Bath Time Safety
Posted on 4th February 2015
In the past 24 hours a number of articles have been written about bath seat dangers including pieces from the Daily Mail, The Public Health Authority and ROSPA to name a few. So I’m going to add to those articles with the same warnings, please DON’T ever leave your baby in a bath seat or a swim seat unattended, even for a second whilst you go for a wee or answer the door. These devices are not capable of saving your baby from drowning.
The Child Accident Protection Trust says that 1 in 4 drownings of children under 5 in the UK happen in the bath and a further 8 accidents are non fatal but extremely serious and need hospital attention.
Bath seats are useful and can be lots of fun, but many are also unstable with inefficient suckers on the bottom, or designs that are overly top-heavy meaning they tip forward easily. Babies can bang their heads as they fall face first into the water. Even as little as 2cm of water can cause a baby to drown.
Swim seats are equally as dangerous and parents who use them in paddling pools and even bathtubs should again ensure that they NEVER leave their baby or child unsupervised even for short periods.
Bath time is not only lots of messy fun, but it’s a great educational time for you and your baby, especially if you haven’t yet started those all important baby swim lessons yet (More about that later). Enjoying water on the face and head is an important step to enjoying swimming; the warm water and safe environment is the perfect combination to begin introducing your baby to water.
It’s never to early to start baby swim classes and it’s never been so easy to arrange with excellent, well trained teachers at schools up and down the country. Do your children the biggest favour of their life and teach them to swim.
Go on, do it now!