Going mobile

You might think you’ve made your house safe for a baby, but you’re wrong. You may smugly reflect that you already did all the prep for your new arrival months before they were born, thank you very much. It turns out that this is a moving target – and to your soon-to-be-moving child, everything is a target.

Ted began crawling at six months. This is pretty early and we were quite surprised when it happened as we hadn’t been doing much to stimulate it or “train” him (if that’s even possible). Really he just went from sitting up unaided to dragging himself along the floor, commando-style, right through to fully fledged crawling in what felt like 4-6 weeks. Today, at just over 8 months old, he’s comfortable with “cruising”, which in baby terms just means “hanging onto stuff while trying to walk” (imagine a nervous adult clinging onto the barriers at an ice rink).

This coincided with an ongoing phase in his development where everything—everything—needs to be placed into his mouth. A piece of paper falls to the floor somewhere? Ted will race over to it on hands and knees so he can find out what its woody texture tastes like. A cupboard door, naively unadorned with child locks, swings invitingly open? Ted will ensure that not a single leftover boardgame piece will escape his drooly kiss. Your trendy sofa, lovingly kept stain-free for two years now? A pool of milky saliva will soon decorate its hip grey exterior for years to come.

These are small-fry issues. Aesthetic imperfections. The ones you really want to avoid are the many, varied ways that your house can maim your tiny explorer. We already moved the freestanding bookcases and other obvious risks out of the rooms before Ted was really on the move. We bought a new TV stand which raised it above his reach, and strapped the TV itself to the table so it can’t topple onto him.

But it turns out that chairs, too, present an exciting opportunity for a baby to hold onto while standing, and then quickly fall to the ground while they cling on, like a dodgy ladder. Suddenly you realise that every surface in every room of your home has inexplicably large quantities of sharp-edged decorative finishings which your child will endeavour to slip over onto, head-first. Ted picked up enough bumps, scrapes and bruises in those first few weeks of mobility that we were worried we’d get reported to social services.

Then there was his cot. Once raised to a reasonable, non-back-straining height, when we woke up one morning to discover him proudly sitting up and leaning over its bars, we quickly lowered it as far as it could go.

As ever, we could’ve solved this much more quickly if I’d just immediately listened to Maddy. For weeks she suggested that we should convert our dining room into a playroom for Ted, and move the table and chairs into the living room alongside the TV. I scoffed at the obvious ridiculousness of plonking our table there, arguing that it wouldn’t “go” with the room, and that Ted already had a nursery upstairs and didn’t need another entire room for all his stuff.

I was wrong, of course. Maddy spends all day with Ted and could see where his explorative efforts were leading. Once I spent a bit of time chasing him between rooms and dragging him away from cupboards and doors in the living room, I was sold. The next day, we converted the dining room into his playroom and removed almost every potential risk in there (including my turntable and LPs, the final holdovers of my pre-parent life).

This made a huge difference. That room now has a safety gate on the door, so if we need to we can leave him (fairly) safe in there on his own while we make a coffee, go to the loo, etc. There are still a few hazards (radiators, for example, which we definitely need on in this cold weather) but generally, having a room where we can safely sit with him (there’s a comfy armchair in there too) is a godsend.

When we recently spent Christmas at my mum’s house, which doesn’t feature an enclosed baby-friendly space like this, I found the whole experience super stressful: constantly keeping an eye on the roving baby as he uncovered hazard after hazard. Some bumps and scrapes are inevitable but there are some mistakes you can’t afford them to make. Having a safe spot in your own home that you know is relatively babyproof is an absolute must once your little one gets to this point. Don’t ignore what your partner is telling you, if you find yourself in my scenario – they’re the expert.

And as for those plug socket safety covers…