Anyway

The next part of an occa­sional series on what we found to be use­ful with a baby. I’ve noticed a few people com­ing to this site with searches on baby stuff, so here’s some more!

Stand­ard lists for what you need for a baby always seem a little too pre­script­ive to me; “thou shalt have 6 sleep­ers and 4 bottles and .…” I’m not going to give num­bers for the simple reason that it all depends on your baby and how you do things. If you do laun­dry every day, you don’t need as many clothes, unless your baby spits up a lot, in which case you need as many as you can get. Etc.

So what do you need?

Some­where for the baby to sleep. To start with, this can be a nice bassinet, or a card­board box, the baby won’t really care. I’ve heard that car seats aren’t good for their heads if they sleep in them all the time, but if that’s where your baby is happy, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Even­tu­ally they need a crib or cot that’s big­ger and stronger and that they can’t roll out of, but that can wait until they’re two or three months old. We always had the baby sleep in our room to start with as well, for the simple reason that it’s easier to get up and change them, feed them, and put them back down, if they’re close by. Also, I found that I woke up quite quickly and could feed the baby without it really wak­ing up prop­erly, so it ten­ded to go back to sleep read­ily after eat­ing. This may just be because both our babies were good sleep­ers, of course, but Penelope Leach’s book also seems to think there’s some­thing to this the­ory of get­ting them up when they just start cry­ing so they don’t get too upset. Once they’re older, things are dif­fer­ent as they can last longer without food, but it seems to work for the little babies.

Some clothes for the baby: com­fort­able ones to sleep in, and maybe some­thing that looks a little nicer to go out and be shown off in. People often give you clothes, in huge quant­it­ies, which come in really handy when your baby spits up a lot (see above) or you don’t have time to do laun­dry every day.

Receiv­ing blankets, which are basic­ally pieces of soft cloth such as flannelette that vary in size, any­where from about 24″ x 24″ (65cm x 65cm) to 36″ x 36″ (1m x 1m) or so; they can be square or rect­an­gu­lar. These are really use­ful, for swad­dling tiny babies (our first child loved this, our second didn’t), as light blankets, as spit-up or burp clothes (the things labelled “burp clothes” in most stores are too small to be use­ful for any­thing other than night-time nurs­ing pads), as change pads, as make­shift bibs, as sun screens, as mats in the bath, as wash­cloths, and as clothes if you’re really des­per­ate and everything else is dirty or wet. They have the added bonus of being use­ful after­wards, unlike a lot of baby appar­atus — they’re great for wash­ing win­dows, dust­ing and pol­ish­ing fur­niture, apply­ing stain, or any­where else you need a soft, lint-free cloth. And believe me, they will be lint-free by the time the baby has out­grown need­ing them with being washed so often.

If you’re bottle-feeding, you’ll need that appar­atus. Ours didn’t take bottles, so I have no idea what is use­ful for bottle-feeding.

We never used baby powder (couldn’t see the point) or pacifiers/dummies (first child spat it out across the room, never needed to try with the second).

Com­ing in a future post: thoughts on slings/baby car­ri­ers, baby mon­it­ors, pumps.