You’ve recently had a new baby, meaning your home is potentially full of safety hazards. As your baby develops and gets older and more confident, the chances of accidents will increase. With that in mind, you need to learn how to keep your home safe when a new baby is brought into the picture. By reading the advice and tips below, you’ll soon understand how to make your home safe and suitable for a small baby:

Run a safety audit

We’re not going to go into great detail on this one, purely because we posted an article about home safety audits not that long ago. So, if you want more information on how to carry one out, that’s your go-to resource. 

For now, we’ll answer the questions of what a safety audit is and why it’s helpful. In essence, it’s when you go around your home and identify the key safety concerns. Here, you are going to look for things that can be a safety issue for a baby. So, the stairs are one thing, your bed could be another as they might be on it and roll themselves off, etc. The importance of a safety audit is that it lets you figure out where the main safety issues are, and you can come up with solutions. It basically helps you create a list of things to do to make your house safer for a small child!

Set up barriers

Barriers are essential when you bring a new baby into your home. Granted, they might not be of much use when your child is a complete newborn. However, your baby at 10 months old or more will start to develop more physical skills, such as the ability to crawl. They also become more inquisitive, meaning you are going to see them crawling about on little adventures. 

Naturally, you need to ensure that they don’t crawl into dangerous areas where they can get hurt. The kitchen should be off-limits, as should the bathroom, and possibly even hallways. Realistically, you need baby barriers that keep them confined to a specific location. It means they still have room to crawl around and explore, but you set limits on where they can go. So, you won’t have to worry about them crawling out of their room and near the stairs – you can have a barrier at their door to stop this. 

Invest in soft flooring

Before your baby arrived, you may have had a stylish home full of lovely hardwood flooring options. There’s no denying that hardwood or laminate floorings are the better options in terms of interior design. They look nicer, can go with your furniture a lot better, and are just generally more diverse. Unfortunately, when you have a baby, compromises need to be made for the sake of safety. 

Hard flooring options are problematic for a baby as they can be dangerous. For one, they can hurt a child’s developing joints if they’re crawling along on hard surfaces. However, the main problem is when your baby learns to walk. No baby ever gets on their feet and strolls around confidently. If they did, that would be pretty weird! Instead, they experience a series of falls and stumbles. When they fall on hard flooring, there’s a greater risk of damaging their soft bones and causing injuries. 

So, investing in soft flooring options is a better idea. Carpet is an obvious one, and it is worth laying it down around the house wherever you can. An alternative is to get big rugs to lay on your hardwood flooring, so you can retain the element of style with the safety included. Or, you can buy foam tiling that basically creates safe flooring for kids. This is the stuff you see in a lot of playgrounds or indoor adventure areas, designed to soften falls.

Apply child locks to everything

Next, you need to get your hands on some child locks. You can find these just about anywhere, and the idea is that they stop your new child from accessing things that they really shouldn’t. Primarily, we’re talking about cabinets in your kitchen and bathroom. Here, you can have some potentially dangerous things when in the hands of a small child. 

Even when your baby can crawl, you need to have child locks on things – especially when they’re close to the ground. You may be making dinner in the kitchen, and your child has managed to crawl into the room with you. You don’t want them opening a cabinet and possibly pulling pots and pans down onto their heads! Likewise, you don’t want them opening the bathroom cabinet and trying to eat shampoo or shower gel. As your baby turns into a toddler, the need for locks increases. Now, they become even more inquisitive and will literally try to open everything. 

Purchase baby monitors

Yes, you need to have some excellent baby monitors to keep your house safe when you have a small child. The whole point of baby monitors is that they let you see and hear your child. Well, you can see them if you get the latest baby monitors with built-in video cameras. Personally, this is a non-negotiable for me. You need to be able to see your child when you are not in the same room as them. Kids tend to be at the biggest risk to themselves when left alone to sleep at night. A baby monitor lets you see if they are trying to climb out of their crib or endanger themselves. 

The great thing about baby monitors is that they are portable. Let’s say your child is in the living room with you, but you need to pop to the toilet. As long as the barriers are in place preventing them from leaving, you can place the baby monitor by them and pop to the toilet quickly. The whole time, you can watch the live feed to be sure your child is safe. If you spot something to be concerned about, you can rush off to help them right away. 

Improve your overall home security

No doubt this is something that will come up during your security audit, but you need to enhance your general home security when you bring a baby into your life. Suddenly, you have more that needs to be protected. You have to keep your little family safe, so an old and out-of-order security system no longer cuts the mustard. 

Ideally, you should invest in the following:

• A proper security alarm system
• CCTV cameras
• A secure gate for the driveway
• A video doorbell
• Motion sensors
• Thick double-glazed windows

Some of you might already have a handful of these things at your disposal. If so, that’s great, you need to spend less money now! By making your home more secure, you reduce the chances of people breaking and entering, putting you and your baby in harm’s way. Too many homes have terrible security systems, and it’s such a simple thing to rectify. Just call a home security company in your area and they will install everything for you. 

Just like that, you’ve reached the end of this guide. Hopefully, it has taught you how to make your home as safe as can be when you have a new baby in your life. You now know the main safety concerns and what you can do to limit them. Ideally, all of this should be done before your baby comes home from the hospital, so start planning ahead while your partner is pregnant.