Newborn favorites — and a learning

The most helpful and delightful things from these early months.

Psst friendly reminder: If you’re not interested in posts about baby stuff, simply opt out of the Oh Baby! section of this newsletter by going to your Substack settings.  

Also, a special hello to new subscribers! Welcome and thanks for coming along for this slow shopping/style journey — lots planned for this year ;) 

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So many nights during my second and third trimesters of pregnancy I would sit on the couch, eating my requisite evening banana while trawling relevant Reddit threads, blogs, and Youtube videos to find the “right” products to pluck into my baby gear spreadsheet.

Now that I’m six months into this new chapter, I can say with confidence that nothing could have prepared me for the relentless around-the-clock responsibility of caring for a newborn. But some things did help make life easier.

I’ve rounded them up below, in no particular order.

1. OXO wipe dispenser — makes it easier to change diapers… enough said. 

2. Alzip play mat— well worth it to make our hardwood floors safe and comfortable for play.

3. Oogiebear — just a no-nonsense nose picker! 

4. H&M wrapover bodysuits — soft, easy to put on, the only bodysuits we want to use. I’m sad it stops at 9M.

5. Baby Brezza dryer/sterilizer — big capacity, worth it for the drying function alone. 

6. Joseph Joseph basin — makes my bottle washing routine feel cleaner, neater.

7. Nestig crib — easy to assemble, well made, cute, and having wheels on a crib is a gamechanger! Baby loves the Nestig mobile as well. 

8. Delta dresser – cute, more petite-friendly than others, a nice medium-sized option. 

9. Munchkin disposable pads — good size, good quality, versatile (we keep some in the diaper bag, at the changing table, and also sometimes one to line the bouncer, aka poop chair 😬).

10. Mia teether — adorable and well designed (the interior handle makes it easier to hold/harder to drop). Lately, it’s been helpful for distracting the squirmy baby during diaper changes.

And now for a learning…

When it comes to the bigger items, it’s worth taking the time to really understand your specific space/needs/preferences.

The first thing I had to de-influence myself from was the idea of having a separate room, aka an official nursery, all decked out and ready to go before the baby arrives. Up until a certain point that’s what being prepared looked like in my mind. But then I really thought through our living arrangement and the product options I’d encountered, and ultimately decided on starting off with the dresser/changing table/crib in our bedroom, the nursing chair (aka my reading chair) in my home office, and continuing to use the would-be nursery as a workout/storage space until we’re ready to move baby to her own room. And that turned out to be the right decision for us.  

Baby corner sometime pre-baby — It was all theoretical at this point. I put one of my paintings on the changing table because I thought it would look nice there (lol). The changing pad is facing the wrong direction. The cubbies innocently unstuffed.

Another personal need that drove my choices was height. The dresser and crib I picked are both the shortest among options I found. I’d always thought I would get a Babyletto dresser because they’re an often recommended cute baby furniture brand, but when I looked at one in person (RIP BuyBuyBaby) it still felt a bit high for my 5’0 self. So I used the height of that dresser as a reference point and found one that’s lower. 

With all that said… it feels like my journey into Kid Product Land has only just begun 😬 I’ve been working on not being in a constant state of shopping (still baby stuff mainly)… but it’s hard! Trying though. 

’Til next time,

— Jenny

P.S. I’m using the Substack app a bit more these days to read other newsletters and participate in subscriber chats. And just for fun, I also started an intro thread in the Ode subscriber chat. If you use the app, come say hi in the thread! :)