rivka | Questions for people with infant care experience.

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Questions for people with infant care experience.

Here's what

curiousangel and I have for the baby so far:

two nightgowns
one bib
one stuffed dachshund (thanks to

geekchick)
one book of original nursery rhymes (thanks to

papersky)
I Am A Bunny (board-book edition)
Touch And Feel Baseball (board-book edition)

It occurs to us that this might not be enough.

Tomorrow we're going to a Baby Products MegaStore to start familiarizing ourselves with our various options for gear. We're still far from buying, and even far from registering for gifts, but we want to get out there and actually handle various kinds of equipment.

So, those of you who have had infant experience, as a parent or daycare worker or babysitter:

What baby gear was absolutely vital?
What was a waste of money and space?
Are there any particular products you swear by?

(Quick rundown of current parenting plans, because I'm sure that they will affect gear recommendations: Li'l Critter will be breastfed. We disagree about cloth vs. disposable diapers. Li'l Critter will not sleep in our bed. We have a car, but also travel by bus and light rail.)

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Do not bother with any clothing that buttons up the back. Baby clothing should not button. Ideally, it should zip; second-best is snap. There must be openings up the crotch and down both legs. You undress a baby's bottom half a lot more often than its top.

You'll need an infant carrier/car seat, the kind where the carrier snaps out of the seat. Test-carry the ones in the store and see which one is least painful to your back.

Bassinets are handy for a very limited period; see if you can borrow one or buy one second-hand rather than buying new.

I got a lot more use out of the collapsible umbrella stroller than out of the full-size stroller. The collapsible one works with short-term last-minute errands; the full-size one takes more preparation.

Don't bother buying stuffed animals. People will give them to you. Boy, will they ever.

Baby spit-up STAINS. Bright colors are your friends. Pastels show every spill of Amoxicillin and nastier things.

My experience all comes from babysitting/daycare stuff...so I may express radically different ideas than other people.

Whether or not you use cloth diapers to diaper the baby, they've always been incredibly useful for other things-as burp rags, to wipe things up, etc.

I hated the wipe warmer. I thought it made the wipes smell even worse, and made them extra slimy.

while i don't have a child, i've baby sat *alot* in my time.

just remember that babies, like all humans, are bags o' drippy stuff. urine, gelatinous poo, vomit, spit... you name it, babies make it... and they get it all over everything.

everything you own should be easily washable (except for the cute sweater i'm going to make you guys :) in the washing machine. you should have multiples of everything unless you want to do laundry once a day for the next two years.

as for disposable vs. cloth diapers, remember that you will be changing your baby's diaper between 2 and 7 times in a day (probably less than 7, but i'm being generous here for a reason). now, imagine the stacks of laundry, even with a service. the gas and electricity (we still use coal for a most of our electricity here in the 'states) it takes to get the cloth diapers to and from the cleaning service... etc. and so forth. be green by using a reusable coffee cup when you get a cup on the run, don't make yourself crazy with cloth diapers. if you are 100% for cloth, understand that it's still easier to carry and use the diaposables if you are leaving the house for any leghnth of time. including 10 minutes.

if you like, i can give you a very amusing story about a friend of mine who ran out of diapers for his baby at a convention in 20 minutes time....

n.

One diaper issue that nobody tells you -- I found that cloth diapers leaked much more than disposable, even with the special diaper covers. That meant that diaper changes required clothes changes more often when I was using cloth.

Most important thing:
Happy Baby food grinder (now sold under the Kidco brand, I think, always made by them)
It's cheap, and once the baby's on soft solids, you never have to make pr buy baby food as long as you have access to healthful foods.

Cloth diapers can be easy if you have a diaper service, which (usually) costs about the same as disposables.

If I used public transit a lot, I'd absolutely have some sort of snugli.

(And when you do register somewhere -- Target isn't a bad choice -- let us know?)

