Suppose that you’re due to deliver your baby a few weeks or months from now. You would have to prepare the room for your little bundle of joy once hospital bills have been paid and you’re currently in the recovery period.
Using baby nests, for instance, could provide new parents with various benefits while keeping their babies safe and comfortable. It’s generally recommended to start using it from birth to six months of age, yet a few models could even last until the baby is nine months old!
But since new parents should make adjustments, here are a couple of tips to help you set up the baby room:
Pick Appropriate Furniture
In particular, a nursery room should keep an eye on the four main pieces of furniture, such as the chair, crib, dresser, and changing table.
Of course, these items could be influenced by various factors, including overall design, finish, detailing, and construction quality. Ideally, the furniture you bought has simple designs to quickly adapt to the newly added pieces or updated look in the nursery.
Typically, you could reuse the same items if you and your partner have agreed to have more children in the future. In case you didn’t, convertible cribs may appeal to you.
This product is versatile enough to suit a growing child. Depending on its design, you could transform the crib into daybeds, toddler beds, or double beds that your baby could use for years to come. Even specific models of changing tables could convert similarly to storage units or dressers.
Meanwhile, we highly suggest going for a sturdy changing table with a 5-cm guardrail on all four sides, ensuring that its table pad follows a concave design so the sides are slightly higher than the middle.
On the other hand, crib slats should be no more than 6 cm (2 ⅜ inches) apart to ensure that the baby’s head wouldn’t be trapped between them. It’s best to remember that wider slats allow your child’s body and legs to fall through, then seal their death by being stuck. Moreover, watch out for the tall corner posts, usually incorporated in the canopy bed models, as the baby’s clothing or ribbon could catch on these things and strangle them.
Choose A Nursery Theme
Choose nursery themes for your baby’s room based on a character, animal, or hobby. For newborn babies, choose a theme that is calming and neutral, such as baby animals or nature. Choose the theme based on the interests of the parents or the baby’s gender.
Employ Practical Placements
Don’t wait until a single accident has struck your baby. Instead, you should think ahead by employing practical techniques in arranging the furniture.
Assuming that you’ve already researched the best crib for you, you should find it convenient to place the item away from the windows or outside walls as much as possible. If you recall, certain homes and climates often suffer from cold or drafty outside walls up to the point that lighting also penetrates the area. As you can imagine, sun rays hitting your child’s face in the morning could irritate the skin, leading them to cry out loud, which could give you a headache in a matter of minutes. What’s more is that streetlights could disturb the baby’s sleep that’ll keep you up all night, yet if you’ve been wise in the placement, we’re sure that you’ll snag a few extra hours of rest soon enough.
Also, consider placing the changing table near the crib, but hold yourself back from putting all changing supplies under the table and choose an area where you could easily reach for it. As a piece of advice, we strongly encourage you to place several changing items in other areas within the house so that you’ll have something to grab in an emergency.
It’ll also be suitable if you could arrange your rocker or chair on the crib’s side so that you won’t have far to go in transferring your sleeping baby. You could add furniture straps to the heavy furniture around the room to secure your child’s safety.
Observe Safety Hazards
Regardless of how your baby behaves, a parent should never disregard the necessary safety precautions, like installing smoke alarms outside the nursery to guarantee that would inform you of any fire incidents inside the house.
For this, it’s a good idea to purchase alarms with long-lasting lithium batteries, knowing that you must replace standard batteries yearly. We hope you also conduct a monthly test alarm to check that the device is working correctly.
On another note, parents should invest in CO or carbon monoxide detectors, given that this chemical generally has no odor, color, or taste. But you may not even know that you’re introducing your baby to this harmful air as this usually comes from appliances that use kerosene, gas, propane, wood, and oil. Then, add window guards so that children in the household are safe from falling out the window.
Final Words
If you’re doubtful of the potential dangers inside your home for a baby, it’ll be worth a shot to read various articles on the subject.
Though there’s no perfect checklist, and it’s a draining task to prepare the nursery, it’s still a critical part of being a new parent, especially now that infant deaths are prevalent. So exhaust all attention to the nursery room, as no amount of fatigue should push you to neglect your responsibility and endanger your baby’s well-being.
