baby-proofing

starting to be that time!

i found this thread about babyproofing your stereo, which includes the advice to simply shout at your children with a megaphone. while this seems possibly the cheapest route and requires no household re-engineering it also sounds a little unpleasant.

i live in a relatively small london apartment. pots and pans are on low, reachable shelves. as a wired-up member of the 21st century i have wires and cables EVERYWHERE.

what have you done, are doing, or will do to baby-proof things? do i need to worry about door hinges? corners of coffee tables? i am suddenly seeing danger everywhere.

haha there is danger everywhere of which you haven't yet even dreamed but that your baby will soon be exploiting. I recommend vigilance above any other preparation: we tied and taped and moved what we could with each kid but they just find new things you hadn't thought of. With the stereo I eventually taped the volume control in place at a reasonable level after treating my entire apartment building to some great tunes a few too many times.

moving out of our unbabyproofable apt and into a house with a yard that will no doubt be even more terrifying. dismayed that the nearby chldren's supply shop only carries outlet plugs in the shape of cute animals, which, um, isn't that exactly what we're hoping to avoid? Bland industrial-beige plastic that we got not much less appealing however. L seems to sense danger and is irresistibly drawn to it! Eg, she is constantly crawling toward the bathroom...the most dangerous room alive!

Maybe we have been lucky but we found we didn't need to baby-proof nearly as much as people had us believe. May have been partly because we have always lived in small or open plan flats where A. was always within sight/reach, but the worst she ever seemed inclined to do was pull books off shelves/things out of cupboards. We did fit plug covers but never got round to drawer/cupboard locks or corner protectors or anything.

I think a combination of vigilence, shouting and recognition that they WILL bump their head on the coffee table at some point is preferable to redesigning your entire house, but as I say, maybe we're just lucky.

that sounds sensible. i'm going to rationalize my crazy spaghetti of cables though. in some way i'm glad for the excuse to actually get things tidy and organized.

The good thing is that he/she won't even be able to roll over for three or four months, so there's no urgency. On the other hand, maybe it's good to do things now, before sleep deprivation destroys your mind!

We bought a bunch of stuff and then didn't use most of it, but it seems fairly sensible to move all the cleaning products/bleach to a high cupboard or put a cupboard lock on the one where you keep them, and move knives out the way.

We got socket covers, but I actually think it is impossible to elecrocute yourself on a British socket unless you poke three screwdrivers in simultaneously, so I wouldn't bother.

I actually found the extreme volume changes amusing, although once he learned the eject button, it was less amusing and I now have many scratched CDs and DVDs. He also dribbled over my laptop keyboard and that broke it. Dunno how you proof against that!

If you have any stairs, a stairgate is pretty essential, too. And maybe wedges if you have self-closing fire doors.

And yes, you will go to casualty, but once you've been it's quite reassuring. Only worry if they DON'T scream seemed to be the advice.

what have you done, are doing, or will do to baby-proof things? do i need to worry about door hinges? corners of coffee tables?

With Ophelia we soundproofed a little bit. With Elisabeth almost nothing. You... are more relaxed with your second child, I guess. But you also realize that you just have to be within reach most of the time. Funnily enough Elisabeth crawls on everything whereas Ophelia was much more obedient. At the end of the day I'm just with Elisabeth all the time.

One of the hardest things for me was adapting to a kid who WRECKS my order. I just gave up after a few weeks. Throwing things out of the cupboard? Fine by me. She's happy, she's playing. Inside I was dying though. hahaha