Please come and tell me what baby proofing products worked for you . . .

[newtoitallmummy]

Hi there

Am looking for all hints and tips and recommendations about products to babyproof our house. Baby is starting to get mobile and will not be long before baby is pulling up on furniture etc etc.

I am thinking about things to hold my kitchen cupboards and drawers shut, do I need those thingys that go over plug sockets? am also looking for stair gates . . .

Also anything that is in your opinion a waste of time/money?

Many many thanks in advance

I know a fab website with everything you'll ever need. It's called the babycatalogue.com. Sorry I haven't worked out how to do links yet

One thing which has been invaluable to us are the little cages that go over the knobs on the cooker. We have a 'twiddler'

IMO - apart from catches on the sharp drawer and the 'toxic product' cupboard, it's all a a waste of time.

DS could get the plug covers out faster than I could, and our stairs don't work with a stair gate. He just learnt to go up and down stairs at a very early age

Those little plastic caps to cover sharp corners proved useless for our furniture - they kept falling off, we have big lumps of blu-tak stuck on the corners of the coffee table.

We took the knobs off the front two burners of the cook top - your baby will be capable of dragging a chair or box into the kitchen and standing on it before you know it.

The stair gates we bought were a waste of money - she worked out how to open them within 20 minutes of our having put them up.

We have socket covers. I've never seen her heading for a socket with a fork and a determined expression but that's not to say it couldn't happen.

We have open plan dowanstairs so dining. kitchen and living room are all one room IYSWIM, and when the dss were small there was a lot of potential for access to kitchen cupboards but the thing that worked for me was that as soon as they went near the cupboards I would firmly tell them not to and then move them away. So I never had to do anything to the drawers and cupboards and dss stopped bothering to try opening them.

Also our cooker has a lid and once that is down the gas/oven cannot be switched on.

Would definitely get socket covers though.

thanks for all the thoughts - hadn't considered the cooker knobs yet but will need to do something there.

what about cables and wires and things eg the spaghetti junction round the back of teh telly? Is that just another thing to tell them "no" about?

I don't know if you have an Ikea near you, but in their lighting section they sell a long flexible tube which all the wires go in, so it's tidy aswell

Don't forget blind cords. Get those little plastic catch things that screw onto the wall to wind up the slack into a figure-of-eight or cut them in the middle if they're a single loop. They're a real strangulation hazard.

plug covers are a must
cupboard door closers of some kind.
if you have heavy doors, those foam things for the top to stop doors slamming on small fingers or feet.
stair gates - we have lindam ones, on top of stairs (in a flat so did not need one at bottom) and as she grew older on the kitchen as she would go and 'cook'
Fire guard if you have a fireplace.
Remember to use any child lock facilities on washing machine or dishwasher.
Lift all breakable objects from floor level. As LO grows bigger, the higher they go!

Our DS is 10 months like Saadia we have an all in one dining room/kitchen/living room, we put catches on the kitchen door because they are so easy to open and we have glass and heavy pots in those cupboards. We also found the (ours are plastic) wedges to go on top of the door so it can't close properly invaluable, mostly because he likes opening the doors. (They are really cheap in Tesco).

We haven't bothered with Stairgates yet and I'm not 100% sure we are going to.

We have put our travel cot up in our living room so if we do need to pop to the loo or go upstairs we can just put him in that for a few minutes. Saves buying a play pen

Have never bothered with plug covers, table corners fell off and my DS is not remotely interested in cooker knobs, he only likes the oven timer.

Only things I found useful were stairgate (mine is quite hard to open - definitely too heavy for a toddler) and those sliding locks for a couple of cupboards - drawer locks have to be screwed on and I found tying all the drawers together with string was effective for the short period of time my DS was interested

It's worth letting them have a cupboard in the kitchen that you don't mind them pulling out I think.

Oh yes - and the blind cord point is a good one. Tie them right up out of reach.

oh yes - those foam things to stop doors slamming are good

bought a lot of this stuff and they didn't kill/seriously injure themselves so I guess it worked. However most important things were removing anything low down (like the books they pulled out of the bookcase - lockable ones would have been useful) and keeping cleaning products under lock and key. I had problems removing our socket covers.

I do know someone who had a lot of trouble removing items from a video and someone whose child's fingers were painfully damaged in a closing door.

Playpens are only useful if big enough for you to sit in as a child soon escapes from them.

Windows that lock for ventilation but prevent them being opened are invaluable once they get big enough to climb on window ledges.

Socket covers essential, but the real saver for us has been the rubber thingys that sit on top of a door to keep it from closing all the way. We also have open plan living, so cupboards and drawers have never been a problem as I'm usually with them in this room.

It depends a lot whether this is your first child or your second! (sorry, couldn't resist!)

Seriously, I think you should do as little baby proofing as possible. Babies are very clever little people, and will often work out how to subvert the babyproofing - and making something harder to get at often makes it more attractive, if you see what I mean. Of course lock up or put out of reach things like toxic cleaning stuff or medicines, and make sure they can't get out into the road, or into the garden if you've got a pond. Oh, and put anything precious and fragile out of reach (which may need to be higher than you think!) And make sure that things like tvs and bookshelves can't be pulled over on top of them. Apart from that, I would just let them explore and learn. You'll be with them all the time at this age anyway.

Where I live is COMPLETELY unbabyproofable - lots of levels, lots of corners and open plan stairs. We had a few bumps and bruises, butI really mean a few. Time spent helping them learn to climb stairs is more useful and enjoyable than time spent fitting a stairgate.

Have never bothered with the corner bump thingys. Only thing I used was a stair gate, which was removed just after she was able to get up and down the stairs safely, and the cupboard locks-didn't bother with drawer ones. I had a cupboard that she could have access to-just with tupperware containers, and non-breakables-she thought this was great! We've still got the locks on the cupbaords, but we're due number 2 in July, so don't see any point in removing them-but she can get into the cupboards now anyway!! (she's 4 in sept). Fire guard-but we have a wood burning stove, my inlaws have one for their gas fire.

stair gate

play pen (for me to do the ironing in)

shelves and moved everything possible up high

new latch and tie on the garden gate

spark guard and big clip-on fire guard round fireplace

Loads here.
Open plan downstairs so we have a playpen, it's currently across the patio doors so we can have them open and dd can't crawl out down the step and bash her head on the patio.
stairgate across the kitchen door.
Cupboard latches so I can keep everything from being trashed.
Soft edge foam on the fireplace.
Safety glass fitted in the front door.
No ornaments. mantlepiece clock replaced with a crappy ikea one which he still bashes after been told off a million times .
Downstairs and upstairs stairgates.
Stairgate across ds's bedroom door, to keep him in if I need 15 mins peace to tidy / shower.
And I often sellotape my bedroom door shut so he can't get in there and pull it apart.

I am very neurotic . Mind you, we don't have socket guards on the couple of 'empty'ones as my dad was an electrician all his life and said a kid would have to jiggle something in each hole at the same time to get a shock, so that's the one thing I'm relaxed about.

We only had a stair gate as our ds wasn't at all interested in opening cupboards, playing with the oven or touching the plug sockets etc. Like rasputin, we always told him "NO" and told him things like sockets are very dangerous and that was that and he soon learned himself not to bump into corners! It depends on the child, of course, as some love playing with things, especially after being told "NO" (like my brother who always got into lots of trouble!). A travel cot or play pen can be useful, though.