We have a Houdini at our house! JB who will be two in April got her big girl bed past November. The girl was creating openings in the walls each time slamming and sliding her crib around the room, and so we gave up and decided to buy her a twin bed - much like her big sister's. Her big sister (A.K.A Gabster) had made the transition very easily and we were longing for the same experience.

JB figured out the first night that she could leave her bed and her bedroom and stroll around the upstairs of our home. The Gabster alerted us for this when she screamed at 4 a.m. "Get this pest out of my bed". Ok, I said to The Man, you are in charge. Find a method to retain JB contained in between the hours of 10 p.m. and six a.m. Preferably in her bed, but at the least in her own bedroom. Before you propose shutting her door, we did. We even utilized one particular plastic child-proof doorknob covers. Tiny magician figured it out in just days. Thankfully, The Hubby rose to the difficult task and got home with The First Years Hands Free Gate.

The First Years Hands Free Gate is sleek, white and easy to put in. It's also the fourth different kind of gate to come into our home, so i treated it with a bit of skepticism. Other safety gates had failed in the past - exactly what might make this gate distinctive?

Ooooh - no hands! How cool! No more juggling a sleeping child to open up the gate. No maneuvering out of the way as the gate swings open. No need to have The Hubby make 4 trips to the hardware store in order to get this gate working.

This gate, The First Years Hands Free Gate is pressure mounted. This means you stick the gate in the doorway wherever you would like to use it and twist the ends till it is good and stuck! Absolutely no hammer and nails, no electrical power drill - best of all - no holes in the wall. In fact, there's a nut that twists to keep the small pressure pads in place. Luckily, came with the gate is the wrench/lock-fit gauge thing-a-ma-bobby you need to make it all happen. The pressure pads are amazing. They keep the gate's hardware from doing any damage to your walls. Ours (the pressure pads - not the walls) are white and are constructed with some type of rubber. Potential purchasers will need to note that tightening up the nuts (there are 4) actually demand some upper body power. This gate works best when a passing baby is unable to even wiggle it, so tighten away with the thing-a-ma-bobby.

The First Years Hands Free Gate will fit into any entrance that's 29" to 34" wide. Gleam 5" extension available that may make this gate fit openings approximately 44" wide. The maker states that consumers might have 1 extension on each side of The First Years Hands Free Gate and it will still be secure. They do not advise going above this number for protection reasons. Thankfully we did not need an extension for JB's small room entrance. Needless to say, the extension comes separately and perhaps costs a lot of money so I was fine without in need of one.

Ok, so you've got it in. Now how does it perform?? Oh this really is so interesting. The best part is that even though your little ones see you opening the gate, they will NOT be able to open it. Why you ask yourself? Well, The First Years Hands Free Gate is controlled with a FOOT PEDAL! There's a grey 2.5 inch by 2.5 inch part of plastic material that the grownup who wants to open the gate steps on with one foot and "pow" the gate will open. The control pedal is on either side of the gate, therefore the "opening adult" could operate the gate from other side. This did at first pose a challenge for us because we were using it in JB's doorway and still needed to be able to shut the door to her room. The control pedal was keeping us from being able to shut the door entirely. Repositioning the gate an additional inch far from the doorway improved this challenge.

Two neat features of The First Years Hands Free Gate include that the gate swings open in both directions. From a mother with previous gates which are installed and can only swing one way, count on me, this is mostly a plus. The second is that the gate produces a loud "click" in order to indicate to you the gate has secured. I love this, except in the evening when I wish to have the ability to close the gate as silently as I possibly can. Never happens. And the small stinker swears the "click" woke her up.

The pointed out click also must be rated a minus for that disturbance factor. I want to be able to lock the enemy inside - but not have them discover. One more negative point is that after several weeks of securing herself in her room, JB Houdini still does not get it. Both young ladies on a regular basis close the gate behind them when they go into the room and then whine that they're "locked in". Duh - don't close the gate. I don't really mind, but at the first light when I am trying to get that last five minutes of sleep, hearing "open the gate, open the gate" is totally annoying.

Please take into account, just like any gate you may buy for your house, unless the gate can be MOUNTED to the wall with hardware, Don't use it at the top of a staircase. Again, the only real form of gate that's acceptable for use at the top of the stairs is a gate which is PERMENENTLY ATTACHED to the wall. This (and all other) pressure mounted gates (types that need no hardware) are not safe to EVER use at the top of the stairs. You can look at The First Years Hands Free Gate and several other great baby safety gates at The First Years Hands Free Gate