Beety and any other stair gate free parents ...

[fisil]

How does it work?

We have just had our hallways decorated and don't want to spoil it all with stairgates.

Ds2 will be 1 next week and has been walking for about a month and has no sense at all. He also started stair climbing yesterday and can get to the top in about 60 seconds! If you go downstairs he wants to come with you, and so just follows.

It has always been important to us that the boys can go off and enjoy their own house - we don't have to have them in the same room as us.

So how does the whole stair gate free life work?

mine would go upstairs and i would shut doors I didn't want them to go in

Beety we have put locks on the outside of the older kids' doors for that very reason. They don't always remember to put the lock on though but I guess that is their problem. However with dh asleep during the day I get stressed about the noise they would make.

yes I can imagine that must be difficult.

ds1 broke his arm at 11 months on the stairs.
so even with a soft carpet on the stairs, two landings, and shallow steps, i insisted on stairgates. but tried to teach them how to come down as soon as possible so only really had them up for a few months.
i think baby baths are essential initally, unless you have a big sink.
changing tables are only good if you have the space. a chest of drawers is just as good to help save your back.

essential? no way. never had one with any of my four!

Dh woudl get in the bath with them or I would. or jsut a quick once over with a cloth

Agree baby bath not essential. DS2 has never been in one, but has been in the basin a couple of times and goes in the bath with me and his big bro now.

But not geting rid of the stairgates

i suppose if you have baths yourself then they can go in with you. but im a shower person, have a bath about oonce a year if that, so for me it was very useful as used lot less water. specially as the sink not very big.

and once they were old enough to sit, the tub was used for dirty cotton nappies

I'm glad I've read this as we won't be able to put stairgates up in the new house.
Never thought about the coming downstairs backwards method either.

We still have ours up and hate it but it's only there to stop the dog going upstairs.

We don't have stair gates either. Luckily all 3 boys worked out the stairs fairly young so not really needed them. We have got a couple and we are using one atm to keep them out of the room being painted!

At ds3's 18 month check the other week HV asked about how he was on the stairs 'supervised of course' - when I said he went up and down on his own all the time unsupervised she said 'let's start again, so when you supervise him going up and down the stairs' - eff off!

Not used baby bath either. Used one for ds1 cos first time round you think you need one, but didn't use it at all for the others.

yup... we've always taught our two the backwards thing... and not too many probs.. all you have to do is shout backwards and they automatically turn around...

well i never used a baby bath, moses basket or infant/stage 1 car seat ( i went sraight to the big combination ones..)
but i do still have a stair gate up and the youngest is nearly 5.
the sound is so loud i can hear him escaping!!!

thanks everyone. I'm much more confident about not having them now.

For us a baby bath was essential - we didn't have a bath, and when you showered you had to perform death defying leaps every time it suddenly went freezing or scalding - not very appropriate for a newborn! We got a bath when ds1 was 6 months. We used the baby bath again when ds2 was born so that we could establish the bathtime routine from day 1 (both boys at same time). Very soon though ds2 gave as good as he got, so from about 3 months they were in the bath together.