#kidadvice

Our son Thomas is seven months old today! He is super adorable. Seriously. People come up to us to tell us this all the time even when Thomas is just staring at them without smiling. 

Having a baby is a truly life-altering experience -- I underestimated this before Thomas showed up. In the pre-Thomas era, I always questioned why new parents tend to post about their kids non-stop on social media. Now that I have Thomas, I can shed light on this phenomenon. Everything is a new experience, and on days when I’m not working, I spend 8-10 waking hours a day actively playing with him or doing related work like cooking baby food. 

Because of how mentally and physically demanding babies are, there is naturally a huge economy around babies. Baby equipment, baby food, baby classes, you name it, there’s some over-priced baby version of it that you can buy as retail therapy for whatever baby woe you’re having that day. Fussy? Not eating well? Not sleeping well? Drooling too much? Google it and have Amazon ship you the solution, or better yet, multiple solutions! Yet all these products seem at odds with the way that many parents claim they want to raise their babies - more naturally, less obsessed with consumerism, less technology and more free play. We want to limit our babies’ screen time, even as we’re downloading tons of baby-related apps and monitoring their every sleeping breath on a custom baby cam. 

It’s hard to embrace the ABSENCE of stuff. When I’m thinking about a subject all the time, a problem-solving shopping list naturally forms around it. Plus all the other parents are sharing what they’re doing and buying ... in a social media age where most posts are photos, no one’s posting about what toys they DIDN’T get their baby or what activity or destination they AREN’T taking their baby to. So much FOMO pressure on something you’re already spending so much time thinking about. In an age when people are locking down daycare spots before the baby is even conceived, is it a wonder that we feel the need to plan and buy everything before there is a manifest need for it?

So let’s take a break from all that. Let’s mindfully create some baby white space. Let’s find a way to talk about the good experiences that can happen when we’re not jam-packing their extremely young lives with trendy gear and photo posing and scheduled, structured activities. 

I’ll start with this list of things we didn’t buy for Thomas and things we bought that we realized we didn’t need. This is not to shame anyone who have this stuff -- it’s simply articulating an alternative because people make a lot of gear recommendations, but not nearly as many people tell you how easy it is to live without them.

Bassinet - Thomas slept in a full-sized crib from Day 1. We also don’t have a bassinet for the stroller - you can use your car seat with the stroller until your baby is 3-4 months old for neck support; after that, the regular stroller seat is fine.

Changing table - he has a changing pad that we put on top of my old nightstand that has become his clothes dresser. It was really hard to find dressers that weren’t made of manufactured wood!

Diaper bag - I use a small canvas bag for the essentials that I dump into whatever shoulder bag or backpack I usually take out.

Travel crib - I got this after weeks of research and have used ours exactly once, and not from a lack of travel. Turns out every hotel has a crib, and plenty of Airbnbs too. We’ve never really had to take this on a trip with us, although it is nice to have a pack-n-play at the grandparents’ house for visits.

Nursing pillow - I had one and it always felt awkward. I used a normal pillow for a while, and now I just use my legs to prop up my arms.

Bottle sterilizer - We wash the bottles with warm soapy water then do a cold water rinse and let it dry on a dinner plate. He’s never gotten sick from it.

Bottle warmer - Just use the microwave! Thomas drinks about 5 oz per meal from glass bottles. Eric puts 30 seconds on the microwave timer, but stops the microwave in 6-7 second intervals to swirl the bottle to prevent any localized hot spots. We don’t like microwaving plastic, so I probably wouldn’t recommend this if you use plastic bottles.

Baby bathtub/related equipment - We got one of these, but we found out that he loved the regular bathtub way more. We get in the tub with him, hold his head up and let him splash to his heart’s content. In the first couple of weeks when we were scared about breaking him, we gave him sponge baths on the changing pad. He had no bath toys for the first 5 months, now he has one “toy” that’s actually just a mini shampoo bottle.

Baby shampoo and soap - We wash Thomas with plain water. This may soon change now that he is getting into eating solid foods though.

Bouncer/swing- We were trying not to make him (and ourselves) depend on too many crutches to fall asleep, so we resisted getting a bouncer. He was fine chilling on the cotton play mat and sleeping in his crib with a little training.

Sound machine - We’re lucky - he sleeps fine without one.

Pacifier - He didn’t cry much in the early days so we didn’t use one. When we finally got desperate enough to try one, he thought it was weird and rejected it.

Mittens - He has had a few minor scratches, but doesn’t seem to notice them. We wanted him to learn to use his fingers and how not to use them, and that’s what he did.

Baby cam - I almost got one when we moved him into his own room at 5.5 months old, but Eric was worried they weren’t secure. So we got the old fashioned walkie-talkie style monitors. Which we never opened because our apartment is all on one floor and we realized we could hear him crying all too well from anywhere in the unit. We returned them. Plus I think I also get more of a mental break from him after his bedtime when there isn’t data to monitor.

Baby classes - We go to free nursery rhymes hour at the library down the street. He also meets other babies at the park across the street.