Despite being told left, right and centre that newborn babies really don’t need much stuff, it’s impossible not to get sucked into the world of baby shopping and it can be really quite overwhelming! On one hand I know that a newborn doesn’t need all the stuff, but on the other I feel like you only have your first baby once and there’s no harm enjoying that. So I feel like I’ve been somewhere in the middle when it comes to shopping. I’m letting myself enjoy the process and buy a few unnecessary bits just because they’re cute, but I’m also trying to be practical and not go too over the top. In fact one of my tactics has been, instead of asking friends and family what I should be buying, I’ve been asking what was the one thing they bought that they ended up not needing or using. Of course you have to factor in that every baby is totally different and what works for one might not work for another, and that’s something no-one knows until the time comes.
I think it’s quite common for people in the UK to start thinking about shopping after their 20 week scan, so that’s what we did and we didn’t jump in head first, we eased our way in. I started by researching online and chatting to friends and family. Compiling a Google list that Rich and I could both log into and edit helped me get my head around it and stopped me impulse buying every time I saw something cute. In fact we didn’t even go into a shop until I was maybe 23 weeks. I’m aware that a baby doesn’t go into it’s own bedroom right at the beginning, but we didn’t want to be decorating and sorting out a room with a newborn so that’s something we wanted to sort beforehand. I gave Rich some specific jobs so that he could be involved and know exactly how he could help, so he was in charge of researching things like baby monitors, cot mattress and baby slings.
*UPDATE*
Hello, Lily post-baby talking now… I was almost spot-on with all of my purchases, but since actually having a baby myself I’ve learnt so much and I thought I’d update this blog post and share a much more experience based checklist. Of course these are not essentials and everyone’s budget will be totally different, so feel free to adapt the list to what you need. This is just what I send my girlfriends when they ask me, and so I thought I’d make it public! As you’ll see on the checklist there’s an A and a B list, because not everything is needed for the first few weeks when a baby is a newborn. I found it really helpful to do all my research when pregnant and have all my links ready to go for when I needed to make the purchases, but to not buy the items until I needed them and it spread out the costs a bit too.
Click the link below to download my newborn “essentials” checklist.
NEWBORN SHOPPING LIST
Watch the video where I talk in more detail about the specific products I used and liked below.
NEWBORN ESSENTIALS VIDEO
SHOP SOME OF MY FAVOURITES HERE
Photos by Emma Croman