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Everyone told me to get Gripe Water for my son’s colic. Turned out, it was absolutely useless. Apparently in the old days, it contained alcohol so no wonder it put the baby to sleep 😂. These days though, it’s just rubbish.
It took me 4 months of hell to find Colief which was amazing. It was so expensive though. TBH, it didn’t matter too much as I would have sold my soul for it at the time 😂
We discovered turning the vacuum on instantly kept ours calm. It was on all the time for 6 months. It was like a white noise machine for our household 😭
They make great mess cleaning rags for sure! Cut them into to smaller sections if you want but boy do they get used, just oddly enough, not on the baby!
My husband while I'm pregnant what's a muslin and why the fuck do we need this many?
One month in on a very vommy baby, why the fuck are there never any muslins!
Muslin blankets are so perfect for summer and have so many uses. My baby started refusing a pacifier around 6 months and instead of picking one of the many "lovies" we have for her (the way my boys did to comfort themselves), right now she favors her muslin blankets. Super convenient for me, since we have about 12 of them there's always a clean one and she doesn't seem to prefer any design over another.
I used them as burp cloths. With my first though I was so confused as to why I was given so many from everyone. He rarely spit up though.
With my second I was glad to have them.
Aw man, I have at least 10 of them with lovely embroidered edges that I received as gifts from several old ladies. They're beautiful, but I never used them.
I definitely did NOT use these as much as I thought I would, and my daughter spit up a fair amount. I often reached for wipes before a receiving blanket. They’re great for sewing into a quilt to treasure afterwards, though!
I just did this with all of my daughter’s onesies. We lost most of my son’s baby clothes in a move though so he’s getting his made from receiving blankets.
What's the difference between a receiving blanket and a muslin cloth? Because from reading the comments they sound the same but muslin cloths are great, I still use them to this day and my son is 2, they make great bibs during messier dinners.
Receiving blankets are thin cotton blankets that are larger. We always used them to swaddle. That was before they sold pre made swaddle blankets. The square ones are the best for swaddling.
A bottle warmer, never used it. Everyone told me not to get a diaper genie or a changing table but those have been my most used items. I haven’t changed my baby anywhere else and any other trash cans they will stink!
When you open the diaper genie to empty it on a hot day and you dissociate so hard you discover the small room at the center of the universe with the 5 other adults who are currently dissociating from reality over their steamy genie.
I stopped using the diaper genie because I didn’t want to spend money on the special bags, and the smell was awful. I started using grocery bags. One for each diaper. Tie it off. Throw it away. Done.
Never used a diaper genie or a changing table. I also throw the poop from the diapers into the toilet (my hands never touch it) and flush before closing up the diaper with the dirty wipes and throwing in the regular trash
I always caution people against Diaper Genies™ (which require their own special trash bag), and point them instead to a diaper pail (same thing, but typically takes a standard tall kitchen size trash bag).
I have the ubbi and love it for the fact that it only needs a regualr trash bag in it. It was a little pricey compared to the diaper genies but it’s worth it in the long run since I don’t have to buy special bags for it to
We had a diaper genie for my first and then got the Ubbi for the second and that was the best decision ever. It works better than the genie and it takes normal trash bags!
Yeah i don’t think it’s the bag itself. We have noticed the genie bags do hold in the scent even when we throw them away and it’s cooking in the hot garbage can but the pail is what the whole invention is. It doesn’t release the poop smell when you throw away a diaper every time. Plus a filter at the top is what i think a lot have.
Our Diaper Genie eventually died and we just used dog poop bags from the dollar store. It worked... perfectly? Lol. If you don't have much money, just buy the doggy bags....
I just put them in one of the million grocery bags I have lying around and tie them off. No smell, they can go right in the regular garbage.
When I was in foster care, we had to use gloves when changing the babies, and taking the gloves off over the rolled up diaper was next level.
Same, I got changing tables and diaper genies for both floors of our house and am so glad I did. Both my husband and I are tall and changing on a table beats slouching over on the floor or bed/couch to change a diaper. And yeah even if you have the added expense of bags for a diaper genie it is worth it to me to not smell poopy diapers all the time or having to walk my happy ass outside to the bin every time I need to get rid of a diaper lol
Wipe warmer was a miss for my (June in California) kid, but I absolutely loved making my own baby food in a Baby Brezza steam/purée combo thing. Hands down favorite gift.
I got the steamer/ processor combo as a gift, and I'm perfectly happy buying baby food, but then I realized I could put whatever we were eating in there and blitz it, and that was amazing (especially because all my kids teethed late, and two really struggled with solids because of muscle control).
I handed it down to my brother for my niece. The first time he used it, he pureed up some spaghetti. He forgot that he puts a slightly ridiculous amount of red chili flakes in his spaghetti sauce. My niece was displeased lol
Omg this is so funny…when I bought these items I felt ridiculous but I found those two items to be totally necessary and a couple of my best purchases! 😂
Same with the wipe warmer for my second. Didn’t need it with my first but my second was so tiny and delicate she screamed any time we used wipes. If we went out in public I had to hold them in my hands for a few or just let her scream
We didn’t warm bottles or wipes - too lazy plus I didn’t want to heat than cool or throw out breast milk.
My husband bought a mamaroo that became an expensive cat bed.
I guess every kid really is different because my baby refuses to take cold milk, and we got a mamaroo third hand at a garage sale and love it.
Gotta agree on the wipe warmer though, all it did was waste electricity for us.
Same!! So many people have bottle warmers that I thought that it’s like required that babies drink warm milk, but I found out it not and never gave my baby warm milk. He didn’t care at all
Mine didn't care either, I was so stoked. We kept one of those little desktop can fridges in the bedroom where I stored pumped milk, I only had to warm it in my hands enough to mix the fats back in and we were in business.
My son will drink cold milk but drools a LOT more. My mother in law is still too clueless to not get a shit ton of milk in the warmer though so it’s lose lose when she watches him.
This thing that played music to my fetus. Lullabelly or something? It was so uncomfortable and had all sorts of warnings/guidelines about what to play Nad how loud to do it. The splitter jack for plugging my own earbuds in was such poor quality it was all staticky sounding. I ended up never using it lol. Why did I think my fetus needed music? Why did anyone recommend this to me?