Need:
Carseat
Diaper bag (Kelty sells swanky ones which I covet)
Crib (buy used, but carefully)
More crib sheets than you think you need
Really good breastpump. I use the Medela Pump N Style. This enables you to, you know, go to movies during the first four months.
Set of rearview mirrors so that you can see into a rear-facing carseat without turning around. Cheap, but oh-so-useful.
Lots of clothes. For the first 2-3 months, the diaper bag always contained an outfit per hour. Because sometimes that was needed. They don't have to be designer, they just have to be clean and weather appropriate.

Sanity savers:
Battery-powered swing
Baby simethicone
Baby monitor
Sling
Bouncy chair/exersaucer
Emergency bottle and formula
Good nursing chair (shop for this now, or after the baby. Good for pregnant and good for nursing are entirely different.

On diapers:
My mom cloth diapered us all. I was going to follow in her footsteps until she told me I was crazy, pointed out that she had a laundry woman with the first two of us and was home for my brother, and said that modern disposables are much more comfortable for the baby. Compelling arguments, all. Also, at least here, licensed daycares cannot do cloth diapering.

I wish I'd had:
A changing table

On evolution:
Eventually, you will need things like a high chair and a stroller. I advocate buying pretty much everything at whichever form of used-baby-store you have. The stuff is nice, cheap, and usually safe. You don't need a climbing castle or most of the large bulky objects yet. But you'll know as you get there what you need. Right now, I need to buy Baz long-sleeve 3T shirts and a musical keyboard. Two months ago, he didn't need either.

Dear god, why:
Crib bumpers. They block your view, and then when they'd be really useful, they become dangerous to the kid. Don't bother.
Shoes for babies who don't walk yet -- why? we should start footbinding early? Baz had some neat little slippers with elastic ankles for when it was cold, but for the most part, he went barefoot.

What I couldn't have lived without:

Nursing pillow. (I liked the "My Brest Friend" pillow in spite of the cheesy name.) Makes it much easier to keep kid in a comfy position.

Flannel-coated rubber changing pads. With these, any surface is a changing table.

Because I was working outside the home and nursing, Medela Pump In Style pump.

Those nightgowns with the elastic bottoms -- easy to pull up for diaper changes, but tend to keep the kid's legs more covered.

A ton more nightgowns and onesies than I'd ever dreamed we'd need. (We had to change the clothes at least every other poopy diaper, sometimes every poopy diaper, and in the first months, the boy had ten poopy diapers a day.) (Stock up on your preferred laundry detergent by third trimester.)

A sling. We also used the Snuggli carrier, which worked very well except that it was hard to get the kid out (ok when he was awake, problematic when he was asleep).

Stroller that fit in our trunk -- we didn't use it much when he was an infant, but by time he was pushing 20 pounds, it was very helpful.

Stuff I could live fine without:

Special baby towels. Our regular towels (or sometimes hand towels) dried him off just fine.

Changing table. Never had one. We just used the bed or the floor.

Baby clothing should not button. Ideally, it should zip; second-best is snap. There must be openings up the crotch and down both legs. You undress a baby's bottom half a lot more often than its top.

This is why my mother got us baby nightgowns instead of sleepers. They have elastic at the bottom, so they keep the baby covered normally but you can also easily push them up to the waist. She said, "you really don't want to have to try to make snaps line up in the middle of the night."

Don't bother buying stuffed animals. People will give them to you. Boy, will they ever.

I'm guessing we won't be buying many clothes or toys. :-) My mom also said, "you should buy the baby a cute little outfit right now, before you start receiving gifts. I didn't get to buy anything for your oldest sister until she was a year old, because other people bought it all."

I found that cloth diapers leaked much more than disposable, even with the special diaper covers.

My sister said that too. I just have crushing environmental guilt.

"It occurs to us that this might not be enough."

Yeah. You'll also need at least one stuffed otter.

B

Do you feel that way about sanitary napkins? I've looked at the alternatives on that front, and have decided that convenience is going to win out over environmentalism. And I personally will have wasted a lot more environmental resources with those in my lifetime than one baby will waste in the ca. three years that it's wearing diapers.

