The Safe Baby

The Safe Baby is a compendium of information about household safety for parents of infants and small children. I don’t know that there’s a lot in here that’s new to me, but it’s certainly helpful to have it all in one place as a reference!

The first section has chapters about the nursery, kitchen, and bathroom, with specific recommendations for making these rooms safe. Although many of the tips are basic (and familiar to experienced parents), like lowering the crib mattress to its lowest position before your baby can stand up, and not carrying the baby and hot items at the same time, many of the tips go beyond this. There is, for example, information about testing your tap water for contaminants. Even more important, the author assumes the parent has common sense and, while some of the things she mentions may be reminders rather than news, she does not repeat the same tips in every chapter; she assumes you can figure out, for instance, that if you needed to keep the water at a safe temperature in the kitchen, the same goes for the bathroom.

The second section talks about safety all around the house. Fire safety and gun safety are addressed, in addition to prevention of falls, preparation for emergencies, pet safety, environmental hazards, common poisons, and more. Things parents might not consider are pointed out, like the fact that gun safety skills are important to teach our children, even if we don’t own guns! If they ever visit the homes of friends or relatives who do own guns, they need to be prepared.  (I do wish there weren’t such an obvious bias against guns in general, but at least the author provides the information anyway.)

The final section talks about holidays and travel.

But the “final” section isn’t really the final section! There are eight appendices. Appendix A is a room-by-room checklist. This can be especially helpful for parents who are having a second or subsequent child, or who have moved. You may know a lot of the basic information, but need a quick reminder of what to check. Appendix B is a list of common household plants that are poisonous. (I always want a list like this when I am looking to landscape or add houseplants to clean our air.)

Appendix C contains a “shopping list” of sorts for safety products. Appendix D has recall information (or, rather, contact information for organizations that provide it). Appendix E is a list of resources for a variety of health and safety products and information. Appendix F is about safely storing breast milk. Appendix G is a form for emergency contact information, and Appendix H is about making your own baby food.

Taken as a whole, this is a really useful “encyclopedia” of children’s safety information. Buy a copy for yourself, give it as a baby gift, or donate it to your local library.

 $16.95

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Disclosure: The author provided me with a copy to facilitate this review, as well as donation and giveaway copies for the upcoming Baby Shower for Jesus.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.