Hello and welcome to the third installment of Baby Steps, about a series of small steps for man and giant leaps for humankind — in this instance, the giant leaps are being made by me and my wife Gretchen, who is now seven months pregnant. The last two columns have been a lot of Catching Up but now we’re shifting into present tense to talk about what life looks like at this moment!
We’re At 31 Weeks, Baby Fell Out of a Coconut Tree
I can’t believe how soon this baby will be living and breathing! But we’re in the home stretch now. The baby is the size of a coconut according to The Baby App. We’re turning my home office into the nursery so I’ve been moving all of my possessions out of the office and into other parts of the home and garage. We wanted to take an in-person birthing class but most of them are online these days, so the soonest we could get an in-person spot was the end of January. We’re cutting it close, but! I am reading The Simplest Baby Book in the World, which has been actually really informative and helpful as well as feeling geared towards Dads.
Which Baby Products Do We Actually Need?
I often think back to becoming vaguely aware of the rise of Luxury Strollers around the turn of the century, as I was generally engrossed in New York City centric media and that seemed to be where a lot of these stroller conversations were taking place. I’d spent my babyhood in what I now know is an “umbrella stroller,” named for its ability to fold up like an umbrella. I think I did okay in there. But times have changed! Having a baby in your early 40s means there’s a pretty dramatic difference between the shit my parents used for me and the stuff available to us for our own kid.
Apparently a major turning point in Stroller World occurred in an August of 2002 episode of Sex in the City, when Miranda Hobbes graced our television screens with her new baby and her new Bugaboo. It was “the dawn of the performance pram.” But major changes in the Baby Market had been underway for a while by then.
I find product history endlessly fascinating, and the $348 billion dollar baby market now increasingly so. High-tech strollers are just one result of societal shifts that started in the ’80s. Women had been joining the workforce in droves and thus required motherhood-optimizing products. People began having kids later, thus having more money to spend by the time the babies were born. Men began picking up some of the parenting duties and apparently Bugaboo specifically hoped to create products for men who wanted better looking, better engineered strollers to push around. Obviously also with the passage of time comes more scientific developments and products created in response to those learnings.
Then came the internet, and with it the advent of the mommy blog, which has now been usurped by the more powerful Mommy Influencer (I admittedly resent this shift because of how the latter seems to prioritize physical beauty and auspicious wealth above skill/talent). Both spend a lot of time evaluating and promoting baby products. The internet also gave us message boards where we could all talk to each other about baby products. Now I know things like “Brittney Griner and Francesca Farago both got babyletto Kiwi chairs.”
Which brings us to the current moment, wherein we are looking at a list of products and wondering which are truly essential. Our registry platform Babylist gives you a checklist of what you require for the child and your list is not considered complete until you have chosen an item for every alleged “essential.” I’m a completist and thus feel deeply upset that we will not be considered complete as parents until we choose a wagon. I mean do we really need a wagon right now? WILL WE BE UNPREPARED FOR BABY WITHOUT A WAGON.
Various friends and family members have started pitching in in for specific big-ticket items. We’ve been gifted some great onesies, and hit up a second-hand baby store for a nursing pillow and carrier, and I’ve been scrolling Good Buy Baby for other used baby products. My friend Meg (who is one of only a few friends I know who had their first kid over 40) sent us the most extraordinary package — it was a whole bundle of baby products, little pants, formula, diapers, each tied up with a note about its purpose and her own experiences with it, and recommendations of where to donate it if we don’t end up needing it.
I actually don’t remember the Bugaboo moment in Sex and the City. What I do remember, vividly, is the baby bouncer that Lisa Gay Hamilton brings to Miranda, the one that finally gets Brady to stop crying, the one that broke during Samantha’s foray into babysitting, which she rigged back to life with a strong vibrator. DO WE NEED ONE OF THOSE??
So anyhow, I figured I’d complicate the already complicated shopping / gifting list in our mind and ask all of you — what do you think we actually need and don’t?
What to Expect When You’re Expecting Everyone to be Straight
Gretchen trying to connect with her peers
We downloaded The Baby App early in Gretchen’s pregnancy, the one that told us our last week that our baby was both the size of a beet with leaves — something I rarely encounter in my day-to-day life, but okay — and also as big as Winnie the Pooh’s red balloon, an item I once regarded as imaginary and therefore relatively sizeless. Gretchen loves the daily tips and I love the pictures and the week-by-week info on what to expect.
