When / how do you babyproof your home?

[BonsaiLife]

My MIL has said we need to baby proof our home. I'm due early July. We live in a one bed all on one level flat. It's quite spacious with floors all on one level, and we have cot, bouncer etc ready.

I wasn't sure we would need to do all that much, apart from when the baby starts crawling to remove dangerous items / cables from within reach. We don't have any wobbly shelves with heavy things on!

I wasn't planning on doing anything in the meantime, but her comment got me worried. What have I missed?

You don't need to do anything until the baby starts crawling. I would say it's a good idea to screw stuff to the wall with safety straps anyway though. Just means you don't need to remember it later.

My LO is three months, doesn't yet have a nursery and nothing has been even planned re baby proofing. Ignore her or make "oooh yes, we must think about that before he/she starts crawling" type noises.

Once he was crawling we put up three baby gates (top and bottom of stairs and across door between lounge and kitchen) and strapped tv to its stand. Medicines out of reach in top cupboard.

You’ve got it right. You haven’t missed anything. Your MIL is being weird.

You babyproof as you work out what mischief your baby gets into. My first you could leave a collection of knives and saws, a pot of boiling lava, a handgrenade and exposed wires in the middle of the floor and she wouldn't touch any of it. She lived pulling books of shelves and things out of cupboards... And if someone was holding a drink they word likely find a toy added.

My second... You couldn't leave anything anywhere-there a tide mark that moved upwards each month where she could reach. We had babygates to trap her in rooms. She escaped out a window. She learnt to crawl at 5 months, and could pull up to cruise at that age too. Luckily she didn't walk until a year!

Due same time as you, haven’t thought about anything like that... Main thing is somewhere for baby to sleep, and some little clothes to wear.

We babyproofed as we went along really. So as Dd started moving we moved certain things up out of reach (breakables, ornaments etc.) then added a play pen downstairs for somewhere safe to leave her for 5 mins. Then we added baby gates as Dd learned to walk and climb, then more baby gates so the dog could have the conservatory to himself without being terrorised! I think the last thing was door locks in the kitchen. She didn't start exploring cupboards until about 18months.

The bookshelf was the best one, she would pull all the books off repeatedly and rip them, so I took them all off. Then she climbed the book shelf! Books and shelf were then moved to a spare room.

I wouldn't bother yet - we've got a lock on the under the sink cupboard in the kitchen where we keep dishwasher tabs, bleach etc and that's about it. We did have a baby gate in the early days of crawling but took it off to redecorate and didn't put it back up!