Just a thought.

-J

Just because I need to warm up my belaboring-the-obvious muscles (I teach freshmen in about 15 min)...a car seat.

Also lots and LOTS of bottles; the Critter won't be breastfed forever.

My baby-having friends seem to get lots of mileage out of a Land's End(?) diaper bag. Maybe it's LLBean or Eddie Bauer. The removable changing pad appears to be a plus, though as an aunt I tend to give the babies back at that point. ;-)

Clothing: Buttons are manageable. Zips are scary. Poppers are easy. Opening at the crotch is essential - I find snaps that go down the front and one leg easiest (rare), down the front and across both legs next easiest, and buttons across the back hardest (nearly useless). It's easiest to undress when it all unbuttons, but when dressing, having one leg that will stay on while you button the other one in helps a lot.

Vests / Onesies. It's possible to have too many, but difficult.

Everything needs to be washable at 60 degrees at least.

Old-fashioned cotton rompers are fantastic in hot weather, which we had in May and June just after Linnea was born.

I know a lot of people who combine eco-disposables and cloth diapers.

My breast pump is invaluable, especially when I'm ill, like now. Pump, and a few bottles, and a small steriliser - perhaps the travel microwave bag type. No point getting all the bottle equipment if you're only going to need them in emergencies.

Check the weight of the pushchair in the shop. Ideally, fold it one-handed with a bag on that shoulder - a bag over one shoulder, and a baby in the other hand, is what you need to simulate. Then you can pick it up and get on the bus. Mine actually comes with a strap for slinging it over my shoulder. I don't know how analogous my RSI is to your arms though.

I loved my moses basket until she could tip it at 6 weeks, and found a baby bath good as she's too big to wash in the sink. Now that she can sit up, of course, she fits in the sink, and rejects bodies of water too small to swim in. Such is life.

We love our changing unit a lot. We really do. And our purpose-designed changing bag for while out. We also love our monitors.

And the baby muslins - they are just the right size, unlike the money-saving dishcloths I bought instead. Oh, and we have some cheap teatowels to cover the changing mat instead of a custom-fit towel that velcros on; prevents wee going everywhere mid-change and since we have lots of teatowels in this particular pattern, it's easy to replace as needed. The custom towels are cute but could be a laundry nightmare.

What the baby actually needs, of course, is food, something soft to sleep on - an empty drawer with a folded towel in the bottom, for example - and something warm to be covered with when cold - like, say, the same towel. Anything else is to make your life easier, and thereby make you less likely to collapse in a heap of overwork after the first week. So if you think it will make your life easier, try it. Try it secondhand, if you like, but try it. If it fails, you can always find someone else with a baby who wants it second or third hand.

Later, we like the Bumbo a lot. And the playmat with arches - babygym, some people call them. The Baby Bjorn baby carrier is fantastic; we got it secondhand and it's machine washable easily and so on. Ebay Ebay Ebay.

Hard toys are a waste of space in the beginning; we had a hard baby toy arch thing and I've never used it because any infant who can hurt herself with a squashy ball toy can manage it with a hard monkey-shaped toy.

Lansinoh brand pure lanolin nipple salve. Washable breast pads with a lacy cover on one side to stop them sliding around inside the bra. Proper enormous sanitary pads. A simple mobile without too many shapes on it to begin with. A book of photographs of baby faces.

Baby bedding... Fitted sheets for the big cot, but don't bother for a Moses basket; then you can reuse the flat ones as drawsheets for the cot (um, possible dialect issue - I mean baby bed with high fence around it to keep Li'l Critter in). Waterproof pad for under the sheet just in case the baby ever does sleep with you - almost everyone takes the baby in for a bit on a weekend morning, or something. Also useful for last month of pregnancy when your waters might break; I found it very reassuring. Mine is very padded and absorbent on one side, waterproof on the other, and ok to sleep on.