When you join the app you’re also added to a message board group of parents who are due the same month as you are. I don’t know if there are other Dads on the app so I do feel like an imposter so I never say anything. But boy do we read them. I read long conversations about “Going Home Outfits” (did not know this was a thing), meal freezing (realizing halfway through that OH these people have like, garage fridges huh) and various physical ailments (in hopes that they will help us with Gretchen’s similar ailments).
It is a very straight environment and there’s a language I had to learn. At first I was so pleasantly surprised to find the boards were teeming with trans people but then I learned that “FTM” stands for “First Time Mom.” Unfortunately I have found myself often gravitating to threads by Moms who have, by all accounts, really terrible boyfriends and/or husbands. Men who have made themselves scarce since the pregnancy was confirmed, men who expect their wives to make dinner after a long day of newborn care, men so unhelpful their wives prefer they don’t take family leave lest they be forced to take care of their husband and the baby. But it’s also sweet to read everybody rallying to support and give advice.
Apparently I Am a Baby Monitor Luddite
The Baby Monitor we chose
The most highly recommended white noise machines come with apps, but I didn’t want those. I didn’t want to have to download another app. I want to move as much of my life off apps as possible.
The most revered baby monitors are also attached to phone apps — apps that enable you to keep tabs on your baby’s activities regardless of your physical distance from baby. It feels like most parents are using them. But I immediately recoiled. Gretchen was surprised that I wanted a baby monitor that didn’t come with an app — meaning our ability to visually monitor will be limited to the bluetooth range of our own home.
“No app?” she asked, mildly alarmed.
“No app!” I chirped, riddled with anxiety. “Intentionally no app!”
The next day, Gretchen shared this piece with me which was helpful for me in trying to parse through my thoughts on this, but I’m still struggling to articulate my aversions.
I know I felt honestly crazy watching my niece knowing my brother and his wife were watching me watch her, getting updates every time she stirred or cried. After that trip, I kept checking it constantly until I was removed as a user, and she wasn’t even my kid!
I don’t want our sitters to feel watched, or for us to feel tempted to provide anyone with feedback based on imperfect (but still acceptable and healthy!) parenting we witness via app surveillance. Things could happen in our absence that aren’t ideal, but there’s a difference between dangerous and “not ideal,” and life is nothing if not rarely ideal. When he starts childcare, there’ll likely be cameras there for us to check whenever we want to. I don’t want my child to grow up feeling more surveilled than he already will be in today’s world. I fear checking it constantly when I’m meant to be taking a break and getting anxious about all of it, worrying I’m not maximizing the utility of the data I’ve been provided. We both work from home, so it’s unlikely the baby will be home without us for more than a few hours for the first year or two of his life, regardless.
As a skeptical user of smart baby devices noted in a Cut piece about wearable baby monitors, it’s easy to understand how baby surveillance became such a growth market: “the ancient urges of protecting your kid at all costs [met] capitalism, and it [became] a free-for-all; smart baby monitors are just one small part of it.”
Which is just to say; I think I’m gonna be a weird curmudgeon about baby surveillance technology. My parents couldn’t watch me on an app when they left the home, and look at me now! Alive! When I’m on parental leave, I hope to feel less attached to my phone than I do now, not more. (Full disclosure I am also a curmudgeon about location tracking!)
I certainly understand the benefits of advanced car seat and stroller technology, and we are admittedly looking to rent a Snoo or buy a second-hand one. I suppose when it comes to all of us getting more sleep with the help of science, I surrender to the machine.
Umbrella stroller for sure. Those things come in hand… at least when they get a bit older. If you have two cars, two carseat bases would be good or if you have means two carseats. Installing and removing between cars is chaotic. Things to keep them occupied in said carseat and stroller. I didn’t didn’t hear a mention of the dangly toys. A mirror so you can see baby in the car. I would definitely get a baby cam with or without an app. Honestly you can’t trust other people with your kids. Accidents and NATs happen all the time. Plenty of receiving plankets.
I know you aren’t asking for advice but I’m gay so I’ll give it anyway. Get the monitor in the photograph. It runs on radio wave tech, and then creeps can’t hack it and you don’t need your phone!
Having a video is super handy if you want to grab your kid post-sleep BEFORE they start screaming and crying for you. You can help them stay regulated and therefore your life will be easier.
