Bathing baby safely
Since Jamaine turned a year old, I have been training her to be a “big girl” bit by bit.
She took to eating solids and drinking from a cup excitedly.
But one thing that took a bit longer for her to adjust to was taking a bath in the bathroom.
I have been giving her baths in her tub until her 11th month and she loved it a lot. Since our bathroom was bit small, I would set up her tub just outside the bathroom so we’d have more space to move around in.
She seemed to like splashing water on the floor and playing with her rubber toys in the water so I thought our transition to the bathroom would be easy.
But when I brought her inside the bathroom, she seemed to be terrified of the faucet and just about everything in the bathroom. When I would pour water on her, she would cling to me with all her might, tiptoe as high as she could and tilt her head up as if she was drowning!
I figured she just needed to see that the bathroom is a fun place to take a bath in. So I taught her how to turn the faucet on and I explained to her that’s what we do when we want water to come out. Then I taught her to to turn the faucet off and explained to her that’s what we do when we’re done taking a bath. I also used her rubber ducky as a dummy to show her that we need to pour water on the body to take off the soap and become squeaky clean.
It took us a few weeks before she finally adjusted to her “big girl” bath time.
Now she likes going inside the bathroom and she seems to want to explore everything, from the bathoom floor, to the shower knob, to the toilet bowl (eek!).
I had to make the bathroom more baby-safe for Jamaine. So I spent a whole afternoon scrubbing and re-scrubbing the bathroom with the help of Mr. Muscle just to make sure everything, even the toilet bowl, is clean when my baby touches them. I also placed all soaps, shampoos and other bathroom cleaners out of reach to prevent any slip-ups or foaming mouths.
I searched online for some bathroom safety products for babies and found these cute and useful little things on Amazon.
I’m thinking when we set up our own house, it would be safer to have walk in tubs for the kids coupled with a tub bumper.
Now, if only I could get Jamaine to like her inflatable pool too. Just realized that summer has come and gone but her Little Mermaid bathing suit and little swimming pool remain unused.
Oh well, ’til the next summer.
Hopefully, by that time I’ll be back to my old sexy bod so I can join my babies in their pool too. 
This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The last time I checked the grocery, there wasn’t any Mrs. Muscle. But kidding aside, the product does work, I actually had an easy time scrubbing the bathroom. Now it’s a staple in my cleaning aids cabinet. 
iris (20 comments.) May 24th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
i like that dora spout cover
it’s so cute. at least jamaine actually likes taking a bath. hehe. some kids don’t. it’s a good thing mia does too. instead of bath time, i tell her it’s swimming time. that way she associates it with fun. it’s worked so far, and sometimes she doesn’t even want to get out of the bath. i have to sprinkle cold water on her to get her to stand up. 
iriss last blog post..Gusto kong mag-swimming [litratong pinoy]
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