Useful Items When Having a Baby

Dear lilioftheworld.com reader, here is Lili, your co-editor. Useful items when having a baby? Yes, this article will have nothing to do with traveling, but with baby stuff. I’m far from pretending to be the perfect mom. I just wanted to share some tips about things which I found very useful while raising my child. These are not the well-known things which you will find in almost every mommy blog. Also they are not among the essentials, you can easily go without them. But they made my life during this very challenging period easier. So, here I’m writing this article about them.

The list below might be useful not only for first-time moms, but also to provide ideas even to seasoned parents. You can as well get ideas for presents which your friends could give your newborn. Simply make a list and send it to your friends. They would anyway buy a present for the little one, so why not it being something useful. Moreover, you can use the list below as an inspiration if you are looking for a birth present yourself.

Useful Items When Having a Baby:

• Tumble Dryer
• Breast Milk Manual Pump
• Cotton changing mat covers
• Baby diapers waste bin
• White noise device
• Electric Nasal Aspirator
• Huge Playpen
• Muffs for the stroller
• Big bib
• Table mat for eating

Let me list the benefits from each of the above mentioned products (at least the way I see them). I will also share with you which particular items we used. Of course, I will share only those we are satisfied with.

• Tumble Dryer

The list with useful items when having a baby starts with something which at first glance does not seem to be connected to a baby. For some reason I did not have the need to have a washing dryer prior to Kaia’s birth. Yes, I was annoyed by the clothes sitting there on the drying rack for days, but in the last few years we had a spare room, so the space was not scarce.

When we learnt that we will become parents, our friends started telling us how to prepare for this new stage of our life. One of them was ironing of baby’s clothes. Ironing had never been among my favorite activities, so I had to find an alternative. And the tumble dryer was such an alternative. It not only dries the clothes, but it also disinfects due to the high temperature.

One time a tumble dryer, always a tumble dryer

Ever since we bought our first washing dryer, we buy one for each place where we live. To illustrate how comfortable this device is, I will tell you the following funny story. Soon after Kaia was born, we went back to Bulgaria where we were living in a small two-room apartment. There wasn’t space to put a tumble dryer neither in the bathroom, nor in the corridor. I knew it was not a good idea to buy a combined washing and tumble dryer machine. In the end, we bought one and we put it in our living room next to the TV set. So motivated was I to have one.

By having a tumble dryer you actually do not need a lot of clothes for the baby. They are anyway outgrowing them quite fast, so you can just have a couple of pairs which you can wash every day.

• Breast Milk Manual Pump

If I have to be honest, the breastfeeding period for me was one of the toughest ones. And I haven’t heard a woman saying she mastered it right from the start. Not only I did not like the feeling of the baby touching my nipples, but also I had the impression that I was doing this 24/7. The main reason for having the impression it takes ages is that the baby falls asleep while eating. Then, right after it is over, you need to collect some additional milk with a pump in order to ensure you have enough quantity. It is the supply and demand principle.

I had an electrical pump, very good deal btw (see the link below). Even with it, I was occupied with breastfeeding half of my awake time.

Towards the fourth month, a friend of mine recommended a vacuum pump which you can use while you are breastfeeding from one of the breasts. Very convenient because you simply collect all the milk (there is some leakage from the other breast while the baby sucks from the other). Additionally, you do not spend time afterwards using the electric pump. The original one is from the brand Haakaa and it has become a reference for such a device. As it was towards the end of my breastfeeding experience and I was also quite skeptical that it works, I bought a cheaper alternative.

Honestly, I wish I knew it right from birth. Although I used it just for two or three months (I was breastfeeding until Kaia was 6-7 months old), this became my prevalent means of collecting milk. It is not a huge investment, so I highly recommend you give it a try.

• Cotton changing mat covers

One of the must haves at home of course is a changing mat. There are so many options that it is quite difficult to choose the right one. Many of them are covered with a material which resembles a tablecloth. I thought the baby would be cold if I left her directly on this material (it was winter when Kaia was born). That is why we started buying this one-time changing mat covers. They are very handy- you do not need to wash anything, you throw the dirty cloth away. Still, the waste you create is huge. In the first weeks the baby pees and poops quite often when you put it on the changing mat, so these covers are often wasted. Together with the baby diapers you really generate a lot of waste.

That is why I switched to covers which I created myself from thick, old cotton bed sheets. I also used some of my cotton diapers which my mom had used for me back in the days when there were no disposable diapers. Of course there are also ready variants for such products, but they were quite expensive. That is why I decided on a DIY option. I need to make the disclaimer that I have a tumble dryer which makes the washing process much faster. If you don’t have one, maybe you just need a higher number of changing mat covers.

