This checklist is to help you feel confident about all things you may need for Day 1 of when you bring your new born baby home! It’s a time to celebrate and have fun and take lots of pictures, and not frantically go to your nearest store or make an urgent Amazon order and wait by the door to get your baby needs at the last minute!
So here you go! Let’s go step by step:
Baby essentials to have on Day 1
1. Baby Crib and Mattress
Baby gets their own bed! This may need a little bit of research, based on your style, purpose and budget. The main size differences are between a standard crib, mini crib and bassinet, and their respective mattresses. But you would need this on Day 1 of bringing the baby home.
Some useful links:
2. Diaper Station, Changing pad and Diaper Essentials
Diaper changing is something you may start in the hospital itself, so you can get familiar with the process there! Essentially you would need (have added some useful links for each product) :
a. A Diaper station or a sturdy dresser table that can act as diaper station
b. Changing pad
c. Changing pad cover
d. Changing pad liners
e. Newborn diapers
f. Butt cream
g. Diaper wipes
h. Diaper wipe warmer (nice to have, not mandatory .. makes your lives so much easier when you need to change the diaper when baby is sleepy and don’t want to wake your little one up with cold diaper wipes !!)
i. Diaper pail (to easily discard used diapers)
3. Swaddle blankets or ready to use swaddle
This is another thing to be researched before your baby’s birth – whether you want to swaddle your baby or use a swaddle sleep sack! Usually a mix of two generally works.
I prefer muslin swaddle blankets for swaddle as well as just covering the stroller kinda purposes, and a swaddle sleep sack for longer sleep durations so that baby’s hips and legs are free to move.
Some useful links:
Muslin swaddle blankets: Aden + Anais
Sleep sack swaddle: Halo, Aden + Anais
4. Newborn Healthcare and Grooming kit
This includes both the healthcare essentials like digital thermometer, and other grooming essentials like comb, nail filer and clipper, medicine dispenser etc.
In addition to this, it’s always better to have a good quality rectal and forehead thermometer for babies always handy.
Some useful links:
5. Newborn hat, mittens, socks and zipper onesies
Those cute hats, mittens and socks are pretty necessary to keep the newborn warm and cozy! And the two sided zippered onesies are so easy when changing diapers, especially when you new to it!
Some useful links:
6. Baby Nasal Aspirator / Snot Sucker
This is an absolute must! Babies often get their delicate noses blocked and hospitals generally send you home with a bulb like syringe to remove the snot out, post delivery. But it’s a real hassle and frankly there is a better product which is way easier and convenient to use! it’s called the snot sucker (don’t worry..there’s a filter which makes sure you don’t literally end up sucking the snot by mistake!)
Here’s a useful link: Nose Frida
This comes along with the necessary spare filters and nasal saline spray that’s used to loosen the snot, but you can also but the saline spray separately here or something similar.
7. Baby bottles
This is something which we don’t know if we would need it initially..could be if you have to feed formula, or if someone other than mom is gonna feed the baby mother’s milk through bottle when mom gets some rest!
So have few baby bottles ready just in case – I highly recommend the Comotomo bottle, it generally is liked by most babies and is a safe bet – here’s the link – Comotomo
8. Sterilizer
This was something I got it late and wish I had it from day 1 ! No matter if whether you are exclusively breastfeeding or using bottles, you’ll have either the bottles and parts of breastfeeding pumping parts for wash and sanitizing. If you want to splurge somewhere, I would recommend here – saves so much time, especially when every single minute counts!
The one I recommend combines sterilizer and drier, so you don’t need to dry the parts separately, here’s the link – Baby bottle steam sterilizer and dryer
Another one for quick use which is a microwave sterilizer is here – Microwave steam sterilizer
Image source: Unsplash
Pattu Mommy 