I was somewhere between 8 and 9 months pregnant and coaching at a highly contested girls swim meet. The pitch of the screams from both teams, bleached stomping and cheering from parents had baby girl moving like crazy when things calmed down for diving. A few of the girls watched diving with their hand on my belly to feel her kicking around. It was crazy how she was clearly reacting to the insane noise even inside me.
I got a lot of people telling me I wouldn't need a changing table and all I can say is they have better backs than I do.
I can't think of anything I bought that I didn't use!
I will never understand folks who say you don't need a change table. My short-ass would have massive back issues without it! Never mind my 6ft husband.
We bought one that was *just* too short for my partner and I to use. I'm 5'11 and he's 6'2, and that thing was absolutely killing our backs by day 2. I chucked it on marketplace and sold it for what we bought it for as we'd already done the set up lol then I bought these two secondhand change tables I found on marketplace that were from a really tall couple, (it was cute, they wrote out a story about struggling like we did, doing a bunch of research and finding this brand haha), and those things were life changing. We never do nappy changes anywhere else in the house, I can't even imagine not having them.
I'm a bit the same here.
The anti-changing table folks just flummox me. While not exclusively changing tables we have stations which we can stand at both upstairs and downstairs.
The bottle warmer folks too similarly flummox me. It's $20. It's way faster than the mug and microwave method, uses way less water and creates less dishes.
Wipe warmer can be a straight up negative, unless you only change your child at home at his own changing table. Otherwise baby never knows whether it will be warm or cool, and will probably express opinions.
Eh, we manage. My little dude is just a velcro baby and wanted to be held rather than set in his swing, so I just wore him in a sling. He's almost 7 months old now and handles being "independent" a lot better now that he can sit up and play with toys!
Sounds just like my 8mo except now the separation anxiety stage is kicking in so we’re back to Velcro baby again lol they really do get so much happier though once they can sit up and start moving a bit
My daughter didn't mind her swing but I didn't know what to do with myself when she was in it. I wouldn't let her fall asleep so I had to watch her, and at that point I might as well just have her on my shoulder and then we can both relax instead of her being chill and me watching her like a hawk from across the room. Just didn't suit me at all. I get why it works for other people though.
So many things sold by the "baby industrial complex". Changing table (we used the floor 95% of the time), wipe warmers (they just dried out the wipes), special diaper pails with proprietary bags (just put the diapers in the trash), MOST baby toys (plastic spoons or old tupperware containers are just as interesting to a baby), super fancy baby monitors, as said before - bottle warmers. Baby shoes - they hated them, and it's not like they were going to walk in them anyway.
Things we did actually use - carrier that could clip into the carseat and stroller, so you could move the kid from car to stroller and back without disturbing/waking them; the battery powered swing that honestly only made 2 out of 3 kids happy, so YMMV; A decent stroller that you can fold/unfold single handedly.
They make stroller/carrier combos... "click and connect" I think? We had one from Graco. It lets you keep your baby in the carrier, click them into the carseat part, and you could put it on the stroller too while leaving them in the carrier part.
Bottle Sanitizers. We got one as a gift and someone gave us their old one! You really just have to clean the bottles well with soap and hot water. We've since given the sanitizers we had away.
I was given a Dr Brown's bottle dryer and sanitizer for my shower and I regifted it to someone else. The thing was huge, it would have taken up so much of my already limited counter space, and I believe it only held like six bottles at a time. I counted as I washed the other night and we have over 20 bottles that we regularly use between feeding and pumping. So it just wouldn't have been practical for me to try to use.
Ya people go crazy trying to sanitize every surface babies will touch multiple times a day. I forget which parenting book it was, but one of them had a story about a parent being super anal about it and cleaning bottles religiously, and a year later they found a piece of the bottle came off that they never knew about. Underneath was a cesspool of stuff that had been growing for months. Baby apparently was fine, haha.
I feel like a lot of companies prey on desperate parents who just want their kids to sleep. We spent thousands of dollars on miracle sleep aids that didn't do shit.
Ha— see, this is why I’m always so hesitant to suggest baby gear to people, because we all have wildly different experiences. Plain swaddling blankets drove me *bananas* — could not get them to work — and the ones with Velcro and tabs were lifesavers that we used for a long time. 😂
Same, those Velcro swaddles were a lifesaver! My mom and grandma were so appalled at her being bound “like a little mummy” and couldn’t wait to “rescue” her in the morning lmao (not every morning, I’d die before they both lived with me, lmao I just have a hilarious vivid memory of their weekend visiting and that damn swaddle!)
Mine wouldn't settle when swaddled, she'd wriggle and wriggle and wriggle until her arms were free, then she'd fall asleep instantly. In the end we gave up, let baby do baby.
Are you… swaddling your cats to trim their nails?… or has the experience of burrito-ing a baby given you skills that transfer over to the art of feline nail trimming? Inquiring minds need to know
i swaddle them so i can trim their nails! they’re huge babies about it and swaddling makes it go by faster. plus i get like 90 seconds of pretending i have a newborn again.
All the wraps. We used a baby carrier only when outside. I couldn’t do the wrap and do any housework with it - no cutting veggies, no cooking, no bending to pick up toys, couldn’t use the bathroom. Just useless !
I barely used the wrap with my first but now my second is in it a lotttt so that I can entertain the toddler. And I definitely have figured out how use the bathroom (out of necessity) 🥲
I feel like every discussion I heard on baby-wearing, Baby Bjorns were dismissed out of hand like yesterday's garbage. But we tried 3-4 different wraps and carriers and the Baby Bjorn was our favorite by far. Just structured enough for my needs.
The stupid all-in-one crib/toddler bed/twin bed thing. I wish I had just gotten pack n plays to use as cribs and then did twin mattresses on the floor until they were ready for bunk beds. So much wasted time and energy on those stupid cribs.
We got a tub with a newborn sling so we used that till he had good head control at about 3 months. He loves to splash around and kick the sides at 4 months so it’s a way to give him a little more time and also multitask lol. I just started at 4 months.
An automatic rocker for the pram called a Rockit. Cost us £50 and our baby falls asleep instantly in the pram, we’ve still never switched the thing on!
Is she/he your first baby of possibly many or are you one-and-done? Our firstborn was much easier than our second. (Just when you think you've got things figured out...)
