shopping for baby advice needed

telecaster

Hello...debut Dad to-be here. Baby's due end of August.

I've been spending a lot of time trawling around websites looking to buy all the baby essentials in a thrifty manner.

Having been in to the mothercare shops, I am stunned by how absoultely unnecessary most of the stuff they are selling is. I appreciate that it's an industry and they are there to make money from me.

I'm a realist. I just want my children to be comfortable, safe and loved. Games of one upmanship with souped up buggies at the toddler group dont really interest me!

Anyway, I'm sure there's plenty of people on this forum who have bought all the essentials before - and probably know the best places in Dublin and online to shop.

I'm a treehugging sort, so any eco-friendly specialist advice would be cool. I've checked out The Baby Orchard and Poops-A-Daisy, but there's a definite hint that I'll be paying over the odds for buying reusable nappies from there.

Anyone who could post a list of REAL baby must haves (as opposed to nice to haves) would find a spot in my eternal gratitude.

deisemum

You've hit the nail on the head. A lot of the baby equipment is not necessary and a lot of the marketing is aimed at first time parents. When I attended ante-natal classes a lot of expectant mums where talking about getting cribs and the midwife pointed out that they are a waste of money and not necessary as a new baby can be put straight into a cot, which is true. We had a crib and both sons only got a couple of weeks out of it as babies sleep with their arms outstretched. First time parents may go for a top of the range pram or travel system but then often resort to a lightweight buggy after a couple of months. Only buy things as and when needed apart from travel system or pram/buggy, car seat, changing mat or unit, steriliser, cellular blankets. I'm sure I've left out a few things but it's late. I'm not familiar with baby shops in Dublin. Also when you have a first baby you normally get loads of presents and nothing near as much for subsequent babies

cormie

these guys have a baby section:)

telecaster

Grand info folks, thanks.

Like you say deisemum, everybody wants to buy a present. Ideally I'd like to make them all count so as I could just send a link to each person for whatever we needed or tell them where they could get it.

I imagine all the family and friends would rather get us something worthwhile too to help us out rather than just picking up cute things which are useless within a few weeks.

I feel a mini website list thingy coming on! Nesting in the 21st century eh?

Nevyn

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=50813545&postcount=4
this was disscused here before and the list is quiet good.

telecaster

Ask and you shall receive. Excellent stuff.

Has anybody bought any baby stuff on ebay? I was thinking of getting a list together and just ordering the whole lot in - would save me traipsing around shopping centres with a pregnant woman who is better off resting.

I find the biggest problem with looking at stuff online is a fear that it could be cheaper elsewhere and you just spend hours going from site to site!

simu

telecaster wrote:

I'm a treehugging sort, so any eco-friendly specialist advice would be cool. I've checked out The Baby Orchard and Poops-A-Daisy, but there's a definite hint that I'll be paying over the odds for buying reusable nappies from there.

I've heard in a few places that Lidl nappies are cheapish and biodegradable. Have no personal experience of them, though.

deisemum

As a childminder with a lot of nappy changing experience the one thing I'd advise is to use good quality nappies. I've found the cheaper ones leak more than the well known branded ones and you have to change them more often so you don't save any money in the end. More likely you're spending more when you take into account that you have more clothes to launder

Dors1976

I use Lidl nappies and they are fantastic, 56 nappies for €9.49. Plus there is a line in the middle which turns blue when you need to change them, I use them all day and pampers at night. Have a friend who sells cloth nappies, pm me if interested.:)

Blush_01

Don't use Johnson's baby products or products that have alcohol in them (perfumed = alcohol). My mum's a PHN and I'm in my 20s, she still gives out yards if I use them on myself. Imagine the damage they're doing to a baby! Having done top-up courses on a regular basis, she continually condemns the J&J stuff as the most damaging!

If you do go for cloth nappies, invest in a few pairs of plastic pants for over them, to limit the leaking as much as possible. My siblings and I were all cloth nappy wearers, and the amount of soaking, washing, drying etc. involved in cleaning them is phenomenal. There were buckets of nappies soaking in the utility room all the time. You're going to have the washing maching on constantly washing baby clothes anyway, so keep the extra extra washing in mind. Also, folding nappies is kind of fun, but nappy pins are monstrous looking things.

