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5 Tips for Babyproofing Your Home

Baby on Deck

Parents expecting their first baby can be overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to make their home safer. They may not know what requires changing, or they may go overboard by adding things in their home that they don’t need. Use common sense and intuition to find things in your home that are obvious hazards. Here are five tips for babyproofing your home:

Setting Up a Crib

Newborns will be spending a lot of their time sleeping, so having a safe place to sleep should be an immediate priority. Do not place any objects in the crib with the baby, including pillows and blankets. Pillows and blankets can be hazardous because the baby can get tangled up. If you want to keep your baby warm, swaddle them instead.

Make sure that the height of the crib rail is appropriate for the age and size of your baby as they grow and develop. As your baby starts to learn how to pull themselves up, you don’t want to risk them falling over the edge of the crib.

Start Babyproofing Your Home by Putting Away Small Objects

Babies love to put things in their mouths. Start babyproofing your home by placing small items out of the reach of your child. Even items you think are safe should be secured as they could fall on the floor giving your baby easy access to them.

If you’re not sure whether objects are small enough to cause a choking hazard, see if the object can fit inside an empty toilet paper roll. If it falls right through the tube, it’s small enough to potentially choke your child and should be placed far out of reach.

Set Up a Baby Play Area

Have a designated area for your baby to play while you tend to chores. For a newborn, this might be a baby swing or bouncer. Older babies will be crawling around more, so set up a playpen nearby that you can supervise. The older the child is, the more independent they will be. Should an emergency happen, you need to be able to get to them as soon as possible.

Use Baby Gates

Using baby gates for babyproofing your home is great because they have multiple uses. They can be used to section off part of the house to keep your child out of trouble, such as keeping them from tumbling down a set of stairs. You can also use gates to keep them inside a specific area. Set up gates to keep them from wandering off and out of sight.

Cover Corners When Babyproofing Your Home

Make sure all of the sharp corners in your house are covered by soft corner protectors. You don’t want to risk your baby hitting their head on anything while crawling around on the floor. Get down to a baby’s eye level and look around your house. There are likely corners that you’ve not noticed because they’re so low to the ground.

These are just a few important tips that will help when babyproofing your home.

Premier Home Inspection Services provides home inspections to customers in Northern New Jersey. Contact us to schedule an appointment.