I was at the pediatrician today getting a weight check done for Little Girl. She had fallen off her curve for awhile and this was a follow up to make sure she was back on track. As suspected, she is perfectly fine. Hooray!
Anyway, this caught my eye for many reasons: first, it's free. It should be. It's a catalog selling Babies R Us items. Second, I wanted to find out what was essential to have for a baby, albeit in retrospect.
I think as a new mom to be, I would have been overwhelmed by this 40 page tome. As an experienced mom, I was frustrated by it.
In the first place, there's no objectivity. Step two in preparing for baby (after analyzing how much space you have available--a step I had completed six months prior to pregnancy) is to register (guess where?).
After a quick flip through, I realized I had done basically none of the required steps to prepare for either of my children.
On buying nursery furniture: "After selecting the crib, purchase matching furniture." Matching what? The crib? Or the mother to be's haphazard personality? I was lucky enough to get a quality hand-me-down dresser from my grandma when she moved to a nursing home. It only needed new hardware. The shelves were built in to the house. The rocking chair was Early-2000's-Resale-Shop style (ugly cushions replaced by yours truly).
On monitors: "Even if you live in a small space, it's nice to have a monitor to know what's going on in the nursery." Whoever wrote the ad copy already sensed the objections from minimalists and tried his or her hardest to convince us to second guess ourselves. Though they were born in different houses, both our babies have slept one wall and within two to twelve feet from us at any given time. Believe me, I knew what was going on in the nursery at all times. This was especially evident during Big Girl's "put herself to sleep by kicking the wall" phase. In full disclosure, though, I did eventually buy a dirt cheap one secondhand when I was doing a lot of gardening during naptime. I expect to be able to re-sell it for basically what I paid.
I think it's fine for moms to be to want to be prepared and to make a list of what they consider essentials. But like parenting advice, some help is best when it comes from friends and family, not a company trying to sell stuff.
And when it comes down to it, there are only a handful of necessities when it comes to raising a baby:
That's right, a pack and play, designer bibs, and twelve microscopically different styles of bottle.
Oh yeah, and food. Something to wear. Some arms to hold it. And love.
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