If you do decide to use a walker (a while away yet, but none the less) expect to be berated by your PHN at developmental checkups, if he/she finds out.

Also, if you're a smoker and decide to smoke outside/in another room/generally away from the baby, keep in mind that the bad crap in cigarettes lingers on your skin and clothes for approximately half an hour after smoking, so your child will still be a passive smoker.

embee

Telecaster,

If you are serious about being thrifty, I had a baby girl in February and my house is bursting to the seams with clothes she'll never wear. You're more than welcome to take them... it'll be a while before I have my next baby and it could be a boy, so they're just taking up space.

(There is an overriding pink and girly theme in the clothes, so I suppose its dependent on whether ye have a girl or not.)

telecaster

Thanks for your kind offer Embee, I'd be very happy to take you up on it.

We don't know whether the baby is a boy or girl yet, but we can just pass on the girly clothes back to the next person on the board who needs them if we don't.

If you want to PM me, we can talk about arranging collection of the clothes etc.

telecaster

Blush_01 wrote:

Don't use Johnson's baby products or products that have alcohol in them (perfumed = alcohol). My mum's a PHN and I'm in my 20s, she still gives out yards if I use them on myself. Imagine the damage they're doing to a baby! Having done top-up courses on a regular basis, she continually condemns the J&J stuff as the most damaging!

DOH! No More Tears? - The tears are just beginning!

Good lady wife came home on Thursday with a heap of J & J "2 for 1s" that pushed her value-o-meter in to the 'must buy' zone. Ahhh...waddeyagonnado?

luckat

For future ref, first parents often make the mistake of giving away cute clothes that no longer fit the baby as it gets bigger, at, say a year or 18 months old.

What they don't realise is that these clothes will again fit the baby at two when s/he's out of nappies and has a more streamlined shape.

What do kids need: strictly speaking, very little; they can sleep in a drawer, then in a bed; they can wear any old thing. But babies, just like older humans, or even pets, need to feel they're loved.

The more good-looking you can make your baby appear, the nicer people are going to be to him, and the more positive feedback he's going to get, making life easier for him and helping him to grow up with an easy, likeable personality. So don't skimp on the clothes - buy nice things that suit your kid.

Toys, when you come to that stage - well, babies like mobiles and rattles and things to fiddle with. As they get older, they like things that teach them about shapes, and from an early age they love stories. At around 18 months they start to like soft toys - often younger, too, but the 18 months to two years stage is when they use a soft toy or a blanket or something as a "transitional object", becoming attached to it (so say the psychologists) as a way of safely weaning themselves off too strong an attachment to the mother figure.

Buggies - get a good strong one, make sure it won't pinch the little fingies, and that it's light enough and foldable enough to be easy to take on buses and so on. Wean the kid out of it as soon as possible when reliably walking.

I see parents bringing babies around on gadgets that you pull behind bikes. I think they're certifiable. Waaaay too dangerous in today's traffic.

The most important things a baby needs, anyway, are love, tolerance, understanding, humour and intelligence.

Khannie

Great link there Thaed. Classic funny stuff SlutMonkey.

embee

I'd definitely reiterate what Blush_01 says : Don't use Johnson and Johnson products!

When my daughter was very very little indeed (0-3 weeks) I used just cotton wool and water to clean her bum. As she got a little older, well.. her poo got that little bit harder to budge (and the volume of poo increased) so I started using Johnson and Johnson baby wipes on her. She constantly had red raw nappy rash and I was constantly having to pile Sudocrem onto her.

Well, I was in Boots one day and they had a special offer on Huggies Pure baby wipes (alcohol and fragrance free) so I bought a load of them. Well, her nappy rash cleared up completely within a day!

ST*

telecaster wrote:

Good lady wife came home on Thursday with a heap of J & J "2 for 1s" that pushed her value-o-meter in to the 'must buy' zone.

