With Christmas right around the corner, it’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of shopping, baking, and wrapping the mounds of gifts you picked out for your little guy. But you definitely shouldn’t forget about baby’s safety in the midst of all the holiday craziness! From hanging childproof decorations on your tree, to making sure his gifts are age appropriate — watch to find out what else you shouldn’t overlook when getting ready for this seasons festivities with your lovable bundle of joy.

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Guest post by Melissa Chapman

It’s a mother’s unfathomable nightmare. The idea that the person in whose hands you leave your kids could turn around and harm them. It’s a situation every working parent grapples with; finding that perfect combination of love, affection and street smart sense in an individual who will care for your offspring when you can’t care for them yourself. Yesterday the tony Upper West side of Manhattan was rocked over the horrific details which emerged after a mother, Marina Krim, returned to her apartment to find her two kids, Leo, 2, and Lucia, 6, allegedly stabbed to death by their 50-year-old nanny, Yoselyn Ortega. Even typing out this last sentence, my stomach is in knots, at the thought that this mother — who just hours before had written a lovely blog post about her kids and their mundane, yet completely extraordinary milestones and lives — could suffer such a devastating loss.

As a working parent — or as this mom was, a parent who needed an extra set of hands to help with her three young children — how can one process the aftermath of this situation, and the fear that a person you hire to come into your home and protect your most precious of assets, your children, could be capable of such an atrocity? Up until she had her third child, this mother was a stay-at-home mom who cared for her kids exclusively. When she and her husband had  chosen to look for childcare, they had been extra careful in hiring their nanny and vetting her, going as far as to spend nine days with her family in the Dominican Republic before inviting her into their home. This family took every precaution to vet the credentials of this woman, so how can a parent ever know what lurks in the heart of her nanny ?

Sure, millions of parents have been leaving their kids in the care of nannies for thousands of years, and this type of tragedy is relatively rare. Even if parents follow all the recommendations for finding a capable and supportive caregiver, is there ever a guarantee that something like this couldn’t happen?

According to Elissa Freeman, whose daughter has been in the care of a nanny since she was two and a half, this tragedy has hit a chord.  “So many of us entrust the care of our children to live-in caregivers,” says Freeman. “This is a very unusual and tragic case and not all caregivers should be painted with the same brush. As a mother, I would hope the vetting process on behalf of the agency was sound, as would be my own good judgment.”

Cara Paiuk, an Upper West Side mom who just last year wrote this post about her beloved nanny, says UWS moms are going to be freaking out over this and rightfully so but, they shouldn’t let it change their lives.

“I won’t live in fear,” says Paiuk. “Honestly, I think what happened is an isolated incident. No amount of vetting, or gut instinct, which is what my husband and I used, can ensure the safety of our kids. It’s all a crap shoot and we just do our best. We loved our nanny. She was part of our family. Could I say with 100 percent certainty that she wouldn’t lose her sh*t one day and do something unthinkable? Probably not.”

For most working parents, childcare is not a luxury; it is a necessity. There are no words of comfort for these grieving parents and, as a collective community, we need to look at this tragedy and measure it against our own lives. That every moment spent with our loved ones is a precious gift not to be squandered. And unfortunately, try as we might to protect and guide our children and steer them clear from any and all harm, we simply can’t.

Do you have any advice or thoughts you can share which have helped you find the right caregiver for your kids?

Plus, more from The Bump:

How I Knew My Nanny Was “the One”

How to Know What’s Happening at Day Care

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You won’t LOL when you hear this news. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that “texting while parenting” has led to an increase in children’s injuries over the past few years.

The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that nonfatal injuries to children under age five rose 12 percent between 2007 and 2010, despite a decline in the years before 2007. At the same time, the number of Americans who own a smartphone has grown from 9 million to 63 million at the end of 2010, according to research firm comScore. Emergency room doctors don’t see this as a coincidence.

“It’s very well understood within the emergency-medicine community that utilizing devices — hand-held devices — while you are assigned to watch your kids — that resulting injuries could very well be because you are utilizing those tools,” says Dr. Wally Ghurabi, medical director of the emergency center at the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, to the Wall Street Journal.

While the connection makes complete sense, doctors and researchers face some struggles in proving there’s a direct link. For starters, children — especially babies and toddlers — are naturally prone to accidents. Learning to walk and handle the world around you is bound to cause some falls, even if the parent is watching closely.

Also, people tend to pick and chose when it comes to self-evaluation. According to the Wall Street Journal, parents don’t report distraction as a cause for accidents, for fear of being judged. In addition, they tend to under-report how much time they spend on their mobiles, whether it’s because they’re unsure or because they don’t want to face criticism.

But other data supports the idea that parents’ attention is key in protecting kids from injury. Barbara Morrongiello, a psychology professor at the University of Guelph in Canada, conducted a survey of over 60 families. She found that 67 percent of the kids’ injuries occurred when a parent wasn’t supervising or was only listening intermittently, while 10 percent occurred when a parent was watching.

Despite this very close connection, more research must be done to prove that texting is a cause rather than a coincidence.

“What you have is an association,” says Dr. Gary Smith, founder and director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy of the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. “Being able to prove causality is the issue.”

Do you text while watching your child? How do you make sure you’re not distracted by your smartphone?

Plus, more from The Bump:

What Baby’s Playing with that Isn’t Safe

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