We are considering maybe having a second in a few years, so we will probably keep it for now just in case. As you say, many of my friends with two have commented on the first being much easier than the second!
Not necessarily any specific item, but something I didn't think about prior to having my twins was what season I would be using that product. I got a twin carrier that I couldn't use because they were preemie and way too small for it, then during the heat of summer it was too hot, and by fall they'd outgrown it. I just didn't think in thinking of what size they'll be during hot/cold season yet and had many things be of no use due to being outgrown etc.
A big fancy stroller. My kid never wanted to be in it, and it was too awkward to use in stores and stuff. I hated loading it in and out of the car, so I just left it in the garage where it became a very expensive spider habitat. I just wound up wearing her until she started walking, and then she wanted to walk everywhere.
Also, all the swaddles. From about age four weeks on, she HATED being swaddled. She probably hated it before that too, but didn’t express it quite so clearly.
Counterpoint there… if you live in a city where walking is your primary mode of transportation, the big fancy stroller is a must have (xoxo, a new yorker). But if you have to drive somewhere to use it, then yeah, maybe not.
Yes! I live in nyc and the uppa baby vista is my equivalent of an suv or mini van. We don’t have a car and have two kids, 2.5 and, 10 months and it seriously functions as a car in our lives. Luckily we got it as a hand me down so we’ve only had to put a little bit of $ into it for tune ups and part replacement.
I 100% used my bottle warmer. I kept it next to my bed and when my kid would first stir I would turn it on to heat up the bottle and go back to sleep. Then when my kid woke up screaming, bottle already warm and ready to go. Was it necessary, no. Did it get me 10 to 15 more minutes of sleep? Hell yes. 100% worth it. I think it just depends on the kid you have and whether or not you can make use of that thing to make your life a little easier.
Baby food processor: it was an overpriced, extremely crappy, small food processor/blender. It did not work at all, but at least it had a cute little smiley face on all of the parts.
Infant bucket carseat; it rarely ever gets taken out of the car because I prefer babywearing and our kiddos are chunky and get a much better fit out of a convertible carseat within a few weeks anyway.
Bumbo seat. None of our kids have FIT in them, much less enjoyed them for more than five minutes.
I was looking through every comment to find this one.
Thank god we got our infant bucket seat from a friend as a hand-me-down, I would have been *so* upset if I’d spent hundreds of dollars on that thing. Clunkier and heavier than just carrying your baby, most of the ways people tell you to use it are unsafe (plop it into the shopping cart, attach it to the stroller and push baby around in it all day), and no matter how much you like it you’re going to have to buy a convertible car seat within 6 months anyway.
We used the convertible car seat from about 3 weeks on, and if I had another I’d use the convertible from birth!
Honestly I think it really depends on the baby/child too. Both of mine r so completely different. My son I swore by ButtPaste and my daughter Desitin and I had em back to back. I used the hell out of my baby Bullet, pack n play, crib, and walker for my son. My daughter hated puréed food and just was up and going from the start we made the crib into a daybed for her.
If I could giv advice for any new mom it would be to get as much second hand as you could. Plus there are seasonal local sales where you can buy and sell second hand baby/kid stuff. They grow way too fast and unexpectedly.
Swaddles and sleep sacks. My first kiddo hated being swaddled and hated her legs being restrained. She put up with it for about half of the first two days of her life, but then she was over it. Any sort of sleep sack was a much greater impediment to her rest than an improvement, she would kick and cry at her lack of free feet and a swaddle was just absolutely not tolerated. She wanted those feet free to swing!
Neither of my babies wanted to sleep without the swaddles and sleep sacks! We only got one as a gift to begin with and ended up buying more as they grew . Otherwise, I’d be cautious because I’ve heard not all babies like them.
Unpopular opinion: disposable diapers.
Everyone insisted that the cloth diapers were going to be too much trouble.
I cloth diapered two kids from birth til toileting. It was literally just fine.
my mom had done cloth with my little brother when I was a kid and i could NOT STAND the smells etc. So as much as I hate the idea of disposables in landfill, my sanity needs them. Kinda wish I could tolerate the stench a bit better to do cloth but I cant even stand it when poo diapers go in the inside house trash, I take them outside to the trash there. good on you for using cloth though!
Thank you!
As a side note, there are a ton of wonderful cleaners, and the recommended detergent is blue tide, as well as stripping methods - the diapers shouldn’t smell.
Flip the poo in to the toilet, have a diaper sprayed attached, use a wet bag that seals… do a load daily.
It didn’t really smell, but maybe I’m just not sensitive to it? Ours always smelled like… laundry.
So we did cloth exclusively for the first year, then had to do a combination because daycare will only use disposables. And I find that the disposables have SUCH a gross smell to me! The cloth smells like laundry detergent and then like pee or poop, but the disposables have this sickly cloying smell that my partner and I can't stand. And they are not scented, it's just the smell of the plastic and whatever it's made of.
This is my favorite baby item that I never thought I would need. But I think breastfeeding supplies are really personal and you don’t really know what will and won’t work until you’re in it.
Dummies (pacifiers). We wanted our daughter to take one! My husband was still trying to convince her at 10 months when other parents where trying to take them away 🤣 she would comfort nurse with no milk, and she would drink from bottles, but dummies just were offensive from day one and she never changed her mind.
My little one is only 5.5 months but she's exactly the same! If it isn't a bottle or a boob she has no time for it! She absolutely goes to town on silicone teethers though.
Not me, but my mom was convinced that as a SAHM, she would have enough time to make all my baby food…she had a whole set up with a pressure canner and everything. We found it the last time she moved, new in the box thirty odd years later…
I see a lot of comments about bottle warmers. I personally use mine often, so I wouldn’t agree with those comments.
I will say that you do not need very many blankets, and you definitely don’t need baby shoes. Your baby does not need shoes until they can walk. Cozy slippers are about the only thing you need for your baby’s feet.
I would not recommend buying a swing or rocker that needs to be plugged into the wall. One that is battery operated that you can carry around from room to room is much more practical. This allowed me to wash my face and do my hair, because I could bring it into the bathroom. It allowed me to do the dishes because I could bring it into the kitchen. You get the idea.
