19
Jun
Baby registry
My wife and I finally registered at Babies “R” Us recently. We really don’t like to register at the large chain stores, instead preferring smaller stores to support local business. The only problem is that there aren’t many of them that we could find. So we ended up at the chain.
If you look at the list of things that they give you, apparently you need a whole lot of stuff in order to have a baby. There were probably about 15 items on the list, if not more. We’re minimalists, so we looked at the list to make sure we didn’t forget anything, but we basically ignored most of it.
We also had with us the Consumer Reports list of basic baby items. This list is much more reasonable. It has about 60 items, many of which you could say to yourself “yes, I could understand needing that.” But it still seemed like a big list.
We are planning on using a doula for our birth, and we asked her for a list of things you need. This is the list she came up with that was much more reasonable.
- An infant car seat
- Large receiving blankets, many of them
- Onesies - many of them in all sizes up to a year
- A diaper bag
- A sling if you are going to use one (we are, so she included it)
- Corn starch (great for diaper rash)
- A pump if mom will need it
- A breastfeeding pillow
- Burp cloths
- Baby bath products (washclothes and soap mainly)
- A thermometer
- A stroller (optional)
- A swing (optional)
That was her entire list. (Note that she doesn’t have anything on there about bottles because she knows we are breast feeding.) We liked that list a lot better, and pretty much registered for what was on it and a few other things. We have a very small space to live in (less than 700 square feet), so a lot of stuff is not really an option for us. It really is funny that the answers to questions really depend on who you ask.
June 26th, 2007 at 5:02 am
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June 28th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
We registered at Babies R Us too, but with this being my second child I was easily able to tell what I wouldn’t really use (or used in the past and HATED). I love the way they make it “easy” on people by offering the opportunity to just beep one scanner code and add a big jumble of things on there - but none of them were my preferred brands.
Much better to get advice from someone you trust and figure out what you really *need* before registering. Good call!
June 28th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
We’ve asked for tons of opinions, but we liked the bare bones list our Doula gave us.
I also thought it was funny how you could register for about 100 things with one bar code scan.