Month 8: A Baby Shower & What to Put on A Baby Shopping List

One of the things that overwhelmed me early on in my pregnancy was putting together our baby registry. It was our shopping list, both for ourselves and for our friends who wanted to buy us gifts. Since this was our first baby, we had no idea what should make it onto the list and what shouldn’t. We got some lists from the doctor’s office and off the Internet, but it all boiled down to talking to other moms and getting our priorities straight.

Putting Together The Registry: Safety First

We started with the basics: crib and car seat. You can’t leave the hospital if you don’t have a car seat, so that was our first priority.

We had two brands of car seat in mind, and the way I narrowed those down to “the one” was simply a matter of lifestyle choice. My husband and I are sporadic runners and tend to do most of our running in the spring and the fall. Because we would have the baby by springtime and the lil’ one would be old enough to jog with by Fall, we decided to get a quality jogging stroller. The stroller we chose had adapters for several car seats, but for only one of the two on our short list. That was how the car seat selection was made.

With a crib, we just needed to make sure that we didn’t buy a used one. One of the main recommendations for reducing the possibility of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is a solid crib and a firm mattress. So we got a new crib with a firm mattress, along with matching furniture for the crib, and all that was done.

Clothing

A mom at work was kind enough to give me a short list of the clothes I’d need for the lil’ one:

• sleepers
• onesies
• nightgowns
• socks
• hats
• scratch mittens

All the lists agreed with her, and I didn’t go overboard because babies grow so fast.

Lifestyle Choices

In addition to the other items on the list, my mom’s friend had some lifestyle must-haves for me. Some of the things on that list hadn’t even occurred to me and the hubby, and we added some things of our own:

• Bottle warmer – In my mom’s friend’s words: “The last thing you want to be worrying about when the baby’s screaming is waiting for the bottle to warm up in a cup of water.”
• Wipe warmer – This made sense for me. I have cold extremities and can barely stay warm myself, so rubbing wipes between my palms to warm them up before a diaper change was a nonstarter.
• Baby monitor – While I know I would spend most of the early days hovering, I suspect that at some point I would want to do things in another room while the baby sleeps.
• Breast pump and supplies – My maternity leave is going to be less than three months, and I want to breastfeed exclusively for longer, so this is actually an essential.
• Diaper pail – The smelly diapers need a place to go.
• Mamaroo – The hubby saw this at the store and absolutely had to have it because it looked cool.

Letting Our Friends Be There For Us

Since we had moved away from all of our friends, I didn’t expect to have a baby shower, but my best friend was determined to have one with or without me. Who was I to say no?

It was one of the best days of my pregnancy. The shower was open to everyone – the moms, dads and babies – and was an intimate gathering of some of the people who’d been there with us through our major milestones, from graduation to getting married. We played games, ate some good food, opened gifts, and everybody had a general rocking good time.

After the shower we went ahead and bought up the remainder of the registry, which wasn’t much, and set out to spend the rest of month eight getting the baby’s room ready. The only thing left to do is to put the sheets on the baby mattress!

Find out what you’ve missed and catch up on the series here — Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

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