Portable stairgates - ADVICE NEEDED!!

[Freddiecat]

I'm spending next week visiting family with DS. For my parents house we'll need a stairgate as the stairs are in the middle of the house. I was going to buy a stairgate to just leave there but I've just seen these portable, easy-fit stairgates on mothercare.com It would also be useful at grandparents house and maybe could take it upstairs at night.

Has anyone used these portable stairgates? Any good? I need to get one this week so quick advice needed! Thanks.

I had one for my dog. It was a Lindam one, very easy to use. For dd we put up proper ones as the removable ones have a bar at the bottom and only open a bit in the middle so are not nearly as easy to use (and the bar on the step is dangerous IMO)

Thanks CD. The one we have at home is borrowed from a friend (Mothercare deluxe easy lock) and has a bar at the bottom. I'm not overjoyed about it and had my friend not offered it to us we'd have done a lot more research and got one without a bar.

I was attracted to the portable one as I'll be one night each at GP's then a few nights at parents plus can take it to other people's houses.

I'll go and look in Mothercare.

We got a mothercare portable gate and found it really hard to use. We bought to put across DD's door when she first moved into a bed and it was a complete waste of time. She could push it over very easily (she was about 17 months at the time). it was also really fiddly. It was a waste of 20 quid for us, but we weren't stair gate people IYSWIM

Please Please Please do not use a pressure-mounted stairgate at the top of the stairs. These are not safe as baby can easily push through and fall all the way to the bottom of the stairs, fracturing skull or breaking bones along the way.

i know what you mean zebra but we have pushed our own full weight on the one we use and it hasn't budged. test it regularly though.

Mum and Dad have the Safety 1st portable gate which needs is a pain to put up ervery time that Dd is upstairs, but it is better than nothing at all. It is pressure mounted but she cannot push through it as we always make sure that we cannot push it off the wall.