Gideon turned one yesterday - we had a great party weekend with lots of family coming to visit and have a barbecue and play with the boy himself, and all his new toys.
This is a long, unashamedly biased, list of some of the stuff which we found really useful in our first year as parents.
- Bouncy baby chair - we used this Fisher-Price chair which has the benefit of making it look like baby has the giraffe’s ears, as she grows!
- Travel cot - get one with a thick mattress, not the cheapest going - we got a cheap one and he doesn’t sleep too well in it.
- Folding baby bath - we used this one
, which folds flat and is great for travel, especially when visiting people who just have showers, you don’t have to juggle bathtime in the sink.
- Baby monitor - we used this BT Digital 200 monitor
and we found audio only is fine. You can hear baby breathing, and it’s got decent range and battery life.
- Cold water steriliser - One like this Milton
is great, just use Milton tablets and refill daily, simple and easy, and again, travels well.
- Room thermometer - We have a Gro-Egg Room Thermometer
which is colour-coded for tired-parent-proofing. We found it mildly useful, but would have found it much better had Gideon been a winter baby. I think the usefulness then depends what you plan to do heating wise - if you keep the house pretty cool normally, you can keep doing that and just heat up the baby’s room with good precision. The Percy the Penguin
cover makes it look like a friendly Star Wars Stormtrooper, too.
- Lots and lots of Johnson’s bath stuff. We got loads and you really can’t have too much. The orange one
is our favourite.
- A Moses basket with a rocking stand - like this one
- if it’s not too expensive, we wished we had one, never underestimate how well rocking a baby sends it to sleep.
- A Jumperoo for when baby is a bit bigger - this is a 4 or 5 month old thing really.
- Additional airers will probably be useful if you don’t have a tumble drier.
- Some dummies, even if you don’t want to use them. Seriously.
- L'Amaze toys are nice for when they’d really small, lots of colour and contrast, just like Captain Calamari the Octopus Pirate
here! As an added bonus, they all have great hooks, perfect for dangling them from…
- A baby gym! Just get a nice fabric one like this
, it’s all about customising it with buttloads of dangly toys!
- Sleeping bags. There are some with arms (expensive, only seen them in JoJo), and lots without arms like Grobags
. We only had armless bags, but sometime wanted armed ones in the winter. With a winter baby, maybe you would want armed ones? Again, depends on your heating plan.
- Muslins, so many muslins. Try to see the size, some places sell them too small. We found M&S and Sainsbury’s did a good size/price/pattern balance. Think decent tea towel size and larger. We were also given a few enormous super posh ones, which were nice but we only really used them at weddings(!)
- Nappies - if you want the disposable route, don’t go Terries, too much faff. There are some really good systems out there with shaped fabric nappies and you can get trial sets and stuff, or check your environment conscience at the door and go disposable. I can’t offer much more advice than this, as the Terries put us off so much.
- A camera. Make sure you’re happy with it and the videos it (or your phone) produces, battery life, etc, you’ll be using it a lot.
- Subscription to Netflix, or something else easy and indoors for you two to do together, preferably doable while holding/feeding baby.
- Kindle
WITH A BACKLIGHT - you can’t really have lights on a lot of the time, and you’re doing everything one handed too, so if you want to read at bed time this is probably the only sensible way of doing it.
- White noise app on your phone - helps them sleep. BBC Radio 4 works well too, and it gets really really weird late at night!
- A whole world of baby wipes. Just fill every available cupboard - it’s always better to buy in bulk…!