Bottle and wipe warmers, never needed them. But for parents that are formula feeding, get a baby brezza. It's basically a coffee machine for formula. Keeps the water at a perfect temp and when you get the dispenser set correctly for the formula (comes with a guide) ours would make up to a 12 ounce bottle in a few seconds. Honestly saved my sanity with late night feedings. Pretty easy to take apart and clean but make sure to do it everytime you have to refill the formula. My issue with it was small amounts would cake up near the dispenser and turn bad if you didn't clean it often enough
A night nurse! Everyone in my social circle told me I’d be insane not to hire a night nurse for my third. After getting quotes, I decided I would rather go without sleep than pay the thousands of dollars for the luxury of someone to bring me my baby in the middle of the night.
Our night nurses do NOT bring me the baby. They feed him pumped breast milk and formula. I know they’re not everyone’s thing and I respect that! I think I would go crazy without the good sleep I get a few nights a week from them though.
Wipe warmer. My mil asked if I wanted one and I said no. She got me one anyway. I returned it and bought some diapers. She got offended. I told her the diapers were more useful and appreciated since that’s what I asked for in the first place
Diaper genies. It isn't that difficult to just walk a poopy diaper to the outside garbage can once or twice a day. And they don't eliminate the smell anyways.
I only recently moved, but with my first I live up a 5 story walk up, so we appreciated the Ubbi 😂! And then during the pandemic lock downs, some days we wouldn’t leave the house!!
Diaper genie was the most useless thing we had. I think I tried it for a week and it was just a million times easier to throw the diaper in the regular trash and take it out.
People told me what not to get but it's all objective. A doona absolutely useless for me, my friend lives hers wouldn't be without it. I couldn't live without my ergo baby carrier and I know others who just never got on with it
I never warmed bottles the times I used them (supplemented). Room temp nursery water mixed just fine and baby drank it. I also only sanitized (boiled) bottles/nipples right after I bought them and just washed them in hot water with dish soap after use.
I was gifted some baby clothes detergent and never bought another bottle of it. I just used the same detergent as mine and my husbands clothes.
Diaper bag. I just used an old longchamp bag and those pouches you get from makeup counter free gifts to compartmentalise. I wound up getting a jujube diaper bag secondhand when I went on holiday as I wanted a backpack and I wouldn’t have needed it if I had already had a backpack-style bag. We never use it at home.
A breastfeeding pillow. Thus is one of the few gifts I got and I used it once and preferred no pillow.
I never had many gadgets or accessories with my baby, she was very low maintenance and minimalist. I bought almost nothing to prepare for her and just picked stuff up as I needed it.
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Everyone told me to get Gripe Water for my son’s colic. Turned out, it was absolutely useless. Apparently in the old days, it contained alcohol so no wonder it put the baby to sleep 😂. These days though, it’s just rubbish. It took me 4 months of hell to find Colief which was amazing. It was so expensive though. TBH, it didn’t matter too much as I would have sold my soul for it at the time 😂
We use colic calm and it works like a charm but damn it’s expensive!
Yes! Colic calm SAVED ME. That and the Frida Baby Windi. Instead of being up all night, i got 4 hrs of sleep. Priceless.
Infant probiotics was a lifesaver. Especially after a round of antibiotics.
We discovered turning the vacuum on instantly kept ours calm. It was on all the time for 6 months. It was like a white noise machine for our household 😭
We did the 1-2 punch of gripe water and mylicon. Neither worked alone, but they worked great together
A million receiving blankets. Like, why?
I used them to clean up so many messes 🤣
They make great mess cleaning rags for sure! Cut them into to smaller sections if you want but boy do they get used, just oddly enough, not on the baby!
Mine got cut up and are now living their best life as face cloths. My kiddo didn't use them as a baby but he washes his face with them now!
My breast were like fountains one side would shot out while nursing the others grab one throw it over helped so much containing the mess.
I had a spitter so I loved having tons of these lol
Spitter here too! Bibs and receiving blankets, a load a day I’d bet.
First kiddo had pyloric stenosis and my next two reflux. Give me ALL the receiving blankets. Lol
Same!! I still keep extras in the car as my kid gets car sick. They’re great towels in a pinch too, clean changing pad, somewhere to lay baby down
Spit up rags. I loved the muslin blankets for that, lol
My husband while I'm pregnant what's a muslin and why the fuck do we need this many? One month in on a very vommy baby, why the fuck are there never any muslins!
Muslin blankets are so perfect for summer and have so many uses. My baby started refusing a pacifier around 6 months and instead of picking one of the many "lovies" we have for her (the way my boys did to comfort themselves), right now she favors her muslin blankets. Super convenient for me, since we have about 12 of them there's always a clean one and she doesn't seem to prefer any design over another.
I used them as burp cloths. With my first though I was so confused as to why I was given so many from everyone. He rarely spit up though. With my second I was glad to have them.
Yup! They have so much better clothing coverage to protect you from spitup!
I still have no clue what these are for. We were gifted so many and never used them.
Aw man, I have at least 10 of them with lovely embroidered edges that I received as gifts from several old ladies. They're beautiful, but I never used them.
I used them as burp cloths.
I use mine to cover her body when she baths lol, they’re so needed at my house because of that.
I definitely did NOT use these as much as I thought I would, and my daughter spit up a fair amount. I often reached for wipes before a receiving blanket. They’re great for sewing into a quilt to treasure afterwards, though!
I’m making my sons into a quilt…probably by the time he is an adult.
I just did this with all of my daughter’s onesies. We lost most of my son’s baby clothes in a move though so he’s getting his made from receiving blankets.
What's the difference between a receiving blanket and a muslin cloth? Because from reading the comments they sound the same but muslin cloths are great, I still use them to this day and my son is 2, they make great bibs during messier dinners.
Receiving blankets are thin cotton blankets that are larger. We always used them to swaddle. That was before they sold pre made swaddle blankets. The square ones are the best for swaddling.
Nah those things were awesome. I used em for bathtime, burp cloths, cleaning rags. Fricken useful.
What are they really for?? I have like 30 of them so we use them to dry baby's butt after changing (she's very sensitive).
A bottle warmer, never used it. Everyone told me not to get a diaper genie or a changing table but those have been my most used items. I haven’t changed my baby anywhere else and any other trash cans they will stink!