Pampers do similar offers too, and I find them very good. Quite often they put the 2 for 1 offers at the end of the aisles rather than beside all the other wipes, so keep an eye out for that. Also in Boots, I've often seen the same offer in there too. I tend to bulk buy them when I can, to keep me till the next time they run the offer.

Simu suggested the Lidl wipes, I've bought the sensitive pack before (white pack) and I found them very good also. No rashes, and done the job just as well. New parents especially are afraid to try cheaper products (which is perfectly understandable) on their baby, but its only by trial and error you find out that you do not always have to have the most expensive products around. I've heard good things about their nappies too, although I haven't tried them myself. They are also doing some baby foods and formulas now too.

I used to buy the biggest tub of Sudocrem, and filled up a much smaller tub (that was given to me by the hospital as a free sample) for when out and about. Tesco's own brand of nappy bags are only 85c for about 100 (I think). Those take up much less space in the changing bag than the ones sold in boxes.

Assuming your wife will be bottle-feeding, I loved the Avent range of bottles. They are wide mouthed which made life easier when putting in the formula, and for cleaning. Here is a god-send for when you are out and about. The first item on the right hand side. There are little comparments that will hold pre-measured formula for you. I had my first son several months before I discovered that, and it really made a difference for me.

A lot of parents find it very difficult to hold baby still while trying to give medicine. (Stocking up on one or two bottles of Calpol mightn't be such a bad idea either, you've months of teething ahead of you!). I couldn't get a full pic of it, but this I found invaluable, and can be bought in chemists. It doesn't show it there, but a small blue cap goes on it to keep the medicine in, but I always kept a dose in it and popped it in the changing bag when on the go. The 'syringe' look scared the hell out of my mother, but if you aim it into the side of his / her mouth and gentle compress, there should be little or no mess.

Sorry about the long post!

Nevyn

Many words of wisdom are always welcome.
Yes the delivery syringe for calpol and the like is wonderful when they are very young and when they get old enough to start refusing to take a spoon fill of medicne.
I would use mine in conjuction with the calpol sachets when we were out and about with the little one and she was teething.

deisemum

luckat I arrived 6 weeks early and being my mother's first she was not prepared. When I came home from hospital I was shoved in a drawer until she could get a cot.

Ayla

Blush_01 wrote:

If you do go for cloth nappies, invest in a few pairs of plastic pants for over them, to limit the leaking as much as possible. My siblings and I were all cloth nappy wearers, and the amount of soaking, washing, drying etc. involved in cleaning them is phenomenal. There were buckets of nappies soaking in the utility room all the time. You're going to have the washing maching on constantly washing baby clothes anyway, so keep the extra extra washing in mind. Also, folding nappies is kind of fun, but nappy pins are monstrous looking things.

Blush:
I see where you're coming from with this criticism of cloth nappies, but they have completely revolutionized since our parent's generation. My poor mother also had the buckets and the scrubbing and boiling to deal with, but now that I'm expecting I've looked into cloth/resuables again and have been surprised.

There are *lots* of options out there, but most of them revolve around the idea of a liner of some sort with an outer wrap. You wash the liner, but the wrap only needs a touch-up clean if soiled. They're more breathable than plastic/disposables and babies wearing them tend to get less nappy rash than babies wearing Pampers,etc. If you soak the liners, you can wash them with any of your other laundry. And the wraps now have snaps/velcro for simplicity (ie: no more "monstrous looking" pins).

So they're a bit less horrible than you make them out to be. Each parent has to decide for him/herself what system works best for them, but cloth/resuable nappies aren't the ogre they used to be. In fact, I've found that some of them out there are downright adorable. For more info, here are some really fantastic sites:

http://www.thenappylady.co.uk/
http://www.thenaturalbabyresource.com/
http://www.diapershop.com/index.php/action/cloth_diaper_news/
http://www.econatural.com/
http://www.naturalchild.co.uk/ShopHome/index.html

embee

telecaster,

I'm very sorry, but it seems my Mammy has given all my babies newborn and 0-3 month clothes away without telling me!

I went into the room to pack them into some bags for you, and they were gone... Seems Mam knows a lady who is due a baby girl on June 18th and is strapped for cash. Well, at least they're still getting recycled.

