News Moms Need

Our daughter is on the verge of crawling. I’m excited, but nervous at the same time. Everywhere I look around our house I see a potential hazard — the stairs, furniture, cabinets, outlets, lamp cords and book cases. We have a lot of work to do! We plan to go through one room at a time on our hands and knees to make sure we don’t miss anything, remove/secure potential risks and make a shopping list as we go.

A close friend of mine (hi Tricia!) appeared on the evening news a couple of days ago. Her home was assessed by a professional who offered some great recommendations on making her home safer for her toddler twins.  Click here to watch the clip.

According to Safe Kids Worldwide more than 4.5 million children are injured in the home every year. Taking simple prevention measures and closely supervising your children can help protect them from common household hazards, such as fires, burns, drowning, suffocation, choking, firearm injury, poisoning and falls. A few easy, relatively inexpensive steps – locking household cleaning materials in a cabinet out of reach, installing carbon monoxide detectors and smoke alarms, blocking stairways with baby gates – can greatly reduce your child’s risk of injury in the home.

The March of Dimes and Consumer Reports have worked together to produce a helpful online guide called, Safe Products for Baby. It includes shopping and safety tips for car seats, strollers, cribs, changing tables, play pens, clothing, bathtubs and more. Click here to check it out.

Please feel free to share any safety tips that you may have!

Gees…I just did the math and figured out that I’ve used approximately one thousand, four hundred and seventy-two disposable diapers in eight months. We go through a case of 184 diapers about every three to four weeks.  Including wipes, that’s almost seventy bucks a month. I’m going on a diaper run later this afternoon. Should I try cloth diapers? I’m a little nervous about the idea. Do they leak? I don’t know anyone personally who has tried them. The disposable ones are easy. My daughter’s skin has been so healthy, but I want to be environmentally friendly.  Saving some cash wouldn’t be bad either.

The choice between using cloth or disposable diapers is a matter of personal preference. Deciding which one is best depends on several factors including lifestyle, concern for the environment, cost, convenience, skin care and other health concerns.  While researching the advantages and disadvantages of both, I came across this helpful info on the Consumer Reports website. Click here to check it out.

What do you think I should do?

We spent almost three hours in Buy Buy Baby on Sunday afternoon. My head is still spinning from all of the excitement and decisions we had to make. This was not like registering for my bridal shower. That was easy. Even though the store provided a registry checklist as a guide, I felt like I was guessing. I have no idea if my baby will want or need half the stuff I picked out (i.e. play pen, bouncy seat, exer-saucer, slings & swing). And if there isn’t already, there should be an accelerated college course on car seats and strollers.  There were literally 100 different models to choose from. Thank goodness my husband printed out info from Consumer Reports beforehand. It would have been impossible to make a selection otherwise. We probably would have registered for a more expensive and not necessarily safer “travel system”, too.

Are there any items that were a personal favorite or absolute must when you had your baby?