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!

It’s a nice, snuggly, tender picture… sleeping with your baby.  But the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warn that infants should not co-sleep with their parents.  By co-sleeping, we mean one or both parents sleeping with a baby in an adult bed.

Many people argue that when done properly, co-sleeping benefits both parent and child.  There are others, however, who argue that the convenience and comfort of co-sleeping is outweighed by the increased risk of suffocation from many directions and of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).  This is especially true if either parent is a smoker.

Read more about the risks of co-sleeping or follow our interactive program called Understanding Your Newborn.   Wherever your baby sleeps, make it as safe a space as possible and always put your baby on his back to sleep.