We have the cam in your photo and it has been working so well for us going on two years now.
Good luck ur gonna be an awesome mom-dad for ur kiddo!
Oh wait lmao the caption says you chose that one. Good on you mate! Baby luddites are the real deal. Just wait til you see all your friend’s kids fully absorbed by iPads while yours happily plays in the dirt and socially interacts with other living creatures. Life is good over here!
yes! that’s the one i put on our registry and my grandma got it for us. i’m so glad to hear you like it! i think i will like being able to do some video monitoring inside the house (and for friends/family watching the kiddo to be able to do that as well), but don’t want it outside the house. and yeah, definitely heard on the privacy stuff. that was a big selling point too, no baby monitor hackers.
We used an old fashioned audio baby monitor and it was just fine. We were also totally weirded out by our Nannyshare family partner’s use of their video monitor to surveil our nanny (there were shitty racial dynamics involved too). I never, not once, wished I had a video monitor, let alone one I could view from outside the house!!!
We also didn’t have a lot of “essential” baby stuff, and what we did have was either a hand me down (we lucked into close friends & fam w kids just a couple of years older) or things we decided were essential along the way and picked up-also second hand where we could. But that tended to be things like “a warmer coat” or “better mattress for the travel crib” rather than “fancy on-trend baby gadget.”
Also, we use a tower air purifier pumped up to full blast as a white noise machine, so it also helps if kiddo happens to grow up w asthma or allergies, when they get sick over and over, etc. (also: no app!)
ok, it is great to hear that you never even wished for a video monitor let alone an app. and eeek re: the nannyshare cam dynamics… when i used to babysit i think i probably would’ve *hated* to be watched doing so. i feel like it’s easy to pop in on somebody in the middle of a something and make judgments about it — i mean truly, just so many things to misjudge or misunderstand, when what really matters is that your kid was happy and fed and healthy and got to bed on time. i remember once realizing i’d put a diaper on backwards and having to re-do the whole process and i think if i’d known i was being observed during that process i would’ve been clumsier and more anxious when ultimately it did not matter, everybody was fine!
Ditto. Just audio here after being weirded out by other ppl obsessively checking video. But I think it’s important to consider if ur a door closed family OR a door aaaaalmost closed family. And how creaky your hallway is. If you don’t close the door, you don’t really need to monitor much.
Two things that I found incredibly helpful, especially during the first few months, were some kind of baby carrier you could wear and something you could put them in when you needed them contained. The tricky part is that every baby is different and so will likely have different feelings about things. Same with parents! I love our Moby wrap, but my wife never really used it. She liked the structured carrier better. And now that our kiddo is bigger, I got a ring sling for when she wants to be carried and my arms are tired. She LOVED the Baby Bijorn bouncer (once she was big enough to go in it) and we also got a Dock a Tot pillow thing as a hand me down that was helpful when we were chilling on the couch and didn’t want to worry about her rolling off. But to be honest I don’t think I ever would have spent the money on it (they are weirdly expensive). And I think our dog ultimately used it more than our human kid did.
At the end of the day so much of the baby stuff is about convenience, mostly for you. You don’t really need it, but it might make your life a little easier. A good friend also gave the very wise advice of anything you or the baby doesn’t like, just pass on to the next family. Something that doesn’t work for you (my nephews had no interest in pacifiers) might be great for someone else (my kid loves a pacifier, they are EVERYWHERE in our home).
true true! I feel like a lot of ‘products you need’ advice attempts to be definitive, but nobody really can be since different things simply work differently for different people. and NOTED on “some kind of baby carrier you could wear and something you could put them in when you needed them contained”
We also rented the snoo. Worth every single penny.
this is very validating
Ok I have a LOT of thoughts about all of the above. But I’ll try not to do too much. I will say I echo the other commenter above, we have that same baby monitor you got and we are very pleased with it! No apps or surveillance culture please and thank you! I look forward to being the curmudgeon mom for approximately the rest of my life.
Re: baby essentials, we struggled hard making a registry because it felt real overwhelming and we felt like we didn’t need a lot of stuff. So we mostly just put cute things on there and people mostly bought us those cute things. If you have time/are inclined, we got soooo much practically brand new stuff from FB marketplace and plan to continue to do so, it is truly insane how much nice stuff you can get for practically nothing, so it felt crazy to have people buy new stuff when we could do that instead. A few months before the baby came, I asked our midwife about which baby stuff we actually needed and she said, people think babies need their own baby-sized version of everything because Capitalism. But they don’t! They can use your regular old towels and blankets and nail clippers and many other things. Of course if you want cute baby things, by all means! But they’re not necessary. That helped me a lot.
