Ensuring your baby's safety

Keeping your baby safe requires vigilance throughout childhood.

Eight major dangers

Our infant safety checklist can help you take the steps needed to protect your child from these eight major dangers: automobiles, burns, drowning, falls, miscellaneous and deliberate injury, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), suffocation and choking.

Helpful tips

Following these tips also can help you reduce the risk of an accident to your baby.

Make your baby a safe rider. Hundreds of children under five years of age die each year in car accidents and thousands more suffer serious injury.

Car safety seats, properly used, can prevent many injuries and deaths. You should never transport your child in a car without using a car seat. You also must use one that fits your child and meets current safety standards.
Although airbags can protect older children, they can injure infants. Never place an infant in an automobile seat that has an airbag.

Babies shouldn't smoke. Passive smoking increases your child's risk for colds and other respiratory problems, even sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Babies should not be near anyone who is smoking.
No one should smoke in your house.

Install alarms. Your house should have smoke, heat and carbon monoxide detectors on every level of the house.

Get rid of mold. Homes with too much mold can cause lung problems in infants. The usual small amounts of mold found in most homes don't cause problems. But standing water with constantly wet walls or floors encourage the excessive growth of molds, some of which can cause serious lung injury to infants. Tobacco smoke increases the damage that excessive mold can do to the lung. Repairing water leaks, removing standing water and replacing constantly wet wood or wallboard minimize the chance your child will have a problem.

Remember, babies are fragile. Parents often experience extreme frustration as they try to juggle their many responsibilities. Fatigue, sleep-deprivation and the many demands of a new baby can drive a parent to the breaking point. Occasionally, a frustrated parent may be tempted to shake their crying baby. Never, ever do this. Shaking babies can permanently damage their brains. Read about shaken baby syndrome.

Encourage safe child's play. Seemingly wonderful, innocent-appearing toys may present unanticipated hazards to your child. Regularly checking the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission's toy hazard recall list can help you make sure you made the right choice.

Prevent baby burns. Burns are the third leading cause of accidental death among infants less than one year of age. To reduce your baby's chance of getting burned, follow a few simple suggestions.