Baby List, 0-3mo
There’s a point in the pregnancy journey where you’re confronted with the question: What do we need? About six months in, not long after we started telling people and planning baby showers, we were asked by friends and family to make a registry. Search for what you need to have a baby and oh wow, does the internet want to sell you things. Tell Amazon you’re having a baby and they have ready-made checklists of must-haves by category ready for your registry! Do you need all of those things? No. But if you haven’t had a baby before, it’s hard to tell what you need and when. I tried to temper the Amazon and BabyList-generated shopping carts with advice from friends. I asked several recent parents to highlight a handful of things that were actually useful to them in the first few months. While I did get some good answers, it was mostly hard for folks to remember. After all, it can be pretty blurry in the beginning.
To that end, as we’re approaching the end of month three, here’s how I’d answer that question and one trailing bit of advice. First the advice: 1. You’re going to end up with a bunch of things before baby arrives. Especially if you have friends or family with older kids. Hand-me-downs are absolutely great. And in most cases vastly better than buying new. Take a moment and organize them into what’s actually useful in the first 3mo and then set everything else aside. I have two large bins labeled: 3-6mo and 6+mo. If it wasn’t useful 0-3mo, it went in a bin. Around month 2 we started migrating some outfits from the 3-6mo bin into daily use. Now I have a new bin, 0-3mo where everything we’ve outgrown goes.
The List
Basinet - There are many sleeping options. We went with a basinet. You do not need a Snoo. And you absolutely do not need to spend $2000 on a brand-new Snoo. Any basinet will do. Borrow or buy used. You’ll only be using a basinet for the first few months anyway. Also, you might want more than one. If you have stairs, you probably want two. We started with one, but after hauling it around the house twice daily for a few weeks, we bought one that attaches to our stroller.
Bath - Fisher-Price Bath Sling. We got by for a few weeks using some bins we took home from the hospital in the sink but as babé got bigger, using them was too unwieldily.
Breast Pump - Spectra S1 Plus Portable and Haakaa Manual Pump. We didn’t research extensively. They both came as recommendations from various folks, and they’ve worked well for us. Spectra makes both wired and portable pumps. A few folks have said that the wired version was stronger and that the portable didn’t work as well for them. That has not been our experience. Another friend pointed out that the wired one is super annoying because once you start, you’re stuck in place for 20-30 minutes.
Bottles - We use Dr. Brown and Comotomo. More importantly though, you need to know that smaller bottles are easier with young babies, and you’ll want to make sure you have an appropriately sized nipple on the bottle for your baby. Generally, the small bottles come with an appropriate T or 1 nipple, while the longer bottles have a matching 2, 3, Y nipple. Nipple size is all about flow. Too much flow is not great for babies. Most likely, you’ll start at 1, and around month 3-4, you’ll switch to 2. That said, a friend accidentally started using a 2 or 3 when they got home from the hospital, and it turned out okay.
Bottle Sanitizer - I wouldn’t have gotten one. One was given to us. We use it daily, and I’d absolutely choose it over a drying rack.
Bottle Warmer - First, there is no need to get milk or formula to 98F. Our goal is to simply take some of the cold edge off the milk. Most of the time we’re giving milk in the 70-80F range. After reading a bunch of reviews, I opted not to get a warmer. Then, after a few weeks of living without, I ordered one. What changed? Two things: first, heating water in a kettle and pouring it into a vessel in the middle of the night got tiresome. When we were using very small/narrow bottles, it wasn’t so bad, but when we switched to larger bottles, it became more annoying. Second, a common thread in reviews is that the bottle warmers overheat milk. That happens because folks are trying to get the milk to 98F. It’s super easy to overshoot to 110F+. Solution: Aim for 70-80F, which gives a pretty wide margin. We have a BabyBreeza, but it’s very low quality and far too fidgety. I’d buy something else.
Cookies - There are a lot of lactation cookies, most are terrible. Most of the ones you can buy at the store are beyond terrible. Instead, make these – Stella Park's Lactation Cookies (Serious Eats). They're great. Everyone who came over in the first three or four months loved them. One modification – cut the amount of flax seed to 10g, or even cut it entirely. Almost all of the lactation support come from brewers yeast (not the same as nutritional yeast). Also, depending on the day and my mood I put any from a bit more, to a whole lot more cinnamon and ginger.
Crib - We have a Lotus Travel Crib, which we’re using both at home and while traveling. Around 3-6mo, baby will age out of the basinet. We’ve started using the crib during the day and early evening for napping. The idea is to get baby used to the new sleeping environment (vs. basinet) early, which will hopefully make the full transition easier down the road. We’re using a travel crib rather than a dedicated crib because (a) we have this one already and (b) we’ve heard that using the same crib at home and traveling can make traveling easier. TBD.
Car Seat - A friend gave us their 2019 Nuna Pipa. If I were shopping, I’d go with a new version of the same or a Clek Liing. Both require an adapter to work with our stroller, but that’s par for the course. On paper, you can use most infant car seats until approximately age two. It’s more about height and weight, but it tends to be around age two. My guess is that we’ll be switching to a dedicated “convertible car” seat in two or three months. Why? The win of the infant car seat is that it moves between the car and stroller without having to wake/unbuckle the baby. The drawback is that it’s an awkward shape, and every day the baby is a little heavier.
