Lifetime is starting a brand-new blog series, called “Before You Adopt.” Each week, we’ll be sharing about constructive activities that you can be doing as you wait to be chosen by your future baby’s birth mother!
Keeping busy during your adoption wait is a wonderfully effective way to cope. Fortunately, there’s a lot you can do during this time to ready yourselves for the baby meant for your family!
Babyproofing your home now is easiest, simply because you more time now to accomplish things that need to be done. Once you bring your baby home through an infant adoption, it’ll be one less thing to figure out.
We encourage you to take these steps needed to babyproof your home, room by room. You could set aside one weekend to evaluate your house, room by room, and make it safe. Getting all of this completed will give you peace of mind. Baby proofing your home, room by room:
- Bathroom: purchase latches for your medicine cabinet, a toilet lock, and a thermometer for determining if your baby’s bathwater is at a safe temp. Plan on moving dangerous products to higher shelves, and move cords to protect from electrical dangers.
- Kitchen: Install safety latches on your bottom cabinets, and latches for lower drawers. Place magnets up higher on your fridge, as they’re a choking hazard. Purchase stove-knob covers and a latch for your oven door. Here are some effective stove-knob covers on Amazon that fit most any stove: Safety 1st Clear View Stove Knob Covers, 5 Count.
- Stairs: Purchase baby gates or fences for the top and bottom of your stairs. If you use the stairs in your home constantly throughout the day, you’ll want a baby gate, which can be opened and closed quickly.
- Living room: Falling and colliding into furniture are the biggest hazards to your baby in this room. So, add some cushioned corner guards (or edging) to your side tables, coffee tables, fireplace, and anything else with sharp corners.
So that a bookshelf doesn’t fall over on baby, make sure that you mount them to the wall. Fasten your TV securely to the wall or an entertainment center so your baby can’t pull it down on themselves. Get heavy-weight picture hooks so your paintings and pictures have no chance of falling. Finally, cordless blinds are best for a home with a baby/toddler; the cords on blinds and curtains are strangling hazards.
- Nursery: By the time you set up your future baby’s room, you might have done plenty of babyproofing already. Until you baby is older than six months, keep all bedding (like pillows and blankets) and stuffed animals out of the crib as they’re a potential suffocation risk. Make sure that baby’s sheets and mattress fit snugly. Consider purchasing “finger-pinch” guards for the hinges on doors. Here’s a nice set of four: Safety 1st Finger Pinch Guards.
- Other considerations: Install safety gates for the entrance or exit to any room that will be off-limits to the baby. Check whether any of your houseplants are toxic: some can be poisonous. Cover your heating vents and radiators to avert burns.
Please “tune in” next week, when we’ll be sharing another action step you can take towards being productive during your adoption wait!
Heidi Keefer is a Content Creator for Lifetime Adoption and has over 15 years of experience in the field of adoption. An author of thousands of articles and social media posts over the years, Heidi enjoys finding new ways to educate and captivate Lifetime’s ever-growing list of subscribers.
Heidi has a keen eye for misplaced apostrophes, comma splices, and well-turned sentences, which she has put to good use as a contributor to Lifetime’s award-winning blogs. She has written and published hundreds of adoption articles which explore the various facets of domestic infant adoption today.
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