Baby stuff. It’s overwhelming how much stuff there is out there for babies, and for parents. Here’s my no-bullshit list of general items (I’ll also do a breastfeeding specific one and an older baby one later):
Stroller(s): ah, strollers. Something you didn’t know could be so stressful. There are 87 different kinds of strollers at buybuybaby and yet I think 80% of the people I know have an uppababy vista or cruz. (Vista is slightly larger and more expensive but can convert to have 2 seats, so I think people err on the side of the vista over the cruz). This is because these strollers are hearty, yet good looking, expensive but not stupid expensive (and because they’re so ubiquitous they’re easy to buy secondhand), and it’s just easy to follow the trend because if everyone else has them, they must be good right? We have an uppababy vista we bought secondhand and we’re thrilled. We bought it with the bassinet attachment, which I love because it’s a safe sleep space when most strollers are not. Until baby is up on hands and knees you can use the bassinet, and you can also take the bassinet off and place it on the floor (or if you’re fancy on the matching stand), and it’s safe as long as there are no blankets or anything in it, which is really nice if you end up having to take your baby around and around and around the block to fall asleep because you don’t have to transfer when you get home. It’s also another easily moveable safe space to put the baby down. We also have a yoyo for travel because it’s so light which is great, but we bought a newborn kit which we used one (1) time because we never went anywhere because pandemic. We will use it if/when we go on a plane with the normal seat. I would say to wait and buy a cheap secondhand yoyo or pockit or other small travel stroller if/when you need it. I prefer to have a sturdier main stroller and a cheaper travel one instead of using the travel one every day. The travel ones are light which is great but that also means I can’t use it when it’s too windy because it’s TOO light. Another pro of the vista is that the bottom basket is so big I could fit a diaper bag and an old dog. 10/10 for having a stroller, good luck figuring out which is right for you.
Bassinet: Relatively necessary in that you need somewhere safe for baby to sleep. I’m not going to get into for or against co-sleeping except to say that I was personally adamant about not doing it because Eric is a restless sleeper and my baby was really small and I am afraid of everything and a dog sometimes (always) finds its way into our bed. You need somewhere for the baby to sleep, but if you want to go right to crib or mini crib, you certainly could. So 10/10 for a safe sleep space, whatever you choose.
SNOO: We had a snoo, which is great but also not going to change your life probably…if you have a good sleeper they’ll sleep maybe a bit better with the snoo, a bad sleeper will always be a bad sleeper, you’ll maybe just get an extra hour or so. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes that’s life changing. But in general, it’s an expensive bassinet. It does keep them on their backs which was good for me and my anxiety. If you join the super evidence based facebook group (which I do not recommend), they’ll tell you that’s a positioner and it’s not safe. I don’t think that’s what it means, but do you. SNOO itself I’ll personally give a 7/10 because we got it at a discount--if we had paid full price I’m not sure I’d score it that high.
Crib (eventually). You will almost certainly need a crib unless you go hardcore Montessori floor bed (good luck I have no advice). My best advice here is that they are all the same as far as how they work. The difference is in how they look, what they’re made of, how big and bulky they are, and HOW TALL THE SIDES ARE given the feet on it. We ended up registering for and getting a gorgeous walnut colored west elm crib. It is made for giants. We are not giants, so every single day we curse and rue the day we chose a crib online without going to the store and trying to lower in a sack of flour with an gyrometer alarm on it (basically the best way to practice lowering a sleeping baby). Cribs are also probably the most frequently seen item on fb marketplace, because once you’re done with them you want them out ASAP because they’re enormous. It’s a high ticket item on a registry but honestly the $300 one we got as a gift for upstate (babyletto) we like better than our stupid expensive west elm one, and a $50 secondhand crib would have worked just as well. 10/10 for cribs in general.
Crib Mattress. If you have a crib, you’ll need a mattress. We got a Newton, which I really like. You can zip all the sides off and wash that, and the inside is all plastic so you can hose it down. They tend to have 20% off sales around the holidays, so plan ahead if you can. 10/10.
