With so many baby items on the market today, first – time parents are often confused when they sit down to create a baby registry. How do you know which things you will need, and which you can do without? One idea is to look around for lists on the internet. Many experienced moms and dads have shared their opinions about what they used, and what they found useless. Use these lists as inspiration, and as food for thought about whether the items mentioned on the lists fit with your philosophy about how you would like to parent your child. Here is my personal take on the must haves and why bothers of all things baby.
If I were stranded on a desert island with a newborn baby and could only have five baby items (besides clothes and diapers), the very first item I would choose would be an Ergo baby carrier. Wearing my babies close to me is amazing, and the Ergo is a huge improvement over the simple sling that I used with my first son because of the options for wearing baby in different positions as well as the attached hood. If you plan to breastfeed, with a little practice you can breastfeed discreetly pretty much anywhere by covering baby’s head with the hood. The other four items would be Sophie the Giraffe, a bouncy seat, and a nursing pillow.
The items that I would not bother with include infant snowsuits, wipe warmers, baby bathtubs, nursing covers, and an extra car seat base. It is not safe to put a baby in a car seat with a snowsuit on because the straps can not tighten properly over the bulky fabric. I found that it was more awkward to try and bathe baby in a baby tub than it was to take him in the big tub with me. As ironic as it seems, there is no more obvious way to nurse in public than to wear a nursing cover. With the right clothes and some practice, or the Ergo carrier mentioned above, baby can dine much more discreetly. When I had my first baby, I did get an extra car seat base but we never used it. It was just as easy to take the first one out of the car and put it into the other car.