With the arrival of our fourth child, I've had a chance to reflect on the time when our other three were babies. I've learned a lot since those days--and spent a lot. And by spent, I often mean wasted. If I could go back and give my younger, less experienced self some sage advice regarding baby purchases, here are the eight things I'd tell me to scratch off my shopping list.
1. Fancy High-End Stroller - The crown jewel of baby purchases! Oh the research I put into finding the best stroller for our first baby. And you know what--it was a nice stroller. Italian. Because the Italians know babies. It rolled like a dream the too few times we used it. Turns out that most stores that parents frequent have shopping carts, and that car seats are built (by design) to sit quite nicely into those shopping carts. And what are you going to do? Push a stroller and a shopping cart? Also turns out that (if you don't already) by the second kid you'll despise and avoid malls, where high-end strollers are a real statement of your value as a parent (go to the kids play area of any upscale mall and the "nicest stroller" competition is ON). Kids somehow help you understand that malls are overpriced yuppie-hedonist petri dishes with too few restrooms.
And as far as babies are concerned, let's think this through, younger Shane. You pull up to wherever you're going and the baby is asleep in their clip-in car seat. Do you really want to wake them up by extracting them from that car seat and placing them in the stroller? Try it. See how the baby likes it. Yea, you won't be doing that again. Instead, you'll keep the kid asleep in the car seat which you'll place into a shopping cart.
Besides being way too expensive to be worth it, high-end strollers are inevitably heavier and bulkier than their cheap counterparts. Not a big deal at first, but it gets old. Fast. And then baby number two comes along and baby number one is still not big enough to walk very far (should have seen that coming). So you have to buy a two seat stroller. And that first, expensive, well-researched, oh-so-nice Italian stroller collects dust until you finally, finally realize that you'll never use it again and sell it or give it away.
These days--and for the last 5-6 years--we've used the same $10 stroller. The kids honestly don't care what stroller we use. I ran over it with the car one day several years ago. I walked back there, picked it up, bent it back into shape and kept on using it. Now that's a stroller!
So to the first-time parent me who has his heart set on that high-end Italian stroller, don't let me kill your dream. Just realize that you really are buying that stoller for YOU...and the people at the mall (that you soon won't frequent anymore) shallow enough to make value judgements about you based on your stroller. My advice to my old self: Put the money into a college fund.
2. Lots of nice baby outfits - Turns out babies grow fast. Really fast. So some of those cute little outfits we'd bought for our first little newborn were worn once. And we were lucky to get them on her once. Nor did we realize how many more newborn outfits we'd be getting from friends, most of whom hadn't yet had babies or were rookie parents. There were literally outfits that never got worn. Baby girl outfits that we held onto for years waiting for the next baby girl to come. Never happened. We finally gave them to Good Will, unused. Babies really need two things: Onesies and diapers. That's about it. No shoes, no hats, no dresses or ties. Keep it simple.
3. Single passenger jogging stroller - Very expensive. Our first didn't really like being in the jogging stroller. Nor were there any good places to use it near our home, which meant loading a large, heavy stroller into the car. Then when the second came along, we couldn't use the single-seater anymore anyway. Wow, that was one expensive stroller. Used it less than 10 times and gave it away in mint condition. I want that money back!
4. Too many newborn and size 1 diapers - We never seem to completely learn our lesson here. We forget just how truly fast babies grow in those first few months (at least our babies). If they fit in newborn diapers at all, they'll only do so for a week. Then it's size 1, for maybe another week or two. Then size two for a month? Maybe. That's why Costco doesn't sell boxes of newborn or size 1 diapers. Anybody who buys a box full of them is going to be donating most of them to another couple in the ward who's pregnant.
5. Baby toys - Nice idea. In my experience, babies couldln't care less about 95% of the toys we got them. If you're really in need of things to liter your floor, go for it. And if you've been thinking, "Gee, it sure would be nice to go insane," then buy the battery powered noise making toys. Otherwise, save your money. BTW, the very best toy you can get your toddler-age kids is a free refrigerator box from the local appliance store.
6. A video baby monitor - I won't lie--this did bring some peace of mind. We could actually look and see that the baby was still alive. That's what it was mostly about. If the baby was crying, we could have heard her, so we really didn't need it for that. There were a few times we looked at the baby monitor and thought the baby wasn't breathing. So we'd dash upstairs only to discover that the baby was fine, of course. It's a little embarrassing to talk about now, so I'll stop.
7. A high end crib - So we got our first crib on close-out and saved a ton of money. And it was (again) a very nice crib. Until the first baby's teeth came it. Then it was a chewed-up nice crib with newly-added plastic chew guards all around that made it look a lot like the cheap cribs we didn't like. Then the government agency in charge of all things babies declared it unsafe, so it was an expensive death trap. We couldn't sell it on Craigslist or even donate it to to Goodwill. And then it broke. It's in pieces in the garage now because I can't bring myself to take an expensive, hardwood piece of baby art to the dump.
8. A high chair with cloth cover - Besides our first, two-bedroom house (honestly, what were we thinking?), this has to the stupidest thing we ever bought. Let me reiterate that this high chair was inexplicably made with cloth upholstery. Who would do that? And who would be foolish enough to buy it? Only a naive first-time parent who's enamored with the jungle theme that matches the crib bedding (as if the high chair and crib would ever be in the same room for a visual comparison). Of course it took exactly one meal for baby to turn that high chair into a nasty mess, with gooey baby food splattered and smeared all over the place. So you remove the cloth cover and wash it...after every meal? In our case--and adding insult to injury--the cloth cover couldn't be removed. I'm not kidding. Somebody designed, marketed and sold that. And we bought it. And we got rid of it. Now we own one of those all-plastic baby seats that has a clip-on tray and is strapped on a dinning room chair. Works great, and it's cheap.
So what's worth spending money on?
- Higher quality (thicker material) onesies and jammies, especially if you're planning on more kids. Buy gender-neutral colors.
- Burp cloths
- A good diaper pail that doesn't let the odors out (most do) and that holds more than three diapers (most don't).
- Car seats. Both the baby car seat and the toddler car seats.
- Amy likes our nice changing table, though I'm ambivalent about it. We got it on clearance, so good deal overall.
- Baby Bjorn, or similar wrap.
- A Costco membership.
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