We got sick of sleepsuits very quickly; Linnea is too wiggly. We like nightshirts with a slightly elasticated bottom hem; for one thing, they take longer to outgrow, and for another, they are easier to manage for a midnight nappy change or for dressing in the first place.

Salve for your cheeks; they start to hurt from smiling.

Nope, Lands' End. Our LE bag got us through two babies unscathed. Lots of storage space, conveniently organized, and a big ol' folding changing pad. I particularly remember the two bottle pockets on the outside; I nursed, but it was still nice to be able to carry juice and mushed food.

I did some research on this, and as I remember, it's about a wash, because of the impact of heating water, bleach, detergent, and drying. And the new ones do break down better than the old really plasticky ones.

I find that the cloth ones we use leak a lot less than the best disposable ones we've found. And we use the super-active breastfed-baby runny-poo disposables.

We need cot bumpers now - and for the past 6 weeks - because Linnea was sticking her legs through the bars and hurting herself when she then rolled over. She's never needed them for her head, or across the top of the cot at all - we use one down each side.

Linnea went barefoot until the recent cold weather; she now has soft shoes which keep her socks on. Soon we expect her to learn how to get those off, and then it's dealing with tights every change...

in my opinion is a sling baby carrier. These things are wonderful.
http://www.mayawrap.com/
That gives you an idea, they are VERY handy for nursing. I also found as Alex got older that a Snugli/Bjorn sort of carrier; the ones that sit on the front of your body; was an invaluable tool for when I needed both arms but also needed to rock a baby to sleep or wanted to have bonding contact.
My son and I have a very close relationship and I firmly believe we are so close because he was breastfed and spent a lot of time in the carrier on the front of my body. That is my one item that I would consider imperative. There is a company in Oregon that has come diaper covers that are VERY good if you are using cloth diapers. I will dig up the link if you are intersted, it has been almost 14 years, lol.

That's what I've found too. We use disposables, I use sanitary pads, and I assuage my guilt by being green in other areas (like how much of our household furniture was acquired from the curb and repainted/slipcovered *grin*)

I wish we'd been able to use a proper sling :( but our baby was too big for the age-appropriate positions, given my small ribcage. We'll try again if I ever retrieve the sling I loaned to someone with a more in proportion daughter.

My arms are too short to usefully do anything while wearing the baby in the baby bjorn carrier. Rob, however, can eat or wash dishes in it.

Things I might have said have been pretty much covered by everyone else... Except lanolin or other creams for your breasts. They can get sore and chapped.

You won't need a high chair for a while, but when you do, they now make chairs that can disassemble and go in the dishwasher.

As far as cloth versus disposables, I'd say use both. Cloth for at home, disposables when you're going out. But only do cloth if you have a service. Cloth daipers make wonderful cleaning cloths as well: we still have a bunch in the house, and my youngest just turned eight. In fact, my local diaper service sells diapers that have been "retired" for just that purpose. My kids seemed to get fewer rashes from the cloth ones, even though they got changed just as frequently. Oh, and whatever type you go with, get a really good diaper hamper. If you go with disposables, don't bother with a Diaper Genie: plastic bags from the market work just as well.

A loved having a rocking chair while nursing.

The environmental cost is about the same for cloth versus disposable; it's more a case of water/energy versus landfill.

8lbs. 2oz. and he was 6 weeks early. Granted this was almost 14 years ago, but the sling worked well for us for quite a while. Just FYI

This is a very cool idea! I'm adding this post to my memories for future reference.

My minor contributions: I've heard tons of good things about the Boppy nursing pillow. My friend Lori (

amerald) has this really great glider rocker and ottoman that she says was fantastic for nursing & reading at the same time. They come in not-hideous designs, too. This is Amy's review of nursing pads for bras.

Please let me know where you're registered when you get around to that!

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Questions for people with infant care experience.

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Ooh, boy

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An imperative for breastfeeding

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My son was a very large baby

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