Which Baby Safety Gate to Buy
We have a Houdini at our house! JB who’ll be two in May got her big girl bed past September. The girl was making holes in the walls when banging and sliding her baby’s crib in the room, consequently we gave up and bought her a twin bed – exactly like her big sister’s. Her big sister (A.K.A Gabster) had made the transition effortlessly and we were hoping for the same experience.
JB discovered the first night that she could possibly get out of her bed and her room and stroll around the upstairs of our home. The Gabster alerted us for this when she screamed at 3 a.m. “Get this pest away from my bed”.
Fine, I told The Hubby, you are in charge now. Discover a method to retain JB safely contained in between the hours of 10 p.m. and six a.m. Ideally in her bed, but at the least in her own room. Before you advise simply just shutting her door, we did. We actually used one of those plastic child-proof doorknob covers. Small Houdini figured it out within just days. Thankfully, The Hubby went up to the obstacle and arrived home with The First Years Hands Free Gate.
The First Years Hands Free Gate is sleek, white and easy to set up. It is also the 4th different type of gateway to come into our home, and so i treated it with a little bit of skepticism. Others had failed in the past – exactly what would make this gate distinctive? Ooooh – no hands! How cool! No more juggling a sleeping child to open the gate. No maneuvering out of the way while the gate swings open. No need to have The Hubby make 4 trips to the home improvement center just to have this gate working.
This gate, The First Years Hands Free Gate is pressure mounted. This means you keep the gate in the doorway where you wish to use it and twist the ends till it is perfect and stuck! Absolutely no hammer and nails, no electric power drill – even better – zero holes in the wall. Actually, there is a nut that twists to keep the small pressure pads in position. Lucky for us, provided with the gate is the wrench/lock-fit gauge thing-a-ma-bobby that you need to make it all happen. The pressure pads are excellent. They keep the gate’s hardware from doing any scratches to your walls. Ours (the pressure pads – not the walls) are white and are constructed with some sort of rubber. Potential purchasers should note that tightening up the nuts (there are four) may demand some upper body power. This gate will work best when a passing toddler can’t even shake it, so tighten away with the thing-a-ma-bobby.
The First Years Hands Free Gate will easily fit in any entrance that’s 29″ to 34″ wide. There is also a 5″ expansion accessible that will make this gate fit openings approximately 44″ wide. The maker states that consumers can have 1 extension on each side of The First Years Hands Free Gate and it will still be secure. They do not suggest exceeding this number regarding safety factors. Thankfully we didn’t need an extension for JB’s small room entrance. Needless to say, the extension is sold separately and almost certainly costs a fortune so I was fine with not requiring one.
Ok, so you have got it in. Now how does it function?? Oh this is so awesome. The best part is that even though your little ones see you opening the gate, they’ll NOT be able to do it. Why you wonder? Well, The First Years Hands Free Gate is handled with a FOOT PEDAL! There’s a grey 2.5 inch by 2.5 inch piece of plastic material that the grownup who would like to open the gate steps on with one foot and “bam” the gate will open. The pedal is on either side of the gate, therefore the “opening adult” could operate the gate from other side. This did initially pose a challenge for us because we were utilizing it in JB’s doorway and still needed to be able to shut the door to her room. The foot pedal was keeping us from being able to shut the door entirely. Repositioning the gate one more inch away from the door helped this issue.
Two great options that come with The First Years Hands Free Gate involve that the gate swings open in both ways. From a mom with gates which are installed and can only swing one direction, believe me, this is mostly a plus. The second is that the gate generate a loud “click” to inform you the gate has locked. I really like this, except during the night time when I would like to be able to close the gate as quietly as I possibly can. Never happens. And the small stinker swears the “click” woke her up. The pointed out click also has to be rated a minus for the noise factor. I’d like to manage to shut the enemy within – without have them discover. Another negative is that after several weeks of locking herself in her bedroom, JB Houdini still doesn’t get it. Both young ladies on a regular basis close the gate behind them as they enter the room and later whine that they are “locked in”. Duh – don’t close the gate. I don’t really mind, but at the crack of dawn when I am trying to get that last five minutes of rest, hearing “open the gate, open the gate” is completely irritating.
Please bear in mind, just like any gate you might buy for your home, unless the gate may be MOUNTED to the wall with hardware, DO NOT put it to use at the top of a staircase. Again, the only kind of gate that is suitable for use at the top of the stairs is a gate which is PERMENENTLY ATTACHED to the wall. This (and all other) pressure mounted gates (types that need no hardware) aren’t safe to EVER use at the top of the stairs. You can check out the The First Years Hands Free Gate and some other great baby safety gates at The First Years Hands Free Gate