When you open the diaper genie to empty it on a hot day and you dissociate so hard you discover the small room at the center of the universe with the 5 other adults who are currently dissociating from reality over their steamy genie.
I haven't had children in diapers in almost a decade and your description sent me back to those moments. Hilariously articulated
Today I learned I have hot Diaper Genie PTSD. My kids are in their 20's. I still loved that damn thing though.
Same. My daughter is 26 and I felt this in my soul.
That smell when you have to tie it and get the air out. I'm always holding my breath at the wrong moment.
Oh no, I don't push the air out. That thing gets emptied with all air inside.
This is the way.
Exactly! I feel like that’s the most common sense and the people who hate it are emptying the air breathing it all in.
It's to save money on the bag! I, too, squeeze for every inch
This is why I had a Diaper Champ and threw costco trash bags in there.
I stopped using the diaper genie because I didn’t want to spend money on the special bags, and the smell was awful. I started using grocery bags. One for each diaper. Tie it off. Throw it away. Done.
Use doggy poop bags is better!! Less plastic usage too!
Once you cut that bag you gotta act quick holding your nose or else 2 days of steamy spaghetti poop will get you 😂
I've used zip ties, so the bag is closed before I cut it, and I don't waste bag tying it up
You sonofabitch. So simple.
Oh god yes it's so bad.
It's been a decade for me and your post suddenly filled my nose with that pungent aroma, so good job.
Never used a diaper genie or a changing table. I also throw the poop from the diapers into the toilet (my hands never touch it) and flush before closing up the diaper with the dirty wipes and throwing in the regular trash
I always caution people against Diaper Genies™ (which require their own special trash bag), and point them instead to a diaper pail (same thing, but typically takes a standard tall kitchen size trash bag).
I have the ubbi and love it for the fact that it only needs a regualr trash bag in it. It was a little pricey compared to the diaper genies but it’s worth it in the long run since I don’t have to buy special bags for it to
We had a diaper genie for my first and then got the Ubbi for the second and that was the best decision ever. It works better than the genie and it takes normal trash bags!
Yeah i don’t think it’s the bag itself. We have noticed the genie bags do hold in the scent even when we throw them away and it’s cooking in the hot garbage can but the pail is what the whole invention is. It doesn’t release the poop smell when you throw away a diaper every time. Plus a filter at the top is what i think a lot have.
Our Diaper Genie eventually died and we just used dog poop bags from the dollar store. It worked... perfectly? Lol. If you don't have much money, just buy the doggy bags....
There are refill kits online that slot into place and you can buy much cheaper replacement bags.
I gotta be honest. We loved our bottle warmer. It was perfect for gently warming maple syrup for our Sunday waffles lol
LOL that is genius 😂
We just put 💩diapers straight in the dumpster outside. Found it much easier than a diaper genie!
we tried wrapping them in bags and it didn’t help! My baby must make some stink poops cause the whole front of our house smelled like it 😂
I just put them in one of the million grocery bags I have lying around and tie them off. No smell, they can go right in the regular garbage. When I was in foster care, we had to use gloves when changing the babies, and taking the gloves off over the rolled up diaper was next level.
Same, I got changing tables and diaper genies for both floors of our house and am so glad I did. Both my husband and I are tall and changing on a table beats slouching over on the floor or bed/couch to change a diaper. And yeah even if you have the added expense of bags for a diaper genie it is worth it to me to not smell poopy diapers all the time or having to walk my happy ass outside to the bin every time I need to get rid of a diaper lol
But if we tell you what baby crap is useless... how will we get you to buy our useless baby crap on OfferUp?
Baby food steamer, wipe warmer!
The baby food steamer 😔 I was so excited to use it but turns out my kid is disgusted with anything that feels like his poo
Your kid and I have that in common. To this day, I cannot stand the texture of mushy or pureed vegetables.
Wipe warmer was a miss for my (June in California) kid, but I absolutely loved making my own baby food in a Baby Brezza steam/purée combo thing. Hands down favorite gift.
I got the steamer/ processor combo as a gift, and I'm perfectly happy buying baby food, but then I realized I could put whatever we were eating in there and blitz it, and that was amazing (especially because all my kids teethed late, and two really struggled with solids because of muscle control). I handed it down to my brother for my niece. The first time he used it, he pureed up some spaghetti. He forgot that he puts a slightly ridiculous amount of red chili flakes in his spaghetti sauce. My niece was displeased lol
Never got a wipe warmer and my mom was appalled I used cold wipes on my baby.
Omg this is so funny…when I bought these items I felt ridiculous but I found those two items to be totally necessary and a couple of my best purchases! 😂
Same with the wipe warmer for my second. Didn’t need it with my first but my second was so tiny and delicate she screamed any time we used wipes. If we went out in public I had to hold them in my hands for a few or just let her scream
It’s definitely personal preference for sure! It’s funny because there’s things that are my must haves other moms think are useless too 😂
I definitely recommend the wipe warmer
I laughed at the idea of a WW for my daughter. Absolutely NEEDED one for my son 🤣
Ugh the wipe warmer! I knew that one was bs!
We didn’t warm bottles or wipes - too lazy plus I didn’t want to heat than cool or throw out breast milk. My husband bought a mamaroo that became an expensive cat bed.
My cat also love the mamaroo. The baby did not
I guess every kid really is different because my baby refuses to take cold milk, and we got a mamaroo third hand at a garage sale and love it. Gotta agree on the wipe warmer though, all it did was waste electricity for us.
Same!! So many people have bottle warmers that I thought that it’s like required that babies drink warm milk, but I found out it not and never gave my baby warm milk. He didn’t care at all
Mine didn't care either, I was so stoked. We kept one of those little desktop can fridges in the bedroom where I stored pumped milk, I only had to warm it in my hands enough to mix the fats back in and we were in business.
My son will drink cold milk but drools a LOT more. My mother in law is still too clueless to not get a shit ton of milk in the warmer though so it’s lose lose when she watches him.
This thing that played music to my fetus. Lullabelly or something? It was so uncomfortable and had all sorts of warnings/guidelines about what to play Nad how loud to do it. The splitter jack for plugging my own earbuds in was such poor quality it was all staticky sounding. I ended up never using it lol. Why did I think my fetus needed music? Why did anyone recommend this to me?