Sorry

Ayla

Blush_01 wrote:

If you do decide to use a walker (a while away yet, but none the less) expect to be berated by your PHN at developmental checkups, if he/she finds out.

Blush:

Why is this?

Dors1976

that it causes the babies to be bowlegged. I personally don't believe it one bit. My son loves his walker and his legs are fine. Most of the health nurses in my experiences have no children and are very by the book.

ST*

Both of my sons used a walker for a little while, and they are fine. I made sure that the walker was always adjusted to the correct height for them however. If it is too low I can imagine how it would cause problems.

deisemum

Also a lot of small ones have had accidents in them but it's not the walker that's the problem it's the way it was used, (usually in inappropriate places ie. upstairs on the landing then toppling down the stairs) and not always supervised. Anything can cause an accident it proper care isn't taken.

Another study has shown that they slow down baby's walking because a lot of babies who are in walkers "walk" on their tip toes.

A lot of the time there is a hugh difference in advice given PHNs that have children to those that don't and do everything by the book.

embee

If walkers really were THAT dangerous, they wouldn't be on sale.

Dors1976

I agree Embee, my sister had an accident one time in her walker but that was because she hit the saddleboard at the door. As I said, my son has one and he's grand. I reckon it's a personal choice. Maybe try to borrow one rather than buy it if you aren't too sure. Door bouncers are a great investment from my point of view too. They really get the chance to burn off energy, tires then out.:D

EcologiKids

Just wanted to ditto Ayla's point that cloth nappies have really been updated and improved and all are used with either seperate or built in waterproof layers. I don't know anyone who would nappy their child without a waterproof layer???

As regards buying cloth nappies at a reasonable price - BumGenius! nappies fit babies from birth to potty using a really ingenius poppering system to make the nappy smaller. They are just as trim as disposables and better still you only have to buy one size so they're the cheapest option initially. You can get a full time set for about 320 euro - saves you over 2000 euro compared to using disposables.

If you wanted to go really economical y ou could buy second hand nappies (note that all cloth nappy users wash at at 60C thereby achieving thermal disinfection so the nappies are perfectly clean and disinfected). You can buy these on ebay if you go to buy/baby/nappies - lots of different types and you can sometimes pick up a great bargain too. Just be wary though, if nappies or the waterproof outers (called wraps now) have been used by 2 or more children previously and are not well cared for, the waterproof lining can be compromised and you may get leaks. the Absorbent nappy parts last over several children, but the wraps if they're not looked after can cause problems if you're buying second hand - buyer beware I guess.

as regards other baby stuff, check out parenting forums such as magicmum.com or rollercoaster.ie - there are classified or products corner sections in each where there are LOTS of parents selling second hand baby equipment etc. and you're sure to pick up a bargain or two there.

There's also jumbletown.ie or try freecycle where everything is free and just needs to be rehomed.

re toys..you will get millions as presents as baby gets older!! flashing lights, molded plastics, buzzing beeping...essentially they all do the same thing in a different shape!! Young babies and children prefer the basics (you see one flashing light you've seen them all!). Take a leaf out of our parents book - bowl and wooden spoons make great drums, socks can be made into funny puppets, chasing a ball is hours of entertainment, playing with plastic pots and stacking them is fab fun....simple stuff is just as good developmentally and economically as today's flashy new toys. We bought no toys for our two as we were given so many presents anyway. we buy them books or paints etc. instead. DS loves nothing more than playing at the sink with the bubbles, or digging in the garden to 'help' mommy...or painting every surface he can find!!

If you want any advice on the cloth nappies, just pm me btw - it's what I do.

hth
N

telecaster

embee wrote:

telecaster,

I'm very sorry, but it seems my Mammy has given all my babies newborn and 0-3 month clothes away without telling me!

I went into the room to pack them into some bags for you, and they were gone... Seems Mam knows a lady who is due a baby girl on June 18th and is strapped for cash. Well, at least they're still getting recycled.

Sorry

No probs Embee, thanks for the thought, and like you say at least they'll be used.