Babyproofing checklist

Babyproof to the stage, not to the fear

Babyproofing is not one job. It is four, and each one is triggered by something your baby has just learned to do. Doing the whole house while you are pregnant sounds responsible and is actually counterproductive: you fit stair gates ten months before anything can climb, you live with them, and then you forget the things that matter when the climbing actually starts, because you already ticked babyproofing off your list.

So this list is filtered to now, and it tells you how many items are still waiting. Come back when they roll, when they pull up, and when they start opening things. Each of those is a new house from your baby’s point of view.

Four numbers that are not the same everywhere

This is why the tool asks which country you are in before it asks anything else. These are not differently worded versions of the same advice; they are different numbers, and an American checklist read in Britain gets two of them wrong.

Hot water is the clearest. RoSPA tells UK households to run the hot water system at 46 degrees Celsius or fit a thermostatic mixing valve to the taps. The American Academy of Pediatrics says the hottest temperature at the faucet should be no more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Australian advice puts bathroom taps at no hotter than 50 degrees. Canada pairs a 49-degree household standard with a 38-degree ceiling for a baby’s bathwater, and Parachute explains why the gap matters: a child’s skin burns four times more quickly and deeply than an adult’s at the same temperature.

Window openings, stair gate standards and the number you call in an emergency all differ in the same way. So the tool switches them rather than averaging them, and names the body each figure came from.

The numbers behind the ordering

RoSPA’s UK figures are why this list is ordered the way it is. Falls account for 44 per cent of all children’s accidents, and around ten children a year die from one, some from windows and balconies. Around 500 children, mainly under fives, are admitted to hospital every year from bath water scalds, with another 2,000 seen in accident and emergency. More than 28,000 children a year are treated for poisoning or suspected poisoning. At least 33 young children have died because of looped blind cords since 2001, and RoSPA is aware of at least 14 deaths involving nappy sacks over the same period.

The NHS adds two lines worth pinning to a wall. A hot drink can still scald 15 minutes after it was made. And babies can drown in as little as five centimetres, two inches, of water.

The three that kill quickly

Button batteries are first. Swallowed, one can burn through a child’s food pipe within hours; Parachute puts the window at two hours. They are in remote controls, key fobs, bathroom scales, thermometers, hearing aids, tea lights, musical greetings cards and light-up shoes, and a flat battery is still dangerous. The Child Accident Prevention Trust’s five steps are look, check, store, dispose and act — and act means going straight to accident and emergency rather than waiting to see. In Canada, Parachute advises giving honey on the way to hospital if a battery has been swallowed: 10 millilitres, two teaspoons, every ten minutes for up to six doses, stopping if the child cannot swallow, because honey coats the battery and reduces the burning.

Blind cords are second, and cordless is better than tidy. If a blind has a cord, fit a cleat or a tensioner to the wall and use it every single time. Above all, do not put the cot within reach of one.

Furniture is third. Anchor everything tall and anchor the television. Health Canada records hundreds of tip-over incidents onto children under ten every year, and more than 70 per cent of them happen to children between one and three. It is the cheapest fix in the house and the one most often left in the packet the furniture came in.

Safer sleep, which does not change by country

The Lullaby Trust’s advice reads the same wherever you are: your baby on their back for every sleep, day and night; a firm, flat, waterproof mattress; nothing else in the cot at all; the room between 16 and 20 degrees Celsius; the same room as you for at least the first six months; and all of it until 12 months, or 12 months after the due date for a baby born premature or at low birth weight.

Nothing else goes in the cot. No pillows, duvets, cot bumpers, soft toys, comforters, weighted bedding, positioning wedges or straps, pods, nests or rolled towels. That list is worth reading twice because several of those things are sold specifically for babies.

The one item on the list that is not an item

Do a first aid and CPR course, and learn infant choking first aid. Training is generally recommended every three years, with CPR refreshed yearly. It is the single most useful thing on this checklist and the one people skip, because it takes an afternoon rather than a click. If you do one thing from this page, do that one.

What a checklist cannot do

None of this replaces supervision, and supervision does not replace any of it. The point of babyproofing is to make the seconds you are not looking survivable, and there will be seconds you are not looking, because you are a human being who occasionally needs the toilet.

This is general safety guidance, not advice about your particular home or your particular child. If something has already happened, call for help immediately rather than waiting to see whether it gets worse — that applies especially to button batteries, magnets, medicines and anything to do with breathing.