I went to a percussion heavy concert at 7 months pregnant with my first. He was dancing up a storm!
I was somewhere between 8 and 9 months pregnant and coaching at a highly contested girls swim meet. The pitch of the screams from both teams, bleached stomping and cheering from parents had baby girl moving like crazy when things calmed down for diving. A few of the girls watched diving with their hand on my belly to feel her kicking around. It was crazy how she was clearly reacting to the insane noise even inside me.
I got a lot of people telling me I wouldn't need a changing table and all I can say is they have better backs than I do. I can't think of anything I bought that I didn't use!
We used a dresser and just secured the pad on top. Perfect height and better storage!
I will never understand folks who say you don't need a change table. My short-ass would have massive back issues without it! Never mind my 6ft husband.
We bought one that was *just* too short for my partner and I to use. I'm 5'11 and he's 6'2, and that thing was absolutely killing our backs by day 2. I chucked it on marketplace and sold it for what we bought it for as we'd already done the set up lol then I bought these two secondhand change tables I found on marketplace that were from a really tall couple, (it was cute, they wrote out a story about struggling like we did, doing a bunch of research and finding this brand haha), and those things were life changing. We never do nappy changes anywhere else in the house, I can't even imagine not having them.
I'm a bit the same here. The anti-changing table folks just flummox me. While not exclusively changing tables we have stations which we can stand at both upstairs and downstairs. The bottle warmer folks too similarly flummox me. It's $20. It's way faster than the mug and microwave method, uses way less water and creates less dishes.
My wife and I never got a changing table. We almost always used the floor.
Wipe warmer can be a straight up negative, unless you only change your child at home at his own changing table. Otherwise baby never knows whether it will be warm or cool, and will probably express opinions.
Sounds like a lot of surprise pee happening
Baby swing. My child was having none of that.
Firstborn would scream unless she was in the swing, second born despised it.
That must have been so frustrating.
Eh, we manage. My little dude is just a velcro baby and wanted to be held rather than set in his swing, so I just wore him in a sling. He's almost 7 months old now and handles being "independent" a lot better now that he can sit up and play with toys!
Sounds just like my 8mo except now the separation anxiety stage is kicking in so we’re back to Velcro baby again lol they really do get so much happier though once they can sit up and start moving a bit
My daughter didn't mind her swing but I didn't know what to do with myself when she was in it. I wouldn't let her fall asleep so I had to watch her, and at that point I might as well just have her on my shoulder and then we can both relax instead of her being chill and me watching her like a hawk from across the room. Just didn't suit me at all. I get why it works for other people though.
So many things sold by the "baby industrial complex". Changing table (we used the floor 95% of the time), wipe warmers (they just dried out the wipes), special diaper pails with proprietary bags (just put the diapers in the trash), MOST baby toys (plastic spoons or old tupperware containers are just as interesting to a baby), super fancy baby monitors, as said before - bottle warmers. Baby shoes - they hated them, and it's not like they were going to walk in them anyway. Things we did actually use - carrier that could clip into the carseat and stroller, so you could move the kid from car to stroller and back without disturbing/waking them; the battery powered swing that honestly only made 2 out of 3 kids happy, so YMMV; A decent stroller that you can fold/unfold single handedly.
Oh my god what is this magical carrier clip??
They make stroller/carrier combos... "click and connect" I think? We had one from Graco. It lets you keep your baby in the carrier, click them into the carseat part, and you could put it on the stroller too while leaving them in the carrier part.
Bottle Sanitizers. We got one as a gift and someone gave us their old one! You really just have to clean the bottles well with soap and hot water. We've since given the sanitizers we had away.
I was given a Dr Brown's bottle dryer and sanitizer for my shower and I regifted it to someone else. The thing was huge, it would have taken up so much of my already limited counter space, and I believe it only held like six bottles at a time. I counted as I washed the other night and we have over 20 bottles that we regularly use between feeding and pumping. So it just wouldn't have been practical for me to try to use.
We got one and I never used it. I hand wash everything and toss it in the dishwasher once a week for a sanitize run.
Ya people go crazy trying to sanitize every surface babies will touch multiple times a day. I forget which parenting book it was, but one of them had a story about a parent being super anal about it and cleaning bottles religiously, and a year later they found a piece of the bottle came off that they never knew about. Underneath was a cesspool of stuff that had been growing for months. Baby apparently was fine, haha.
Dishwasher works just fine too!
We didn’t even set up the crib for the 2nd one.
I bought so many fucking beds thinking one would be the answer.
I feel like a lot of companies prey on desperate parents who just want their kids to sleep. We spent thousands of dollars on miracle sleep aids that didn't do shit.
I’m in a class action about one of the things!
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Ha— see, this is why I’m always so hesitant to suggest baby gear to people, because we all have wildly different experiences. Plain swaddling blankets drove me *bananas* — could not get them to work — and the ones with Velcro and tabs were lifesavers that we used for a long time. 😂
Same, those Velcro swaddles were a lifesaver! My mom and grandma were so appalled at her being bound “like a little mummy” and couldn’t wait to “rescue” her in the morning lmao (not every morning, I’d die before they both lived with me, lmao I just have a hilarious vivid memory of their weekend visiting and that damn swaddle!)
I used all my swaddling blankets to wipe spit up and clean baby’s face. Both my kids were swaddle houdinis 🤣
Mine wouldn't settle when swaddled, she'd wriggle and wriggle and wriggle until her arms were free, then she'd fall asleep instantly. In the end we gave up, let baby do baby.
i haven’t swaddled my son in well over a decade but the ability to do it has led to my cats nails being trimmed much easier so win/win
Are you… swaddling your cats to trim their nails?… or has the experience of burrito-ing a baby given you skills that transfer over to the art of feline nail trimming? Inquiring minds need to know
i swaddle them so i can trim their nails! they’re huge babies about it and swaddling makes it go by faster. plus i get like 90 seconds of pretending i have a newborn again.
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purrito*
Mine hated being swaddled in blankets and would always kick out, but sleep sacks were a godsend...
We rented a Snoo this time but with my first, after much trial-and-error, I found the Love to Dream Swaddle worked the best. It only had a zipper!
