Baby Gear You Don’t Need
When preparing for your little one to make his/her appearance there are definitely a lot of resources, baby stores, and unsolicited opinions. It doesn’t matter if you are expecting your first baby or your eighth baby. While I am definitely not an expert; I have gained some knowledge and experience over the last 10 years of parenting. What do you need? What can you do without? What should you splurge on and what should you save on? Below is a list of items I found I could do without.
Wipes Warmer
Pee-Pee Teepee
Yes, I only have boys, and yes girls don’t use Pee-Pee Teepees…either way I found both the wipes warmer and the Pee-Pee Teepees were more work than needed. I know it may seem cruel and unusual punishment to use a cold wipe on a baby, especially a brand new baby. But hear me out…the baby will eventually have to feel the cold wipe. Whether you are out and about and don’t have the wipes warmer with you; or if it’s 2am and you forgot to refill the wipes warmer and your baby is screaming from a soiled diaper and starving…are you really going to let your baby scream while you refill the warmer and wait for the warmer to warm the wipes? I also found that the wipes warmer was very talented at drying my wipes out. By the time I was at the bottom and about to refill with new wipes, the left over wipes were warm but they were also dried out. It didn’t matter what brand of wipes I used either.
Now the Pee-Pee Teepees…boys’ natural instinct is to just pee on everything. It’s still true for my twin 9 year old boys. We go for a family hike and they act like they must mark their territory on everything. YoYo pees in our backyard at least once a week. No amount of reprimanding them has changed this aspect. It is 100% natural for a baby boy to pee when the cold air hits their private area. Using the Pee-Pee Teepees just added one more step to the diaper changing routine; and added more items I had to launder. Not to mention, I never wanted to use the Teepees if the diaper had more than just urine in it. I figure, between my 3 potty trained boys, plus diaper changes for the next 3 years with Goob; Mr. Man and I have changed/will change diapers for a total of 9 years (since my boys all seem to like to potty train around age 3…and 3 of those years we did double diaper duty with twins). We’ve mastered the art of changing boy diapers. The key is to do it quickly, be ready for spontaneous urine spouts, ALWAYS remember to tuck the wee-wee down after the new diaper is secure, and be prepared to laugh about incidents that don’t end up going your way.
Side Story: When Bean and Keegs were around age 2, Mr. Man was giving them a bath. Randomly in the middle of the bath, Bean stands up and starts to pee on Keegs head…who just sat there and let it happen. He even looked up to see what was dripping on his head so he also received a face full of urine. Bean was pretty proud of himself and was laughing hysterically the entire time. Needless to say Mr. Man and I were glad that it occurred during bathtime and a double shampooing was all that was needed.
Specialty Diaper Pail
Changing Table
We did have a diaper pail with the twins. It was in their room right by their changing table. AND boy did we use both. We were so adamant that we change the boys on the changing table when we were home, heaven forbid we put them on the floor. And the diapers only went in the pail. We didn’t see anything wrong, or inconvenient with that. Even though we cleaned the diaper pail on a regular basis, and sprayed Febreeze, or stashed air fresheners at the bottom and top of the pail; it ALWAYS stunk…which then caused the boys’ bedroom to stink. When we had YoYo, we were house sitting for some friends and all of our belongings were in storage while we waited for our house to be built. There was no way we were going to purchase double baby items when we had perfectly good baby furniture in storage. So YoYo was deprived of using the changing table and the diaper pail for the first 6 months of his life. By the time we were in our new house and had unpacked, Mr. Man looked at me and we just realized ‘why do we need these two things?’ Changing on the floor or the couch was SO much easier, especially when the baby started the rolling over stage. And we had so many extra plastic shopping bags left over from stores that any stinky diapers went directly into one of them and then into the garage/outside trash bin.
Fancy Stroller
I feel like I’ve tried it all when it comes to strollers. The first one we had was the limousine type double stroller from Graco. It could clip in the baby carrier car seats. That was just about the only convenience for it though. It was super long, which made it difficult to steer and it was heavy and bulky so it was a nuisance putting it in the car. After the Graco double, we purchase a side-by-side double jogging stroller. It was perfect for outings when I was by myself. It was super easy to steer and maneuver. It was still bulky, but most double strollers are. When Mr. Man and I were together we actually used 2 Chicco umbrella strollers. Then when we had YoYo we tried the stroller frame that you clipped the car seat in, but there was no other way to sit in it without the car seat. That worked for a little while; but I became frustrated with it when Yo was old enough to not need his car seat carrier and could sit up by himself. That’s when I started researching the crap out of strollers. I knew I was tired of purchasing strollers only to not like them after several months. I decided I didn’t need to spend a ton of money and the main criteria would be that it had to be lightweight, easy to fold and unfold, durable, and if possible I could eventually use it with the clip in car seat carrier if we decided to have another baby. I landed on the Chicco Liteway 2-in-1 stroller. It’s an umbrella stroller that can be folded in such a way that the baby carrier can clip in. Best stroller purchase ever! I did end up purchasing a single carry jogging stroller when I started training for my first half marathon; and I do love that one too, but it mostly stays in my garage when I’m not running with it. In the end, babies don’t need fancy strollers. They sleep, spit up, and leak messes from their diapers in them. If you are looking for a stroller with a specific purpose, such as a jogging stroller…splurge! If you want an every day stroller that gets the job done then save your money. If you’d like to check out the Chicco Liteway 2-in-1 similar to the one I have, I will leave the link below.
Bottom line, babies love you and need you whether you spend $1,000 on a crib or stroller, whether you use a wipe warmer, or don’t. You need to figure out what works best for you and your baby. Guess what…every baby is different too. What one of your babies likes, the other one might not. Parenting is trial and error from the very beginning, and it’s oh-so-fun! Remember these suggestions are just from my experience, and I am by-no-means an expert!!!
