Child-safety devices getting more sophisticated

Products include electronic devices, magnet locks, cordless drapes

Granite crowds the kitchen, couples could swim laps in the bathtub, and cherrywood finally sheaths that dream library.

But here comes Junior.

A few decades ago, child-proofing the house meant little more than "keep the martinis away from Baby's reach." Now, it means a blizzard of products, a cacophany of advice, and even professional child-proofing services.

The cabinets? They need doodads to keep baby out. That lovely cherry wood coffee table? Time to wrap its edges with foamy "bumpers." Steps demand gates, the decorative outlets need stolid covers, and don't even think about leaving those antique glass doorknobs alone. Cover them.

"When we first got into it, it seemed so overwhelming and scary," says Roxborough Park, Colo., mom and blogger Karen Mohler, 44, the mother of a 4-year-old girl. If she didn't buy the right stuff, she feared her "baby would die a horrible, flaming death right away."

The family baby-proofed the house; Junior survived.

People in the know about childproofing say the market now is flooded with new products, many of them worthwhile. But the first thing any parent should do, they say, is get down on hands and knees and scoot through the house.

"Crawl around each room," says Debra Holtzman, a child-safety expert in Florida and author of The Safe Baby: A Do It Yourself Guide to Home Safety. "You'll be surprised at what you see."

You might find nails sticking from the underside of tables, or televisions that could tumble with a yank, scatterings of things under couches that kids could choke on and a sharp knife too close to the edge of a counter.

Only after the crawling should a homeowner begin baby-proofing.

Most injuries revolve around these themes: falls, water, fire, poison, suffocation and collisions.

Each threat invites solutions.

Where child-proofing used to hinge on the kind of hardware you screwed into place, now it increasingly relies on things you turn on, says Stephanie Brown, the parenting, baby and toddler guide at About.com.

Parents, she says, "are starting to rely on a lot of electronic safety devices. Remote fever monitors that you can hook up to your child. It used to be baby monitors -- now people have them with cameras."

One popular device, she says, involves putting a bracelet on the child that is connected, electronically, to a base station.