Constructing a Shower Registry

Putting together a baby registry is a daunting task. In one respect, it is great to know you are not responsible for buying all of these things yourself if you are lucky enough to have someone throw you a shower and lucky enough to have generous friends and family buying things to get you started. But nonetheless building the registry is complex. Most stores have a checklist as a starting off point but I'm always leery of these and feel additional research may be something you want to do to ensure you are not being swindled into buying everything little thing the store wants you to think you must have for a new baby. In addition to determining overall what items you need, many of the individual items come with a decision as to which specific type and brand you want to get. This may also require a little research on your part- whether it be heading online or asking other recently new moms to weigh in.

                For our registry we started in what I like to call the ‘Beg, Borrow, or Steal’ category although I guess it is more appropriately known as the ‘Hand-me-down’ category because I don't really plan on stealing anything (haven't gotten to that point yet!). Again if you are lucky enough to have friends and family with little ones, don’t be shy in asking what you can take off their hands. For the most part they want to give some things away, as they know it will being going to good home and it clears up space in their home. And it’s a generosity cycle, for the most part someone helped them out when they were starting out as new parents and surely you’ll want to pass your things down to friends and family when you no longer need them. I sat down with my sister-in-law and we went through everything she planned to give us from her collection as well as the things she would not be able to give us. This was all very helpful for a number of reasons- I have somewhat of a general idea of the things we need (crib, high-chair, stroller, car seats) but overall I am new to this so having a mother of two go through what she is and isn’t giving us was a great starting off point on what I need. Sitting down with an experienced parent is also recommended because you can pick their brain about what they had too much of and what they didn’t have enough of- for example I was surprised to hear my sis-in-law say they didn’t have enough clothes because they didn’t ask for a lot on the registry and she suggested we put a decent amount on there. I also think that works well with building a registry in general since clothes are the inexpensive items and it is a good idea to have a range of price points for your shower guests to choose from.

 Another helpful tip from my sister-in-law was what you should put on the registry and what you should leave off the registry and purchase yourself. For the latter things if you want to splurge on and get a specific, high-tech version of something you are probably best off just purchasing that yourself because on a registry someone might buy a slightly different one. For anything that is on the registry, it is up to your guests discretion to make a slightly change in what you asked for and what they give you so for the things you know you are going to be really particular about it’s probably best to go ahead and get them yourself to save the hassle of return and exchanging it later.  For us, we are leaving the baby monitor off because we want to research it, splurge for one with a video system and get exactly what we want.

                Next I sat down to actually registry or registries since we opted to do both Babies R’Us and Target. Both stores provides the check-list and by this point I have become a bit more familiar with what we need. Most of the checklists have the items categorized by furniture, clothing, health, toys, etc. I opted to start with the health/safety and furniture/equipment because I feel like those are the categories I should pay the most attention to in terms of specifications and recommendations on what is best to use. By the time I get to clothes and toys I’ll probably just add things quickly and that seems fine for those categories.  Another tip, if you know other new moms you can do a quick search for their registries on the popular sites. I easily found a few of the latest moms that we know and was able to look at what they had asked for.

Starting with something as simple as the thermometer sent me down the rabbit-hole- there are different options in terms of where the thermometer is going in/or the baby. A quick online research yielded the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation of using a rectal thermometer on babies 0-3 months as this type is the most accurate. Around six months, the parents can switch to the ear thermometer since by then the baby’s ears are larger to accommodate it. I checked with a mommy friend of mine to see what she uses and she confirmed the rectal is the one you should use for newborns, and she reassured me with a little Vaseline the thermometer goes in easy and doesn’t cause the baby discomfort.  The other health & safety items come in cute little kits- the one I added had the nasal aspirator, nail-clippers, comb, little toothbrush, etc.  I'm going to look into medicines and creams at some point as well, but for the registry I moved on.  A lot of the equipment is being handed down to us which is great, the major things we need to ask for/get ourselves are car seats and swings/bouncers.

For the car seat I spent some time online looking at recent consumer reports and I matched up the brands and makes that were consistently mentioned on several different reports. Then I went back to Babies R Us and Target to see which options they  and both have them at the same price. (For the most part these two places have the same prices on the equipment, I have a feeling Target will have better prices on clothes when I get to it though). I went with the Chicco Keyfit 30-Foxy.  The only question mark is it both my husband and I really need our own or if two bases, one car seat is enough.

Source: http://www.babyviva.com/photos/product/giant/9995130S15248/alt/15248.jpg


 I spent some time looking into swings as well, this along with the car seat was the major thing my sister-in-law will not be handing down to us. It seemed with the swings the best bang for your buck is when it swings in multiple directions. Also having both battery-operated and plug-in options seemed to be the most positively reviewed if your baby finds peace while swinging and you don’t want to go through tons of batteries.  After much deliberation I went with the Fisher-Price My Little Snugapuppy Cradle 'N Swing. Funny, Fisher Price's swings all seem to be named after animals and I assumed they were all the same otherwise. I saw a review where another women made the same assumption and she got the Snugapuppy instead of the 'My Little Lamb' and was shocked to find out they were different. One was noisy or bulky, something mechanical not just the animal depicted on it. Thanks for making things easy on us Fisher Price.

Source:http://www.fisher-price.com/img/product_shots/X7345-my-little-snugapuppy-cradle-n-swing-d-3.jpg

              

          Diapers, ok well this is probably more appropriate for another post but the long and short of it is we are going to try to use cloth diapers for some of the time. I’m going in with a really flexible ‘just see how it goes’ mentality but I would like to use them at least part time to alleviate the cost of buying disposable ones. (I read somewhere that all the laundering you do to the reusable ones mostly puts them on an even playing field with the disposable ones taking up space in a landfill, so environmentally they are almost even. But something about throwing away all those disposables away does seem cruel to mother earth). I have a lot more research to go, there are so many questions and I’ve found some great resources online so to be continued on this issue. But for the registry I, at least, was able to some research and add the Charlie Banana’s starter kit, along with a separate request of the disposable inserts (the starter kit comes with the cloth diapers themselves and 12 reusable inserts). We are also going to ask for some newborn sized diapers as well for night-time use/back-up plan.

            For clothing it’s important to think season, I’m due in June so we’ll need more short-sleeve onesies than long-sleeve to get us started. Also as pointed out by this great list, http://www.babble.com/baby/baby-registry-guide/, a sunhat and sunscreen will be necessary for when I’m home with little one and venturing out for walks during my maternity leave. We are not finding out the gender so we mostly are picking animal-adorned things from the boys section. One of the reasons I didn't want to find out the gender was to not gender imprint the baby so much, since I know we imprint so much unconsciously. It is starting to drive me nuts that almost everything is denoted as 'boy' or 'girl' just based on the color. Really? A boy can't have a purple binky and a girl can't wear blue. I think it's all very silly. (Below is the most adorable thing we have picked out as of yet).

Source:http://img.rakuten.com/PIC/63124485/0/1/1000/63124485.jpg

                Ok that’s it for now, the registry is not done but this blog post has helped me organized myself as I have gone through the list of getting it started. Please feel free to let me know what you think about my choices, as well I’ll gladly take suggestions for any must have items.