Parentpedia

What Experts Say

You want your baby's room to be comfortable, soothing, and safe. While you're making things pretty, make sure you keep an eye on safety too. These 11 tips will help you make sure that your child's nursery will truly be a safe haven.

Keep the beautiful bedding out of the crib. Comforters, pillows, and stuffed animals are a suffocation risk.

The National Safety Council advises you to skip the gorgeous antique crib. Cribs made before 1974 don't adhere to modern safety standards, like keeping bars no more than 2 3/8 inches part (which is too small for your baby to get her arms or legs stuck).

Cover the outlets before your baby is on the move. That way you won't be scrambling when she decides it's time to crawl.

Make sure the dresser is latched to the wall. When your baby starts to stand, she might use open drawers to pull up, causing the dresser to tip.

Hanging crib toys, like mobiles, need to be high enough that your baby can't grab them. They're a strangulation risk if they're in reach.

Keep the crib away from window blinds and shades. The pulls can be a strangulation risk.

Keep your hand on your baby at all times during diaper changes. Babies learn to roll over in the blink of an eye, and it only takes one distracted second for baby to fall.

Install a carbon monoxide detector and smoke detector near your baby's room.

Use safety gates to keep unsupervised pets or older children out of the nursery. Make sure they're easy to step over or open so you can get to your baby quickly if you need to.

Check door locks to be sure that your baby can't inadvertently get locked alone in the room.

While it won't matter until your baby is a toddler, make sure windows are safe now by installing childproof locks before you need them.

If you don't have time to go through your house with an eye to baby safety, you can hire someone to help. In her book, "Getting Ready for Baby: The Ultimate Organizer for the Mom-to-Be," Helene Tragos Stelian says you can also check out your local Yellow Pages for childproofing experts. They will come to your house, evaluate the safety issues, and then tell you how to fix them -- for a fee of course.