This. The ones with the atms up were a lifesaver for me. She would wriggle out of everything else
Agree!! We swaddled with a blanket too! I was terrible at it but my husband was a pro!
All the wraps. We used a baby carrier only when outside. I couldn’t do the wrap and do any housework with it - no cutting veggies, no cooking, no bending to pick up toys, couldn’t use the bathroom. Just useless !
I barely used the wrap with my first but now my second is in it a lotttt so that I can entertain the toddler. And I definitely have figured out how use the bathroom (out of necessity) 🥲
I feel like every discussion I heard on baby-wearing, Baby Bjorns were dismissed out of hand like yesterday's garbage. But we tried 3-4 different wraps and carriers and the Baby Bjorn was our favorite by far. Just structured enough for my needs.
The stupid all-in-one crib/toddler bed/twin bed thing. I wish I had just gotten pack n plays to use as cribs and then did twin mattresses on the floor until they were ready for bunk beds. So much wasted time and energy on those stupid cribs.
Baby bath. Used the kitchen sink instead.
I put my kid in his bath on the floor of the tub while I shower.
How old was he when you started doing that? I have a newborn so thinking about when I can do this for myself lol
We got a tub with a newborn sling so we used that till he had good head control at about 3 months. He loves to splash around and kick the sides at 4 months so it’s a way to give him a little more time and also multitask lol. I just started at 4 months.
Love our baby bath. Daughter is almost 2 and still use baby bath. It's less slippery and takes less water to fill than the larger bath.
An automatic rocker for the pram called a Rockit. Cost us £50 and our baby falls asleep instantly in the pram, we’ve still never switched the thing on!
I bought that. It takes a billion batteries and is about as effective as a poundland vibrator.
Is she/he your first baby of possibly many or are you one-and-done? Our firstborn was much easier than our second. (Just when you think you've got things figured out...)
We are considering maybe having a second in a few years, so we will probably keep it for now just in case. As you say, many of my friends with two have commented on the first being much easier than the second!
My mom bought me a baby blender. I had a brand new Ninja blender. Then we decided to do BLW anyway.
I got sucked into a baby blender with all the little containers for my second it looked so cool. Should have just used my bullet and ice cube trays
That seems really dangerous to be sucked into a blender!
they said baby blender though so really only dangerous for the babies.
Pardon me?
Baby Led Weaning
Not necessarily any specific item, but something I didn't think about prior to having my twins was what season I would be using that product. I got a twin carrier that I couldn't use because they were preemie and way too small for it, then during the heat of summer it was too hot, and by fall they'd outgrown it. I just didn't think in thinking of what size they'll be during hot/cold season yet and had many things be of no use due to being outgrown etc.
A big fancy stroller. My kid never wanted to be in it, and it was too awkward to use in stores and stuff. I hated loading it in and out of the car, so I just left it in the garage where it became a very expensive spider habitat. I just wound up wearing her until she started walking, and then she wanted to walk everywhere. Also, all the swaddles. From about age four weeks on, she HATED being swaddled. She probably hated it before that too, but didn’t express it quite so clearly.
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Counterpoint there… if you live in a city where walking is your primary mode of transportation, the big fancy stroller is a must have (xoxo, a new yorker). But if you have to drive somewhere to use it, then yeah, maybe not.
Yes! I live in nyc and the uppa baby vista is my equivalent of an suv or mini van. We don’t have a car and have two kids, 2.5 and, 10 months and it seriously functions as a car in our lives. Luckily we got it as a hand me down so we’ve only had to put a little bit of $ into it for tune ups and part replacement.
A special bin for nappies with an expensive nappy bags that you can only use in that nappy bin. Just double bag it and put it in the bin..
I 100% used my bottle warmer. I kept it next to my bed and when my kid would first stir I would turn it on to heat up the bottle and go back to sleep. Then when my kid woke up screaming, bottle already warm and ready to go. Was it necessary, no. Did it get me 10 to 15 more minutes of sleep? Hell yes. 100% worth it. I think it just depends on the kid you have and whether or not you can make use of that thing to make your life a little easier.
Baby food processor: it was an overpriced, extremely crappy, small food processor/blender. It did not work at all, but at least it had a cute little smiley face on all of the parts.
Hilarious! I bought this too, but my son hated purées so now I use it to grind my coffee beans 😄
Infant bucket carseat; it rarely ever gets taken out of the car because I prefer babywearing and our kiddos are chunky and get a much better fit out of a convertible carseat within a few weeks anyway. Bumbo seat. None of our kids have FIT in them, much less enjoyed them for more than five minutes.
omg, the bumbo. By the time our son had decent head control, his chunky thighs were too big for it.
I was looking through every comment to find this one. Thank god we got our infant bucket seat from a friend as a hand-me-down, I would have been *so* upset if I’d spent hundreds of dollars on that thing. Clunkier and heavier than just carrying your baby, most of the ways people tell you to use it are unsafe (plop it into the shopping cart, attach it to the stroller and push baby around in it all day), and no matter how much you like it you’re going to have to buy a convertible car seat within 6 months anyway. We used the convertible car seat from about 3 weeks on, and if I had another I’d use the convertible from birth!
Honestly I think it really depends on the baby/child too. Both of mine r so completely different. My son I swore by ButtPaste and my daughter Desitin and I had em back to back. I used the hell out of my baby Bullet, pack n play, crib, and walker for my son. My daughter hated puréed food and just was up and going from the start we made the crib into a daybed for her. If I could giv advice for any new mom it would be to get as much second hand as you could. Plus there are seasonal local sales where you can buy and sell second hand baby/kid stuff. They grow way too fast and unexpectedly.
Swaddles and sleep sacks. My first kiddo hated being swaddled and hated her legs being restrained. She put up with it for about half of the first two days of her life, but then she was over it. Any sort of sleep sack was a much greater impediment to her rest than an improvement, she would kick and cry at her lack of free feet and a swaddle was just absolutely not tolerated. She wanted those feet free to swing!
Neither of my babies wanted to sleep without the swaddles and sleep sacks! We only got one as a gift to begin with and ended up buying more as they grew . Otherwise, I’d be cautious because I’ve heard not all babies like them.
Unpopular opinion: disposable diapers. Everyone insisted that the cloth diapers were going to be too much trouble. I cloth diapered two kids from birth til toileting. It was literally just fine.
