When you bring a new baby home, especially if you are a first time parent, it’s easy to get obsessive about safety. I brought home two new babies just a few weeks ago, and we are constantly trying to make sure everything in their nursery is safe enough for them to sleep in every night.
Our babies have slept in their nursery in their own cribs from the first day we’ve had them at home, although I know this isn’t the norm. Many parents keep their babies in small bassinets next to them in their room, which makes it easier to feed them at night.
Regardless of where you baby sleeps though, it’s important to think about safety. There are so many scary risks when it comes to newborns, and I know many of them keep me up at night. All parents are different and so what works for us might not work for you. Most people are probably more relaxed than we are when it comes to safety measures in the nursery, but here are some things we’ve implemented or are going to implement in the future.
1. Baby monitors.
Baby monitors are a great addition to any nursery. Even if the babies are in the very next room like they are in our house, a baby monitor can pick up sounds a bit faster and transmit them louder. This helps parents to wake up at night so that they can go and comfort their baby. You’ll also know if something is wrong quickly based on how loudly they scream! It’s funny because the monitor wakes me up immediately but my husband hardly ever hears it. It must be a mom thing!
2. Breathing monitor.
It’s a new decade full of new technology, and one of those pieces of technology is a breathing monitor. Some people might think that it’s too obsessive to add these to a nursery, but it’s given me great peace of mind. We have a monitor that goes off if our baby’s breathing slows for more than 20 seconds at a time. When we first brought our son home, it went off twice in the first night just because he was a preemie who was having some breathing issues. We ran in there so fast, and I’m so glad we had it! We have one underneath the mattress of each crib now, and it really helps me to feel confident that we’ll know if something is wrong. Again, some might say this is overkill, but in my mind it’s better to be safe than sorry.
3. Outlet covers.
We don’t need these just yet but in a few months our babies will be crawling. They spend a lot of time in their nursery so we will be making sure that they can’t shock themselves.
Ultimately, the safety features that you put in your baby’s nursery are completely up to you as parents, but I hope the things we’ve implemented for our twins can help give you some ideas too!
What safety features did you put in your nursery?
