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What Do You Know About Baby Safety Gate?
We have a Houdini at our house! JB who'll be two in May received her big girl bed past October. She was creating holes in the walls each time banging and sliding her baby's crib in the room, so we threw in the towel and decided to buy her a twin bed - simillar to her big sister's. Her big sister (A.K.A Gabster) had made the transition easily and we were hoping for a similar experience.
JB found out the first night that she could possibly get out of her bed as well as her room and wander around the upstairs of our house. The Gabster alerted us to this when she screamed at 4 a.m. "Get this pest out of my bed". Ok, I told The Man, you're in charge now. Discover a way to keep JB contained between the hours of 10 p.m. and six a.m. If at all possible in her bed, but at the least in her own bedroom. Before you advise just shutting her door, we did. We even used one of those plastic child-proof doorknob covers. Little Houdini figured it out within few days. Luckily, The Hubby rose to the challenge and arrived home with The First Years Hands Free Gate.
The First Years Hands Free Gate is sleek, white and simple to setup. It is also the fourth different type of gateway to come into our house, so i approached it with a little bit of skepticism. Others had failed in the past - exactly what could make this gate special? Ooooh - no hands! How cool! No more juggling a sleeping little one to open up the gate. No maneuvering out of the way as the gate swings open. No need to have The Hubby make 4 trips to the home improvement store in order to have this gate up and running.
This gate, The First Years Hands Free Gate is pressure mounted. Meaning you stick 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 electrical power drill - what's even better - no holes in the wall. Actually, there is a nut that twists to maintain the little pressure pads in place. Luckily, provided with the gate is the wrench/lock-fit gauge thing-a-ma-bobby you need to make it all happen. The pressure pads are fantastic. They keep the gate's components from doing any damage to your walls. Ours (the pressure pads - not the walls) are white and are made of some form of rubber. Potential purchasers have to note that tightening up the nuts (there are 4) may demand some upper body strength. This gate will work best when a passing baby can't even wiggle it, so tighten away using the thing-a-ma-bobby.
The First Years Hands Free Gate will fit into any doorway that's 29" to 34" wide. Gleam 5" extension accessible that will make this gate fit openings approximately 44" wide. The maker states that customers can have 1 extension on each side of The First Years Hands Free Gate and it will still be secure. They don't recommend going above this number for safety reasons. Thankfully we did not need an extension for JB's narrow bedroom doorway. Needless to say, the extension comes separately and perhaps costs a lot so I was great with not requiring one. Ok, so you've got it in. Now just how does it perform?? Oh this really is so interesting. The good news is even though your little ones observe you opening the gate, they will NOT be able to open it. Why you ask yourself? Well, The First Years Hands Free Gate is operated with a FOOT PEDAL! You will find there's gray 2.5 inch by 2.5 inch piece of plastic that the adult who wants to open the gate steps on with one foot and "bam" the gate will open. The control pedal is on either side of the gate, therefore the "opening adult" could operate the gate from other side. This did initially create a difficulty for us because we were utilizing it in JB's doorway and still needed to be able to close the door to her bedroom. The foot pedal was keeping us from being able to close the door all the way. Repositioning the gate an additional inch far from the door helped this issue.
Two cool top features of The First Years Hands Free Gate include that the gate swings open in both ways. From a mom with gates which are installed and can only swing one direction, count on me, this is a plus. The 2nd is the gate makes a loud "click" in order to indicate to you the gate has locked. I really like this, except at night when I really want to be able to close the gate as gently as I possibly can. Never happens. And the small stinker swears the "click" woke her up.
The noted click also must be rated a minus for the disturbance factor. I'd like to be able to lock the opposing force inside - and never have them realize. One more negative is that after several weeks of locking herself in her bedroom, JB Houdini still does not get it. Both girls regularly close the gate behind them as they go into the room and then whine that they're "locked in". Duh - don't close the gate. I do not really mind, but at the very early morning when I am trying to find that last five minutes of rest, hearing "open the gate, open the gate" is totally annoying.
Please remember, just like any gate you might purchase for your house, unless the gate can be MOUNTED to the wall with hardware, Don't use it at the top of a staircase. Again, the only form of gate that may be ideal to be used at the top of the stairs is a gate that is PERMENENTLY ATTACHED to the wall. This (and all other) pressure mounted gates (types that require no hardware) are not 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
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