• Baby diapers waste bin

This one is just a nice-to-have thing, still among my favorite useful items when having a baby. You can use a standard waste bin or you can just throw the used diapers in the other waste bin. One thing to have in mind is that they smell. And they smell bad. You would most probably feel comfortable having a waste bin close to the changing spot (which in most of the cases is in the bedroom). Having a normal waste bin automatically means that smell will come out every time you open it to throw the new diaper.

The waste bin below is quite a cheap one, you can use it with normal trash backs, so why not have one. It is designed to prevent the smell coming out. We used it until Kaia was 14 months old. It has always stayed in our bedroom, literally one meter away from my head and I never felt a bad smell coming out of it.

• White noise device

Ever since Kaia was born, we have used some noise to calm her down. Actually this is not something we had particularly intended using, it happened naturally. She was crying a lot in the first days at the hospital and we were desperate, so we put some calming music on our phones. Of course you can always use your phone for this, there are so many free songs on YouTube. However, you are blocking your device. That is why we would recommend buying a special device which produces a white noise. I can share the one we used, however it had one disadvantage. The playtime was only 20 minutes. In the first weeks and months, the baby needs a longer time to fall asleep and the last thing you want is the music to stop right when the baby falls asleep.

I would advise you to look for a very basic option. Something which uses standard batteries (because honestly you will have thousands of devices to charge anyway, there is no need to have an additional charger with you). It should be light to carry, so that you have it with you every time you travel somewhere.

• Electric Nasal Aspirator

If I have to be honest, the last thing I was thinking about when I got pregnant was that the baby could get sick. I was having these romantic dreams about cuddles, matching clothes and so on. The reality is that as soon as the baby gets exposed to the outer environment (especially when going to nursery), they get sick pretty often. And the first symptom in most cases is a runny nose and congestion. We as adults know how to cope with it, but believe me, it takes time until the baby can blow out the nasal content.

The electric nasal aspirator is one of the most used devices at home, after the white noise one. There are manual equivalents when you have to use your mouth to vacuum the nasal content, but for us the electric version was more convenient.

• Muffs for the stroller

If you are living somewhere where there is winter, at some point it will be winter during your baby’s first year. And having in mind that children spend time in strollers even until they are three, you will need something to keep your hands warm not only in the first year. Of course you can use your winter gloves. However, you might want to use your hands- either for your baby or for using your phone, or else. In this situation the following muff comes at hand.

Some strollers even have such in the package, but in case yours does not have them, you can buy them separately.

Winters in Berlin can be quite chilly, so having baby stroller muffs are a must for me

• Huge Playpen

This is the best thing we bought for our child and my favorite from the list useful items when having a baby. She is now 1 year and 5 months old and we are using this playpen a lot. The main benefit is that you can leave the child there and you can do your stuff. This is the safe space in the house. Plus, it is very useful for the period when the baby learns how to walk. Depending on the space you have, you can buy different sizes. I would say, the bigger you buy, the better.

We have three playpens in total- we started with one 90×90 when Kaia was around 6 months and then we switched to bigger ones like the one below. If there were such big playpens also in Bulgaria, I would have directly bought a big one there and skipped the 90×90 one.

• Big bib

The other very challenging period in a baby’s first two years is teaching her/ him to eat solid foods. Even if you haven’t chosen the Baby Led Weaning (BLW) method, your child will learn to eat solid food at some point. And he/ she would create quite a mess. This is inevitable. Maybe you are a rather calm mother and you are fine with seeing food all over the baby and its clothes. Well, I’m not. I do not like seeing stains on the clothes and as much as I wanted Kaia to learn how to eat solids from 6 month onward, I also wanted to save the clothes. And I was also not OK with putting her naked in the eating chair.

Then I found the Bibado bibs or huge overalls. They were a life saver for me. They are equipped with elastic straps which cover the chair table and thus protect food from falling on the legs.

• Table mat for eating

The last on the list , but still not the least in importance among the useful items when having a baby- a table mat. This one is especially useful if you are following the BLW method and you are going out and eating at restaurants often. You can put pieces of food directly on the mat, without worrying whether the chair table is clean or not. I saw it from one of the influencers I’m following and as it fits my way of living, I immediately wanted to have one for Kaia. Although I have a different one (which I got as a present), here is one which I would have bought myself.

As promised, the things above are not something which you cannot raise your child without. Still, why not make our life easier with these useful items when having a baby :). If you have other items like these, I would like to hear them and also implement them when raising my future kids. Leave me your ideas in the comments below.

If you found the article about useful items when having a baby interesting, do not miss to read the other two baby-topic related articles:

• 10 Things to Take When Flying With a Baby
• Flying With a Baby Tips

Note: the links above contain affiliate program pixels.