Pack n play (with changing piece): I found this to be a must have, even though we didn’t use it outside our apartment for the first 6 months. We set it up in our living room since our apartment has 2 floors. We needed a safe space to put the baby down to wash our hands, use the bathroom, eat something, etc. without having to walk all the way up and down, and this is perfect for that. We have a nuna sena which has a bassinet insert so the baby is closer up to the top so you don’t have to bend all the way down, but it’s not a tiny insert so you can use it for a while, and they can roll around in there so it’s not too containery. This one also came with a changing table which was perfect and we used it to change his diapers in the living room until we sent the play yard to my parents’ for naps (which it works perfectly for) at around 7 months in favor of floor space. If you do travel, it’s a perfect safe sleep space on the go, and it folds up into a little easy to carry bundle with a strap. 10/10 for me on a pack n play/the nuna sena, though I have also heard good things about the 4moms and the graco.
Changing table. You need somewhere to change diapers in the places you spend the most time, unless you plan to walk across your home to the same spot every time which is cumbersome when you’re changing 12+ diapers a day. It’s nice to have somewhere to keep your diaper changing items as well, so a changing table lets you keep everything all together. But you could also just keep a basket of items on the dresser and change your baby on a canine wee wee pad on your bed like we did for the first 4 months until they’re in their own room, so…I give an actual changing table a 6/10 because you need something, but you can improvise if you’re crafty or short on space.
Keekaroo. A changing table insert. It’s weirdly shaped so it doesn’t fit in all the changing tables, which is odd. It’s nice that it’s totally wipeable since it is bound to get pee pee and doody on it, but we just used a wee wee pad half the time. Easy to find and not gross to buy secondhand like some other changing table inserts because you can literally hose down the whole thing with soap and water. So this is a 5/10 for me. Nice to have but not necessary.
Dock a tot. Not necessary for me. It’s not a safe sleep space, but it’s a nice place to put them down next to you if you’re sitting on the couch. Very expensive and super annoying to take apart and wash and put back together. I would give it a 4/10 personally.
Swings and bouncers. There are tons of kinds and every baby likes something different. Some vibrate, some jiggle, some bounce, some rock, some swing. They’re not safe sleep spaces, though for some people this is the only place their baby will nap so they monitor closely, my official party line was no sleeping in it but he also hated them all so that was an easy stance to take. Ours only liked the baby bjorn bouncer thing, and he only liked it because of the toy bar for short periods of time. He hated the mamaroo and the graco glider. We bought and sold most of those things secondhand off facebook and I’m glad we did. Not going to bother giving a rating because every baby likes something different.
Nail Dremel. This is a must have. I use it every single day on this child, while he’s on the go I manage to snag one nail at a time and if I miss, no big deal. I cannot imagine the trauma of using an actual nail clipper and nicking a baby finger (it still haunts me the time I quicked Penny while cutting her nails and I haven’t done it since, I only Dremel). 11/10 must have.
Baby carriers. We did fabric wrap for the newborn, then an ergo 360 or a boba light mesh carrier once he was a little less floppy. I never figured out how to make a ring sling work. As far as the fabric wraps everyone will tell you a different one is their favorite. We have a solly, a k’tan, a moby, and maybe even something else. The Moby is our favorite hands down—easy to put on by yourself, adjustable for each person wearing it, secure. Our child exclusively napped inside of it for 12 weeks, and we briefly considered renaming him Mobius during that time. We may have been losing our minds. 10/10 for some kind of baby carrier.
Tabletop sterilizer: We registered for a babybrezza and I love it, we still use it even though he’s probably old enough not to need everything sterilized every time we use it. Takes 30 minutes to run, sterilizes and dries. We put pump parts, bottles, and haakaas in there. I am not a big pumper or bottle user, and we still found it super useful. You can usually find people selling them secondhand cheaply because they do take up a fair amount of counter space. You need to wash the bottles with soap and water first, otherwise milk bits accumulate in the water area and it turns gross and brown, which we learned through trail and error. I’d give it an 8/10 for convenience and the fact that it’s not actually that expensive ($100ish which isn’t cheap but when you consider we received some like $70 baby blankets, it’s a much better deal).
