Baby Must-Haves

It seems you can't visit a blog these days without finding a gift guide. This isn't so much a gift guide as a list of products that, in my short tenure as a mother so far, I've found to be awesome.

1. Dr. Brown's Mixing Pitcher

This thing is great, especially since we have two babies to feed. We mix up 32oz of formula and then just pour into bottles as needed and stick into a bowl of warm water for a minute or two to warm it up. The real benefit is that this pitcher gets rid of clumps of formula and doesn't aerate the formula, helping to reduce bubbles and gas. Win-win!

2. Cloud B Gentle Giraffe Sound Machine

We've been using this white noise machine almost from day one, so I'm not sure how well they'd fall asleep without it, but I'm not going to mess with a good thing. We usually (knocks wood) can put them down sleepy but awake and with the soothing sounds of Mr. Giraffe they are soon off in la-la land. It doesn't always work, but I'm happy with our success rate. Mr. Giraffe is here to stay. Plus he's little and can travel easily! They also make full-size ones and different animal versions.

3. Carter's Velour Sherpa Blanket

We received a few of these as gifts and they soon became our most necessary items. These are perfect to cover baby in the car seat going between car and destination. They are cozy for swaddling, especially as we head into cold weather. Our babies have a much harder time escaping these than thinner blankets. They're also great to toss over baby's lower half when they are lying in the pack and play (supervised, of course, so nothing dangerous happens). And they are great to wrap baby in after bath time to snuggle them and warm them up. They are available in many patterns, and I'm convinced you can't have too many (sometimes baby has an accident and you need to wash it, so it's good to have backups). We have five and I would welcome more in a heartbeat.

4. Boppy Pillow

This pillow is apparently great for breastfeeding moms, but we've found it to be useful for keeping the babies in a somewhat sitting position to mix things up for them. It lets them look around at something other than the ceiling, helps keep their food down after a feeding, and they just look adorable sitting in them!

You can also use them to help with tummy time, and we found it to be the perfect "nest" during our newborn photo shoot.

5. Black and White Books/Toys

Newborns are best able to see high-contrast images, hence the black/red/white is great for them to work at focusing on. Periwinkle took to this book immediately and just stares at the images, wide-eyed and curious. Indigo is getting there, but he'd still rather just look around the room. I also have some black and white toys that they are still a bit too young to play with, so I'd stick with the books.

So there you go. I wouldn't trade any of these items for anything. Well, maybe money, but then I'd just go re-buy these items. I highly recommend you add these to your registry or buy them for someone who is expecting. They might not know they need them, but they do.