This month marks the 25th anniversary of the Juvenile Products Manufacturers’ Association (JPMA) sponsoring of Baby Safety Month - to bring public focus to an important issue. This year, the JPMA is focusing on car seat and booster seat safety.

When it comes to your baby, every safety issue is critical - from having a child-proofer help make your home a safe haven for you and your baby to having essential safety gear available when needed.

Look around. Plan ahead. Learn first aid and CPR. Leave your child with a competent, trained babysitter. And, of course, check out SafetyMate for the New Parent - which in a most timely, well-placed debut, is launching this month!

Be the ROCK STAR at your next baby shower and give the gift that shows you care!

Check it out at www.safetymate.com/home/index.html

I’m curious…what are the main fears parents have when bringing their newborn home from the hospital?

I’ll throw a few items out and I’d love to hear back from different members what your thoughts are.  Feel free to add others.

1. Will I know what to do?
2. Basic care issues (diapering, feeding, sleep schedules)
3. Medical concerns/First aid issues (what if baby stops breathing? what if baby falls? what if baby has seizures? what if baby is allergic to something and has a reaction?)
4. Will I ever be able to leave my precious baby with someone else? (competent babysitters, spouses, grandparents, etc.)

I am sure there are more. Please comment. I’d love to get your feedback.

As I noted in an earlier post, we have some exciting happenings!

After our debut on the TODAY show, it is now no secret that we are coming to market with a brand new solution to family first aid issues. SafetyMate for the New Parent is talking first aid for the home. The newest trend in essential safety gear for the modern mom and dad, SafetyMate allows parents the opportunity to refresh all the information they might have learned one time on-the-job or in an infant CPR class - at any time! Because SafetyMate is more interactive and engaging, with colored icons and blinking lights to guide the user, caretakers are much more likely to spend the time to refresh the information and to be prepared to deal with an emergency if the need arises.

Allison and I were recently at a trade show when a mother asked us how she was supposed to listen to the device over ”my own hysterical screaming.”

Interesting question.

My first thought was that in being afraid to even THINK about the issue that something might happen to your child is probably very normal and was, obviously for her, very anxiety provoking.

My own experience in being trained only once a year (while I was working in psychiatric hospitals) left me feeling vulnerable and afraid that I was supposed to know how to respond when actually I somehow felt LESS prepared than had I just remained totally ignorant. The diffusion of responsibility theory would absolutely be in play had I remained untrained.

However, now that I have been around this information and have listened to it numerous times, I have felt calm and totally capable of handling a situation. In fact, since I have been working with SafetyMate, I actually have responded on four separate occasions. In each case, I was able to not only remain calm myself, but have been able to keep others calm as well.

The point here is that preparedness does not increase anxiety, but allays it. The likelihood that a child is going to experience some emergency seems inescapable. The choice is to be prepared or to remain ignorant and perhaps when the time comes, to scream hysterically. Which would help your kid more?

CNN’s report on the tragic story of a five year-old kindergarten student in Marlborough, MA choking to death while on a bus ride to school was forwarded to me. 

The bus driver pulled over after being alerted of the emergency and called immediately for help. The child was reportedly choking on a foreign object. Since brain death begins to occur within four to six minutes of being deprived oxygen, EMS response time is critical. But really what is more critical is whether bus drivers, as the only adults present in this type of scenario, are trained in First Aid/CPR. School bus drivers across the nation are entrusted with the safety of our children.  Any adult who has the responsibility for caring for a child - be it for 20 minutes or for 6 hours - needs to be adequately trained in first aid/CPR and needs to be constantly refreshed on that information. Practice decreases panic. Accidents do happen. Adults need to be prepared to take care of the children in their care.

Despite OSHAs requirements that employees be trained in First Aid and CPR if the company is more than four minutes away from emergency medical care - many informally or perhaps even formally tell their employees to do nothing more than call 911.

Is the intention of OSHAs First Aid Standard being lost here?

How do you feel about a company that tells its employees “hands off?”

You guys are the experts. What would you like for lay responders to have done or to know before you get there…?