Changing Table / Dresser - TBH, I got it for the dresser. I figured we’d change the baby on the floor, dining table, or on the bed. Having a place to put the piles of baby cloths people gave us, on the other hand, was an obvious win. In practice: Having a place to put baby clothing was, in fact, an obvious win. Having a place to change the baby that’s always ready has been better than any of the options I imagined. Why? When it’s time to change a diaper, that’s the priority. I don’t want to kick a dog off the bed or quickly make space on the table. Those are the clean reasons. And then, there’s what happens when things go wrong: if there’s a pee accident, I don’t have to worry about the carpet or comforter being in the splash zone. Well, mostly, mostly I don’t have to worry about that — there was one time… Anyway, having a changing table turned out to be a great choice. Like a basinet, you might want two depending on your house’s layout. We have one, friends with stairs have one on each level.
Clothing - You should have no less than three of any regular outfit ready to go. In the summer, we used onesies with short sleeves and no legs. In the cooler months, long sleeves and trousers are becoming the norm. Why three? One is on the baby, the second is ready for when there’s an accident at 0300, and the third is there so that you’re not compelled to do laundry at 0300. In practice, you’ll have more like six to twelve of these types of outfits. Or, you’ll be doing laundry more often.
There are a bunch of types of onesies: crew neck, wide-neck, snaps, ties, zips, Velcro, and magnets. Avoid crew necks. I find ties annoying, so I avoid them, but that’s just me. Same with magnets; it seems unnecessary. Pretty much your goal with any baby clothing is to be able to get it on easily and, more importantly, get it off quickly during a potty emergency. Wide-necks are designed to be removed by pulling down the body, rather than over the head. It’s super helpful when there’s been a diaper/changing incident and you’re trying to avoid getting poop on the baby’s head.
Diapers - You’d think there had been some major innovation for the number of brands available today. We’ve tried three, and the functional differences are negligible at best. Pampers, Very-Very, and Parasol. Stanford uses Pampers, so that’s where we began. After seeing 8.3 billion ads urging me to use anything else because Pampers are terrible For Reasons That Are Almost Certainly Made Up (TM), I’ve tried a few. They’ve all been fine? We’ve been mostly using Parasol because they feel nice, don’t smell like diapers, and they’re reasonably priced at our local Target. Curiously, they cost almost 30% more on Amazon. So don’t buy them on Amazon, I guess? It’s quite possible that as the baby becomes more mobile, the differences between various brands will become more clear.
We thought about reusable and compostable diapers, but that’s as far as we got with that.
Diaper Pail - We were gifted a Diaper Genie. We have used it zero times for diapers. It's been great as a small table to stack bottles and beverages on during feeds and contact naps. We have a small trashcan in the kitchen. We take the trash out about once a day or every other day. It's been fine. Maybe when we get to solid food that'll change, but I expect taking the trash out daily is going to work a lot better than having a bit of poop-only trash in the room we/bebé sleep in.
Edutainment - Lovevery’s boxes are pretty good — that’s pretty much the range of toys that your new baby is likely to pay attention to at all. Most of the toys that friends/family want to gift are completely lost on the baby at this age.
Go-Bag - Or tote, or diaper bag, whatever you want to call it. You want something when you leave the house with all of baby’s essentials. There are countless specialized (overpriced) bags you could buy. We’re using a small (21L) tote/backpack and a pair of small packing cubes from Peak Design (though any would work). For day to day trips we carry three diapers, Burt’s butt lotion, water wipes, a collapsable changing table, a spare outfit (or two), and a roll of small trash bags for soiled diapers. Thus far that’s been sufficient. I’m sure it’ll evolve as baby grows.
I’m pretty convinced that diaper bags are dumb and so I avoid them. Material and build quality for most, at any price, are pretty terrible. Many are oddly heavy, awkwardly shaped, and tend to have an abundance of organization. I’d rather achieve organization through packing bags than built-in compartments. Your milage may vary.
Grooming - Lupantte 24-in-1 Baby Care Kit. It checks a bunch of boxes.
Medication - Your hospital, pediatrician, or midwife will probably give you a list of things, e.g. baby Tylenol, etc. Go with whatever they say. At this point, the only two things we’ve had to use are Gripe Water and Gas Relief Drops. No idea if the Gripe Water does anything at all — I think it’s mostly so as parents we feel like we did something. Gas drops, on the other hand, border on actual magic for how well and quickly they work. Typically on the order of one to two minutes after application!
Pacifiers - Stanford Medical gave us some JollyPop pacifiers, so that’s what we used at the beginning. Later we tried Bibs, now that's all baby is willing to use. I'm not sure we needed to change, but the Bibs are nice: 9/10 when they fall to the ground the bulb is pointed up.
Stroller - We have a UppaBaby Cruz v2, along with the UppaBaby Basinet. We’re happy with them. The stroller was recommended by a friend, and we got the matching basinet for compatibility reasons.
Swaddles - You can absolutely use a square or rectangular blanket like folks have been doing since long before the rectangle was known to man. We did that, and it was fine for a few days. We settled on two brands of swaddles: Halo and Miracle Blanket. Both work great. I think the Miracle Blanket is a better design and can be used from infancy until they grow out of swaddling. Halo’s are much easier to use, but our boy grew out of the small size, which meant we’d have needed to buy
Throws - We have a bunch of burp cloths, blankets, and washcloths in various sizes and materials.