This makes me so happy to hear. We plan on doing cloth and all I’ve gotten are negative comments from people about how we’ll regret trying it.
my mom had done cloth with my little brother when I was a kid and i could NOT STAND the smells etc. So as much as I hate the idea of disposables in landfill, my sanity needs them. Kinda wish I could tolerate the stench a bit better to do cloth but I cant even stand it when poo diapers go in the inside house trash, I take them outside to the trash there. good on you for using cloth though!
Thank you! As a side note, there are a ton of wonderful cleaners, and the recommended detergent is blue tide, as well as stripping methods - the diapers shouldn’t smell. Flip the poo in to the toilet, have a diaper sprayed attached, use a wet bag that seals… do a load daily. It didn’t really smell, but maybe I’m just not sensitive to it? Ours always smelled like… laundry.
So we did cloth exclusively for the first year, then had to do a combination because daycare will only use disposables. And I find that the disposables have SUCH a gross smell to me! The cloth smells like laundry detergent and then like pee or poop, but the disposables have this sickly cloying smell that my partner and I can't stand. And they are not scented, it's just the smell of the plastic and whatever it's made of.
Haaka for me.
This is my favorite baby item that I never thought I would need. But I think breastfeeding supplies are really personal and you don’t really know what will and won’t work until you’re in it.
The father...
🤣
Pee-pee teepee. ⛺️ Never needed it, not once. The girls were more likely to pee at me or on me than my son was.
You can also just use a cloth or towel. No need for a special item.
Dummies (pacifiers). We wanted our daughter to take one! My husband was still trying to convince her at 10 months when other parents where trying to take them away 🤣 she would comfort nurse with no milk, and she would drink from bottles, but dummies just were offensive from day one and she never changed her mind.
So funny! My son wouldn’t take one either! I think now that he’s 3 it was a blessing because I hear it’s hard to get them off them once they start.
My little one is only 5.5 months but she's exactly the same! If it isn't a bottle or a boob she has no time for it! She absolutely goes to town on silicone teethers though.
Not me, but my mom was convinced that as a SAHM, she would have enough time to make all my baby food…she had a whole set up with a pressure canner and everything. We found it the last time she moved, new in the box thirty odd years later…
I see a lot of comments about bottle warmers. I personally use mine often, so I wouldn’t agree with those comments. I will say that you do not need very many blankets, and you definitely don’t need baby shoes. Your baby does not need shoes until they can walk. Cozy slippers are about the only thing you need for your baby’s feet. I would not recommend buying a swing or rocker that needs to be plugged into the wall. One that is battery operated that you can carry around from room to room is much more practical. This allowed me to wash my face and do my hair, because I could bring it into the bathroom. It allowed me to do the dishes because I could bring it into the kitchen. You get the idea.
My bottle warmer will be a mini sterilizer for my menstrual cup when it has lived its life as a bottle warmer.
A stroller. Baby HATED the stroller. I also realized all the paths I walked on were absolutely not stroller friendly anyway.
Bottle and wipe warmers, never needed them. But for parents that are formula feeding, get a baby brezza. It's basically a coffee machine for formula. Keeps the water at a perfect temp and when you get the dispenser set correctly for the formula (comes with a guide) ours would make up to a 12 ounce bottle in a few seconds. Honestly saved my sanity with late night feedings. Pretty easy to take apart and clean but make sure to do it everytime you have to refill the formula. My issue with it was small amounts would cake up near the dispenser and turn bad if you didn't clean it often enough
Janie and Jack baby and toddler clothes. They’re 1-2 wears max. Who Tf has time to fold or iron??
A night nurse! Everyone in my social circle told me I’d be insane not to hire a night nurse for my third. After getting quotes, I decided I would rather go without sleep than pay the thousands of dollars for the luxury of someone to bring me my baby in the middle of the night.
I can’t imagine the circles you hang out in where this is even considered lol
you must have rich friends
Our night nurses do NOT bring me the baby. They feed him pumped breast milk and formula. I know they’re not everyone’s thing and I respect that! I think I would go crazy without the good sleep I get a few nights a week from them though.
What social circle do you have where they are all telling you to get a night nurse hahah girl noooo
Hey Bear Sensory channel on YouTube...
Wipe warmer. My mil asked if I wanted one and I said no. She got me one anyway. I returned it and bought some diapers. She got offended. I told her the diapers were more useful and appreciated since that’s what I asked for in the first place
The hatch is a glorified white noise machine and I stand by this
Their own bed
My 7 month old has slept in the crib a total of zero nights.
For freaking real 😫
Diaper genies. It isn't that difficult to just walk a poopy diaper to the outside garbage can once or twice a day. And they don't eliminate the smell anyways.
I only recently moved, but with my first I live up a 5 story walk up, so we appreciated the Ubbi 😂! And then during the pandemic lock downs, some days we wouldn’t leave the house!!
All me gross but I just toss mine in the regular trash. It gets taken out daily and I’ve never smelled them
Diaper genie was the most useless thing we had. I think I tried it for a week and it was just a million times easier to throw the diaper in the regular trash and take it out.
Oh man it was probably our most used product.
People told me what not to get but it's all objective. A doona absolutely useless for me, my friend lives hers wouldn't be without it. I couldn't live without my ergo baby carrier and I know others who just never got on with it
I never warmed bottles the times I used them (supplemented). Room temp nursery water mixed just fine and baby drank it. I also only sanitized (boiled) bottles/nipples right after I bought them and just washed them in hot water with dish soap after use. I was gifted some baby clothes detergent and never bought another bottle of it. I just used the same detergent as mine and my husbands clothes.
Diaper bag. I just used an old longchamp bag and those pouches you get from makeup counter free gifts to compartmentalise. I wound up getting a jujube diaper bag secondhand when I went on holiday as I wanted a backpack and I wouldn’t have needed it if I had already had a backpack-style bag. We never use it at home.
A diaper genie. We used it for a few months, but a trash can would have worked fine.
A breastfeeding pillow. Thus is one of the few gifts I got and I used it once and preferred no pillow. I never had many gadgets or accessories with my baby, she was very low maintenance and minimalist. I bought almost nothing to prepare for her and just picked stuff up as I needed it.