I always thought it is my job as a mother to protect my son. That was true until I met The Childproofer.

Not too ago, I began to realize that my watchful eye was no longer going to protect my son from all the evils of the world. Well, my home.

Until he started crawling, I never knew the dangers of ordinary household items. In a matter of weeks, the banal and boring became fun and exciting. Cabinets and drawers filled of kitchen utensils were a veritable chest of toys. Blind cords became ropes to swing from. You name it, my son was into it.

I tried homemade solutions to my problems. I bought plastic plugs for the outlets. I tied up the blind cords with a string. I even moved all of my favorite vases and trinkets to non-reachable locations.

But when the glass table came crashing down on the floor I knew I had to call in reinforcements. The Childproofer.

The Childproofer had already made his rounds of my friends. With his widgets, latches and straps, he had made holes galore in my friends' finest wood trim. With drill in hand, he was like Bob the Builder's evil twin brother. It was inevitable that I was next in his demolition path.

The Childproofer gives a free consultation to unsuspecting housewives. I like free things, so I obliged.

"See this oven handle? Hazard!" he declared.
"Your home office? He shouldn't even go in there. At all. Not with all those cords."

And then, the clincher.

"Do you want to keep your baby alive?" the evil twin asked.
"Uhm, yeah." I sheepishly replied.
"Then you must do something about this baby monitor cord, here. The way it's dangling next to your son's crib is a strangulation risk."

Clearly, I was not going to win any Mother of the Year awards from this man.

I stood, stunned and mortified by the things I had in my house that put my son in harm's way. Worse, I had fallen hook, cable and monitor cord for his scare tactics.

How is it that a complete stranger can make me feel so incomplete about my mothering skills? I never meant to put endanger my child, but after a checklist of all the things that were deemed unsafe in my domain, I felt as if we were living in the House of Flying Daggers.

I then called the only person who could pick me up from my doldrums. My mother.

"We never did any of that when you kids were growing up. You used to play with knives and television plugs, and you're just fine," she said. I think she was doing her best to pick me up.

"The Childproofer said there are dangers lurking everywhere in my home. Did you know that door stoppers are a choking hazard?" She didn't, and that made me feel a little better.

But I still wasn't convinced that all was well. Even my mother could not protect me from paying for everything that might give my son one-eighth of 1 percent chance of surviving through the next day.

So I called up the Childproofer.

"When can you come back to fix all of this?" I reluctantly asked him.

We put a date on the calendar and I waited with a watchful eye until I could secure my house. When he arrived with his tool boxes and equipment I wondered what exactly I had done.

I was now locked out of my house.

No drawer, no blind, no fireplace was accessible without maneuvering my finger into a strange and twisted position. The easiest task -- getting something to eat out of my cabinets -- was now a four-minute endeavor that even Houdini couldn't untangle.

I immediately called the Childproofer.

"Help!" I cried. "I can't see out and my window only opens 4 inches."

"That's so your child doesn't fall out of the top story window," he explained.

I protested and questioned and complained and argued. But the Childproofer had logical explanations. After a lot of back and forth, I decided to try to live within his system. I could step over the bar that holds the safety gate to the wall without tripping. As annoying as it was, I could manage to push down the latch to get a drawer open.

I guess preventing even the smallest of accidents is worth the hassle. Even my mom didn't let me run with scissors.

Sara R. Fisher is a new mom trying to look hip, work hard and raise a child -- all at the same time. Her column appears every other Thursday. You can read more from her at her blog, Self-Made Mom.