Clothing. Not that much. Get some kimono style shirts for when they still have their gross umbilical cords, and some footie outfits (unless it’s summer and you don’t have AC), and you’re good for the first few months. You really don’t need shoes, socks, the little mittens if you have a nail Dremel, many hats, etc. Unless you plan to go out and about and want to dress them up like little dolls (which is adorable, and power to you), they just need enough outfits to wear something appropriately warm while the clothes they just threw up on are in the wash. Also, you can just leave them in a diaper if you want. There are no rules. Almost all of our clothing was gifts or secondhand bags of it from people just giving it away in the neighborhood. 10/10 for some type of clothing, I guess.
Owlet: We got this because I’m nuts. We started off not using it, but then we decided to use it, but then we got a false alarm and I flipped the frick out (even though I was holding him and he was screaming so obviously neither his oxygen nor heart rate dropped to 0). So we stopped using it for a while. We decided to try again when we moved him to his own room and we wised up. The trick to the owlet is to put a sock over it so it doesn’t come loose and give you a false alarm. Now I love it and when I wake up in the middle of the night I just look at the green light and am able to fall back asleep without worrying if he’s breathing (though there is literally no reason he wouldn’t be, and SIDS risk is super low if you practice safe sleep and it’s before 6 months). FOR ME PERSONALLY, I would give it a 9/10. For other people it’s a 0/10. So do you.
Baby monitor: We have a eufy, a vava, and a nanit. We were fine with the first two (I think the eufy is better than the vava but they’re pretty similar. One of them shows you 2 cameras on the same monitor, I think the vava) when he was in our room and we were just using it for naps, but once he moved to his own room I found I wanted to see how he was sleeping, etc. We got the nanit and the wall mounts (after a silly long period of taking the entire travel stand back and forth between homes until Eric broke it and we realized if we got 2 wall mounts we literally only have to take the tiny piece.) We love that we can log in and see him/his naps even if we’re not home, and listen to what’s going on in his room even if we can’t see the whole room. Other people are adamantly anti-wifi, but since we strap the owlet to him anyway, I figure why not load him up with the 5g. 10/10 for some kind of monitor, and I’d specifically give the eufy an 8/10, the vava a 7/10, and the nanit a 9/10.
Sound machine: we have portable ones off amazon and a hatch. I like the hatch best, it’s great that we can control it from outside the room if we need to turn it up, and we will use it as a ready to wake clock when he’s older. 10/10
Swaddles and sleep sacks: If you choose to do swaddles, I highly suggest something with velcro. We were in the snoo so we used the swaddles that go with that, and they were great, and they make a version that isn’t meant to go in the snoo so I’d recommend those. People are FANATIC about the Ollie but I thought it was confusing and A LOT of fabric so we just did a batwing under the snoo swaddle when he started escaping. The regular halo velcro swaddles are perfectly good. People love the kyte baby sleep sacks, I think they’re a big waste of money, though I spent the same amount of money on zippadees and I think those are worth every penny because they help dampen the moro reflex just a little bit post swaddle AND they keep your baby from scratching their face with their little talons.
Other things you need:
diapers (any kind will do, but you’ll have to do some trial and error for your specific kid. We ended up a Hello Bello family)
wipes (water wipes or pampers pure for sensitive skin)
diaper cream (we started with the natural earth mama stuff and ended up having to go to the heavy hitters of desitin and aquaphor for diaper rash)
diaper bag or some kind of bag for when you go out (we got a skiphop backpack, it does the job fine. I think a bag is a bag unless it’s a bad bag)
bottles this is super personal for each baby so I won’t recommend much other than to say my super picky breastfed baby did ok with the Lansinoh Moma and that’s what the lactation consultant recommended so that’s what we used
Ok, that just might be everything you need! If I forgot something, message me and let me know @samhasbigideas on instagram.