The things we have found useful so far are: a carrier that is comfy for you, a simple bouncer, hakaa if breastfeeding, an Ikea cart to roll around with snacks, diaper stuff, and breastfeeding supplies; sleep sacks, lots of burp cloths (we’re using cloth diaper prefolds someone gave us, they soak up EVERYTHING it’s awesome). We don’t have a changing table (just change the baby on the bed/floor where you are, on a reusable chux pad or other cloth), a stroller (we just babywear, but we don’t live in a city so ymmv), a baby tub (we just take a bath with them or rinse them in the sink). If you can hold off or get gift cards to an actual physical store with baby stuff that’s nice, so then you can try out carriers and swings and all the things once you have the baby and know what they’ll like, you just never know! You don’t need a lot of clothes but people WILL buy them for you, and damn there’s so much cute stuff.
We are co-sleeping and I highly recommend you look into it; it’s so much easier in so many ways for us! But I know it freaks people out and there are plenty of ways to sleep a baby! Just mentioning it because you mentioned the Snoo. Happy to say more if you’re interested.
Ahhh ok I’m just excited for you!
thank you for the baby monitor affirmation all these comments are making me feel very smart about this one thing! and thank you for the other tips toooo, the necessity of burp cloths has been a consistent theme i think!
My two cents in this is that what you need really differs from other families and I’d actually think less is more, because you will come on contact soon enough with very specific issues and then can decide and also borrow from friends to see if it’s a good fit or not.
It is hard to trust yourself when you have never done this before and lack of sleep and hormones and just the rawness of your body after birth / while nursing is really tough.
If it helps to know what I actually found “essential” with my 2 babies:
– A baby wrap to carry them around and do lots of skin to skin contact. I learned to even nurse while wearing it and it helped with SO MUCH stuff. Colics, sleep, and when they get sick with fever, mine wanted to be around me ALL the time, it was the best. I don’t like the Babybjorn because they are not ergonomic (babies hang inside them instead of the recommended Frog position) also I love in Europe and found it more practical to move around without a stroller but that’s probably not going to be your experience in L.A.
We bathed with the baby or used the bathroom sink, a good Milk pump was really good for us, but as I said, maybe borrow/try some. I would invest in lactation consultant or baby massage group, and also found some podcasts about Hipnobirthing and or birth much more useful than the classes. “Planeta Parto” in Spanish was so amazing for me as a podcast maybe you find something equivalent in English…
Have one friend send you food, one friend send encouraging affirmations, one help with errands, one with shopping… that helped me more than items….you are going to be GREAT!
less is more — noted! have also put ‘baby wrap’ as most wanted item on our registry now. it seems like the baby bjorn is hit or miss, but either way are tons available on FB marketplace and other used baby supplies sites.
I am also a weird surveillance curmudgeon when it comes to baby monitors! We have a similar non-wifi monitor and honestly, it’s never been an issue in the 5 months my child has been alive. There was one time we didn’t have the monitor with us while visiting a friend and spent the $4.99 on an app that would turn my phone into a camera and my partner’s into the receiver. It was helpful in a pinch, and I’ve never thought about it again. This is the price of my peace of mind to not obsessively check the app while at work or otherwise out of the house.
thank you this is very reasurring!
Maybe my best advice is: you can find nearly everything free online! Most baby stuff is made of plastic or wood and designed to be completely wiped down. So it’s easy to make something used be practically new again. And if your baby likes sleeping in the car, you’ll have so much time to drive by rich neighborhoods and pick up free stuff. Fb, Nextdoor, join all the buy nothing groups.
true, i am going to grit my teeth and return to facebook in order to peruse its marketplace! i can imagine with all the new things people need for such a short period of time that a lot of stuff ends up given away!
Huh. I thought obsessive surveillance of your partner/kids was a straight thing. My sister and brother in law look at each other’s dots all the time, and have a ring camera in the lounge that she would check to see what he was up to. It’s led to unneccessary moments of panic and I think is unhealthy for the kids (who also require this of their friends). I do not understand. If I need to know where my wife is, I ask. I read the linked question and the key benefit cited was “I know when to cook because I can see if they’re coming home”. If they’re not home, their dinner goes cold, it is their fault! We asked a bunch of straight people if this was normal and they said yes, I was hoping it was a straight thing.
