A Few of My Favorite Baby Products

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Dylan and I are expecting our second child. (I am due April 2018). Naturally, I have all things baby on the brain. While I won't start planning for the nursery until we find out the gender, I have been thinking about some of my favorite baby items. There are so many items out there and so many conflicting reports about what you need and don't need. While I think so much of it depends on your baby and your lifestyle, here are a few items I highly recommend as well as some thoughts on a few 'essential items' like cribs and burp clothes.

1. Keekaroo Changing Pad—I love, love, love this changing pad. Having a boy definitely is risky business for getting peed on. This has been an amazing lifesaver because I can wipe it off easily, and for bigger messes, I can stick it in the tub to wash it off. I highly recommend it. (Ours is in the Vanilla color, but it looks like there are other colors here.)

2. Milkbarn Organic Swaddle Blankets—These blankets are so nice! They are soft and super cute. They have a bunch of different colors and prints. I like the thickness of these—great for a breezy summer day, keeping a chill away on the airplane, layering with a thicker blanket. In general I recommend having a bunch of blankets in various thicknesses. They come in handy for wrapping the baby up, playing on the ground, etc. (These pink foxes are so cute!)

3. Union 2-in-1 Convertible Crib—I personally believe a crib is a crib is a crib. Other than style, I don't think that much is different between them. This is the crib we got. It has held up very well, though I recommend getting these rail guards for when your baby starts standing up and chewing on the rails. The paint chipped on ours from Finn chewing on it, but once I added these fleece rail guards, there was no issue.

4. Peek-a-boo Panda Toy—This was such a simple, cute toy. We've had many a good time with it, and it fits easily into the diaper bag for on-the-go entertainment. Sadly they don’t seem to make it anymore, but I came across this Peek-a-boo Bear Toy, which is a nice alternative.

5. Zutano Fleece Booties—These booties are wonderful! They stay on really well and come in a variety of sizes and colors.

6. Cute Burp Cloths & Durable Burp Cloths—Buy a zillion burp clothes. It's nice to have a few cute ones to take on an outing, but do yourself a favor and get some that can get beat up. They are great to have for just about anything but especially spit up...and since they aren't anything special, you won't care if they get destroyed.

7. Twelve Hours Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old by Suzy Giordano—Although Finn did not sleep through the night by twelve weeks, I found the suggested schedules in this book and her overall approach toward sleep to be helpful. (You can see my full book review here.)

A few other thoughts—

A humidifier is a must.

A sound machine does not have to be a must. We have not used one with Finn, and he has done just fine. I think this is a personal preference you have to decide for yourself.

For a winter baby, this JJ Cole Bundle Me stroller or car seat cover is awesome. Finn was born in April, so I used it on the carseat for the last little bit of wintery weather we had here in MN. Then, I used it on our stroller in the fall when Finn was about 6 months old. I absolutely recommend it. It is so soft and cozy.

I think car seat canopies (like this) can be overrated. Our car seat had a good canopy that worked well to help Finn nap and the canopy that was supposed to hang over it never seemed to stay on right.

This is the baby tub we got when Finn was a newborn. It was nice that it worked through various stages of infanthood. I don't know if it is any better or worse than any others.

I would love to hear if you have any favorite products you recommend for baby. Let me know in the comments.

(Affiliate links are used in this post.)