Toddlers and a broken glass incident - what to do

The probability of stuff breaking in the house goes up dramatically when you have children. So I'm usually not that shocked when it happens. As I recently found out though, cleaning up BROKEN GLASS with a toddler in the house adds a lot more drama to the usual routine I'd go through. Since it was the first time it had happened to us since having Noah we had a bit of an adrennaline rush as I realised that it is actually quite a dangerous situation. Over the last few weeks it has happened again (and again) and I got used to dealing with it efficiently - so I put together a step-by-step guide of what to do after a glass breaking incident. This works for me:

1) Lift up your child, take away from the scene and check for any cuts
If there are cuts but there are no pieces of glass in the wound and the bleeding is minor, sort out with band aids. If there is heavy bleeding or you can see pieces of glass still in the wound make your way to A&E.

2) Find a safe place to leave your child (e.g. cot, play pen, another adult, etc) or block off the area so that there is no way your toddler can go back to where the broken glass is.

3) Pick up the biggest pieces of glass by hand and dispose safely (e.g. wrap them in paper or something else and put in the bin)

4) Use (paper) kitchen towells to soak up any liquid that may be on the floor around the broken glass. Ideally dispose of the towells as well.

5) Get your vaccuum cleaner out and clean the entire area and all around it. It's easier to see small pieces of glass if you kneel down. Make sure you've done a thorough job.

6) Take out your rubbish bag or bin you used for disposing the bigger pieces of glass / kitchen towells

Finally ... look on the bright side ... broken glass is supposed to be a sign of good luck!

-Stef