I have a friend who is experiencing significant domestic violence and this kind of tech would make it so much harder for her to leave or access safety, or speak to people who can help before she’s ready to leave. (and potentially put people at risk who try to help) You are literally putting yourself at risk by enabling this.
It is scary how much we’re happy to use surveillance, and how much we have no way of opting out in society. So Riese, thanks for doing the work on baby monitor choosing. I am totally on board with no app. It doesn’t sound healthy.
i do feel like straight people trust each other les than gay people do… but also gay people are more attached to each other in a way that i think would encourage location sharing, not to spy on each other but because they’re so open about all the things. weird to think of kids expecting this of each other as well, the experience of not being invited to a thing must feel so much worse when you can literally see all of your friends locations at the thing you weren’t invited to! i wonder if anybody ever feels truly alone anymore. i am thinking about this stuff all the time now !!
Buying used baby gear is a great idea, especially clothing is sometimes unused because baby outgrew it before their parents put it in for the first time.
I recommend the “Womanly Art of Breastfeeding “, if either of you intend to breastfeed your baby. It comes with tried and diy parenting tips, so you do not have to struggle with long shopping lists.
A baby carrier is better than an automatic rocking seat because it does not force your baby to lie on its back and baby gets physical contact with their favorite humans.
Whatever you intend to buy, borrow or steal, remember that you are the only thing your baby actually needs to become a happy and healthy human.
All the best for your beautiful family!
“remember that you are the only thing your baby actually needs to become a happy and healthy human”
well this is lovely to consider!
A new healthy baby only needs to eat poop sleep and some minor cleaning:
EAT: As the non gestational mom I did finger feeding with our first so as to not impede my wife breastfeeding. They’ll give you all those supplies at the hospital if you ask. Second one was bottle only so that required SO MUCH pumping supplies equipment accessories.
POOP: set up your changing space, consider right/left handed direction, and that you’ll be doing it all one handed.
SLEEP: anywhere safe. So many options. Frequently right on top of you. So I liked having multiple comfy seats conveniently next to a phone charger and anything else you find essential.
CLEAN: ask any nurse you see in the first few days if they have time to bathe ur baby. Watch closely. They’re the pros and it’s shocking how firmly they’ll move that baby around. My preference was the squeezy bottle and the human puppy pad things. Steal those aaany time you have access! A thousand uses!
EMERGENCY KIT: all the baby medicines. Even tho they’re too young, if you’re calling the advice nurse hotline at midnight, you want to have all the basics in stock. An odd number of thermometers. No matter how good they are, they won’t agree and you’ll need a tiebreaker if it’s ER worthy or not. Snot sucker and humidifier.
noted on all points thank you! i never thought about that with the thermometers but i do think our collection is growing ambitiously
I recommend the “Womanly Art of Breastfeeding “, if either of you intend to breastfeed your baby. It comes with tried and DIY parenting tips, so your shopping list might become a little shorter.
A baby carrier or wrap is better for soothing your baby than an automatic rocking seat because it does not force your baby to lie on its back and baby gets physical contact with their favorite humans.
Whatever you intend to buy, borrow, or steal, remember that you are the only thing your baby actually needs to become a happy and healthy human.
All the best for your beautiful family!
“I find product history endlessly fascinating,” and this is why I love you. I often struggle to find histories about clothing, products and design but when I do I find this compelling, even when it’s any a as product I will never need to purchase (for myself). STAY CURMUDGEON!!
THANK YOU JESS FOR AFFIRMING MY INTERESTS AND I WILL STAY CURMUDGEON!!!!
In your sleep deprived state you will buy a bunch of crap to meet whatever need comes up, and half of it will be useless. Stuff that was 100% recommended by friends was useless to me, and surely my 100s are useless to others. I did love the BabyBjorn Bouncer for putting baby in while I went to the washroom. Eventually added the toy bar (bright colours, not the weird grey stuff) and he loved it. Still paying for cloth diaper supply/wash service and love it (hated it the first 4 weeks). Used isn’t what it was, lots of people selling stuff on marketplace that their baby pood on for 90% of the original cost. Drop in orgs often have closets you can raid and restock!