He teeters a little, wobbles a bit, and using all his might, he rolls over for the first time. A few weeks later, with a toy just out of her reach, she uses her toes to push herself forward. Not too long after that, you have a mini marine, scooting around the house on her stomach, arms pulling her forward to her desired destination. The marine crawl turns into a full-fledged crawl, and you know the day is near. Then one day, one gloriously terrifying day, your baby pulls himself up to the couch, or the coffee table, or the dog, and takes that first step.
All of this advance in mobility could happen over a very short period of time. Or a fairly long period of time. But it will happen. And you should be prepared. The first time your baby rolls over could be as early as three months of age. Crawling could be at six or seven months. Walking at ten to twelve months. Of course, there are those stories of the child who walks as early as nine months (like mine), or as late as sixteen months (also like mine). The range of “normal” is pretty wide.
But it will happen.
And with mobility comes new dangers. New access to otherwise unreachable dangers.
When your baby begins to roll over, the bed is no longer a place you can leave him. He might just roll right off the edge of the bed. And really, the bed should never be a place you leave him unsupervised, because you never know when that first roll over could happen. The dangers on the bed are not limited to just falling off though. You baby could roll into a pillow, be unable to roll back out of it, and smother himself in the soft folds of the pillow. The bed seems like a perfectly safe place, but for a baby, the dangers are great. Better to place him or her in a crib, or another enclosed area meant for babies.
After baby learns to roll over, she will go through any of a variety of stages of mobility. From the marine crawl, to the butt scoot, or straight to the four-limbed crawl, her motivation will almost always be to get from here to some object over there. As with rolling over, scooting and/or crawling comes with challenges anew. Baby will be drawn to items she can put in her mouth. And she will recognize and desire immediately something that is not one of her toys. Paper, dog food, jewelry, anything that baby can reach, baby will reach. You will need to visually sweep the area constantly, and keep all chokables and other such dangers out of her area.
As soon as your sweet, pudgy pumpkin can pull himself up, your life is officially over. He can now reach everything in your home, either by simply reaching up, or by climbing whatever mountain is available to get what he wants to reach. You might as well just empty the house at this point. Consider furnishing your home with a well-reputed baby furniture maker’s product. There are many fine brands out there, but one that many are familiar with is Little Tykes. Your local stores can provide you with some excellent expertise on different items, as well a variety of recommendations online with a simple Google Search using terms like “Baby Safety”. Don’t forget to put baby gates at both the bottom (yes, they will try to go up) and the top of the stairs, and be prepared for your little circus performer to attempt to climb that too. Some children will succeed (like mine).
When your bundle of joy takes her first step, say your prayers. At this point you will understand my recommendation to invest in child-safe furnishings as your baby will clock her head on the corners of your dining room table, and you will grow tired of explaining her bruised forehead to strangers. The climbing will continue (more reason for the kid-friendly stuff in your living room), and the propensity for injury will increase exponentially. But not just injury. Now that your pumpkin is walking, he can walk away from you. He can walk out the front door (like mine), into the pool area, down the street, into traffic, you name it. Don’t forget corner guards on things like fireplace edges, and corners with hard edges. Regardless of what you do, the bumps and bruises are going to come, unless you bubble wrap your child and don’t let them “do” anything.
Injuries and issues vary with each stage in development, growing more serious with each subsequent stage. If you ever thought parenting would be easy, you now know your former self was an ignorant–yet blissful–nincompoop. You now know that with parenting comes the very real possibility of injury, serious injury, at any moment. Fortunately, you also now know that there is no better, more fulfilling job in the world.
