Most-Used Baby Gear

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Henry is two months old! Where did the last 8 weeks go?! Our precious boy is growing so fast. His little personality is really starting to show! The little babbling and cooing is music to mommy's ears and his smiles light up the whole house! We can't get enough of this little hunny bunny!!

Our neighbors are expecting a baby this year and we are so excited to have another little one around the same age on our street. It’s been so nice to actually know our neighbors and enjoy spending time with them. The expecting mama asked me what one item I suggested she register for and I had a hard time landing on just one. I sent her a short list of our favorites and it got me thinking I should compile a post for other first time mom friends and those planning to have babies one day!

Baby Registry Must-Haves from a First Time Mom, 2 Months In

I struggled with knowing what all was really needed versus what was just the cool new stuff parents wanted but could get by without when planning our registry. Since we’re only 2 months into parenthood, I can’t speak for future stages of baby life but I can definitely tell you what’s been helpful thus far!

Note: this isn’t a complete “registry list” but more so just the highlights of what’s been most helpful in the first 8 weeks for baby!

Everyday Items

Bibs - My sister used these bibs with her son and I thought they were the greatest thing. I knew I wanted to have some on hand for Henry and at this stage they are sooo helpful because they keep the milk from dripping down his little neck folds and therefore preventing stinky baby crusty neck lol!

Burp Cloths - We have several burp cloths but these are our favorites! Might I suggest you register for / buy a TON of burp cloths and bibs because you’ll be using them constantly and therefore constantly washing them.

Disposable Changing Pads - This is a suggestion I heard on a podcast and I’m so glad because it’s been extremely helpful - especially for those middle of the night changings where pee or poo somehow makes its way outside the diaper! Using disposable changing pads allows you to just stack a few and remove one as messes occur and toss it… no need to change the changing table cover over and over!

Wipe Warmer - While this might seem like a frivolous, “splurge” item, I find it’s actually super nice for parents of baby boys! A warm wipe placed over little boy parts makes has significantly reduced the number of times we’ve been peed on!! We actually got two wipe warmers - one for upstairs and one for downstairs! We have two different brands, one is the Munchkin wipe warmer and the other is from Amazon. Of the two, we actually prefer the Amazon wipe warmer (which is the one I’ve linked).

Tech

Owlet - So Owlet was our preferred option for monitoring but at the time of our registry, the brand was working through marketing issues with the FDA and it was pulled off the market. We ended up getting the Nanit system (a story/post for another day comparing the two), over Thanksgiving weekend. After arriving home from the hospital with our little bundle of joy, we were extremely anxious about Henry’s choking/gagging (expected but still scary) in the night and I just basically refused to sleep. We decided to order the Owlet camera and sock right away and I am so glad we did. It’s simply peace of mind. If you’re debating the cost, I would certainly register for it and look for any sales if you can (I honestly don’t know if they have sales but I was determined to get it right away regardless.) We still use Nanit too, but Owlet is the obvious choice for nighttime.

Car Cam - Another item my sister used that was really nice, we love that this car camera works in the dark and it is safer than a typical mirror.

Hatch - We use the Hatch Baby app all day every day (and all night) to track feedings, pumping, diapers, sleep, weight, and more. Darrell researched the app options for logging this information and choose Hatch. We don’t have the scale that communicates to the app but that hasn’t mattered. We use the paid version of the app, which is $49.99/year. This provides premium features and it integrates into Alexa which is super nice because 85% of the time we just tell Alexa to “tell Hatch Henry had a wet diaper” etc. You can also manually enter the information but having voice commands is great when your hands are usually full and your memory limited on such little sleep.

Nursing

Pillow - Let me preface this by saying I only did direct nursing for the first week before switching to exclusive pumping. We lugged all sorts of stuff to the hospital that we ended up not actually using. One of those items was the Boppy nursing pillow. It just never worked for me. But you know what did work??? A cheap Walmart pillow we only brought because a nurse in the birthing class told us there wouldn’t be many pillows in the hospital and due to pandemic times, it might be a good idea to bring something we would be okay disposing of after our stay. We bought two cheap pillows at Walmart and I continually preferred them over the “nursing” pillow. I think if I had continued nursing, I would’ve gotten the My Breast Friend nursing pillow for long term better support but yeah, sometimes just standard household items will work just fine.

Chair with pillow - Whether you breastfeed, pump, or bottle feed, invest in a good chair! You’ll be in it a lot! I’m short so I really wanted to make sure I found a glider that “fit me.” This glider with matching ottoman is a great fit for me! And I love that it swivels. It comes with the perfect pillow for tucking under your arm while holding baby, propping under your elbow while bottle feeding, or supporting your back while pumping! Highly recommend!! We purchased this chair from Buy Buy Baby during a sale where we also stacked some coupons (don’t ask me how, I’m not really a Buy Buy Baby shopper, my sister just knows how to get the best deals there!!)

Nightlight - Getting up in the night to do everything you need to do requires light but light is the last thing you really want when you hope to quickly get baby (and yourself) back to sleep at night. This magnetic little nightlight clips onto your PJs or pillow case and you can just tap it to see what you need to do. We also really like these tappable night light wall outlets which also have USB ports.

Sleep

Sound Machine - The sound machine is basically the key to going or doing almost anything with baby in tow haha! But really… We were given this sound machine as a shower gift and used it so much in the hospital and the few days after coming home that we quickly ordered a second. This way, we can always have one on the charger and one in use. They come with a USB charger cord which makes it great for charging on the go - we’ve been known to charge it in the car as well. We love that it is small, portable, has a nightlight feature (great for in the car), and is so easy to charge.

Swaddles - There are so many options for swaddles and I’m sure the expensive options are very nice. We had a hard time finding many in the brands we were wanting in boy or even gender neutral color options (and we were running out of time). Swaddles were some of the last items we purchased before H arrived. We went with gender neutral Swaddle Me swaddles which have been great! I think we have two packs giving us a total of 6 that we keep in rotation. Six seems to be a good amount. Three was not enough.

There are so many other items I could write about but these are the highlights and honestly what we use the most, at least at this stage. I hope this is helpful!! I think I’ll do a separate post all about breastfeeding / pumping / exclusive pumping. Too much to say on that subject to include it all here.

Are there any items you highly recommend? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!