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mcatmay
member
Sorry, another post - babyproofing
mcatmay
member
The little girl is really starting to move - rolls all over the room but no crawling (and i guess she probably won't for a couple of months or so). We know we should start babyproofing - where do you all start? Is there a trusted resource? Or are there just some common sense basics?
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Re: Sorry, another post - babyproofing
I would say that the main thing to worry about is baby gates if you have stairs. Other than that, I just sort of just kept an eye out for what the kids get into and then adjusted as necessary. DD#2 just started crawling. The primary thing she wants to get into is the dog bowl. She LOVES putting her hand in the water and splashing around. So, we put that on our kitchen desk whenever she's on the floor. Also, we had a step ladder leaning on the wall in the kitchen that we had to move because if she knocked it over, it could hurt her. We put a few outlet covers in the plugs in the dining room which we never use because I saw her having some "interest" in those one time. Other than that, we didn't really do much. But, for the most part, someone is in the room with her at all times. If we have to leave for a bit (to go to the bathroom or something) we put her in the bouncy seat.
Here's an old post on baby gates if you are interested. I wrote a long post about the baby gates I've used. If you have any baby gate questions, let me know if I can help. We currently have 4 baby gates in our house (we have a split level) and I had to get 3 different kinds due to the different needs of each stair opening.
https://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/50003734/ShowThread.aspx#50003734
you never know, she may start crawling tomorrow! Baby proof now while you can:)
Be sure all lower cabinets are locked, poisonous stuff put away and anything breakable is way way out of reach.
Ok, so we were overthinking this. The hubby is making it one of his projects tomorrow to babyproof the areas where DD spends most of her time - we'll do what you all suggested and take it from there. The thing that disturbs me the most is the TV - it's a large screen HD TV that sits on a entertainment center type of table. I have NO idea how to fix it to the entertainment center and, when she gets big enough, I don't want her to pull on it - we're doing some research into that now.
Vtkendra, thank you for that thread. I'm going to do some research into baby gates - we have a very large step down from the kitchen to the family room (five feet across with a wall on one side and railing on the other) that is currently the biggest baby gate challenge.
Yeah, we had two openings that were 4 feet and I had to find gates that had extensions for those. For a 5 foot space, I probably wouldn't recommend a swinging gate just because that's a big swing. You may want to check out the Retract-a-gate which go up to 72" and you can hook up to a railing (see photos on the website) Also, it doesn't have the constraint of having to be at a perfect 90 degree angle to the other wall. However, if you use the walkway a lot, I think I would find that dragging the gate over 5 feet might be a pain.
The other option is the gates that stay in place and have a little door that you walk through. One thing you'll have to keep in mind is that some of them require the gate to be at a 90 degree angle with the wall. Also, you may have to rig up something on the railings. One thing I've seen people do is to take a board and use those plastic ties to attach it to the railings. Those ties actually hold really tight if you get the thick ones.
There are a few different kinds of furniture anchors on amazon... some are specifically for TV's others are for dressers and stuff...
I think the most important things (in addition to stair gates) are probably the furniture anchors, the corner protectors, the plug covers, and putting the poison stuff out of reach.
Since our house isn't necessarily a mansion and DS was always within sight we just stuck to stairs and outlet covers until he figured out how to pull those out as well. We just put locks on the kitchen cabinets as it finally got insanely annoying at how much he was going in them to pull things out and play.