh air while making sure that they don’t climb out of the window. This is important even if the height of the window is out of reach from your child because eventually, they could use chairs or tables as their means to reach high enough.
• Make sure there are no electrical cords near the crib. Electrical cords can be a strangulation risk, as well as an object that a young toddler might try to put in their mouth (which is clearly very dangerous). This includes the baby monitor cords as well. Make sure all cords are at least three feet away from the crib so that your child does not reach out through the slits of the crib towards any of the cords.
• When figuring out the lighting in your toddler’s room, avoid investing in freestanding lighting. Overhead lighting is a lot safer since a toddler has the potential to move about while playing and pull over a standing light that could fall on them and cause serious injuries.
• When you invest in a crib, ensure that you have done sufficient research to make sure that your crib adheres to current safety standards. This is very important to keep in mind since the crib is where your child will spend most of their time (especially in the initial years).
• Make sure that you replace the door stops with one-piece safety door stops. Children are curious and explore, especially in their later months. They run the risk of choking on the rubber part of the two-piece door stop, therefore making a one-piece doorstop a better investment.
• No furniture should be placed within reach of the crib. Furniture near the crib makes it too easy for the toddler to climb out of the crib and onto the furniture. This is a hazard because they can get stuck or fall and hurt themselves.
• Make sure that you have installed and checked your carbon monoxide and smoke detectors in the nursery. The batteries should be changed regularly.

Having a child can be a beautiful yet intimidating experience, but all you can do as a parent is do your best to keep your child out of harm’s way to the best of your ability.