Baby Basics: What We Didn't Use

Clearly I'm not as good as Erica at posting things for my baby week, but here's the next installment: All the Stuff We Have and Didn't Use.

And in no particular order again...

Nursing Tanks. I've discovered that in mom-land people either adore nursing tanks or leave them at the bottom of their drawers. I'm definitely in the latter camp. I think I got off on the wrong foot with them because I didn't realize how when you nurse (especially at first), well, you get bigger. Ok, huge. So mine always felt really tight and uncomfortable. As much as I find nursing bras to be uncomfortable too I have to admit they are handy and help keep a nicer shape for me. I really only wear my nursing tanks on Mondays when I do laundry and wash my bras.

Pacifiers. Oh how we tried and tried to get Liam to like pacifiers! We must own at least four different kinds and they are currently sitting in a basket gathering dust. I remember when my mom was here the first week Liam was born, she came downstairs holding him happily sucking on a pacifier. The kid loved to suck on anything. I freaked out at my mom (seriously freaked) saying he couldn't have a pacifier until he was four months old at least. See how by the book I was? I was so concerned about nipple confusion that we completely missed the pacifier window. I should have seen from the beginning Liam would have no trouble nursing and it was probably fine to give him a pacifier, but how was I to know? The silver lining of no pacifiers: no pacifier fairy needs to come visit when Liam is going off to preschool to take the precious binky away.

Bottles. Again, we tried and tried. I would pump until I was sore and then listen to Rob upstairs trying to give a screaming baby a bottle. Miserable. It was all with the goal that when we drove to PA for Thanksgiving when Liam was barely a month old that we could feed him in the car and not have to stop and nurse. What a joke. I was trying to pump in the front seat with a blanket over me so the truckers couldn't see and then we would still stop to get him started on the bottle and then stop again to burp later. After one time of this we gave up and just stopped to nurse. Everyone was much happier. After that we didn't really have reason to keep trying a bottle as I was barely ever away from Liam. I wish now we had tried a little harder because there have definitely been times when it would have been so nice to leave him with someone and a bottle. Probably until he was about seven months old the longest I was away from him was six hours when we left him with Rob's parents (and a bottle) and went to dinner and a movie. I was told it went fine, but later learned he had cried, a lot. Next baby: we're going to try a little harder with bottles. However, like the pacifier, the upside to this, no bottle habit to break.

Moby Wrap. I thought I was really going to like the Moby wrap. And perhaps I would have if, like my friend Suzie told me, someone would have showed me how to use it. The enormous length of fabric freaked me out and I never really tried it. I had three other carriers I did use though -- a Baby Bjorn, a cloth sling for when Liam was really little and a Mai Tai carrier a friend made me. My feelings about carriers are this: you have to find what works best for you and your baby. Find one that is completely comfortable to you and that you can put a baby in by yourself. I rarely wore Liam around the house; mainly the carriers were for places like church or waiting in restaurants when I wanted him to be quiet and go to sleep. I'm getting an Ergo carrier for the next baby though. You're welcome to send me money toward one whenever you want.

Baby dishes, etc. Our house is a decent size, but we do not have a lot of kitchen cabinet space. Therefore I simply made the decision one day that Liam is going to learn to use the dishes we use and not take up a lot of space with baby dishes. At least for now when he isn't feeding himself. Maybe when he breaks a piece of dinnerware from Royce Yoder, Potter I will feel differently. But for now all we own special for him are four spoons (really three because he doesn't use the pink spoon -- that is for girls!) and two sippy cups. That's it. Any food I give him I just use our dishes. I've found this saves a lot of hassle and space.

Expensive Video Monitor. This was a disaster. We bought this expensive video baby monitor with extra money from our registry and got it all set up before Liam was born. The first night we brought him home we turned it on and it had terrible feedback, even though we'd tested it before. I was a mess. Liam was tiny, tiny (or as tiny as an almost 10 pound baby can be!) in his big crib and I was sure something was going to happen to him in the night. After Rob went out to get batteries at 11 pm and those didn't work either, we gave up and didn't use a monitor the first night. Liam cried in the night and my mom came up to get him because Rob and I slept right though his crying. After that we went to Wal-Mart and got a $30 cheapo monitor that is still going strong. Thankfully we got our money back from the expensive one, but it was a hassle and not worth it. Unless you really feel like you need to see your baby all the time, the technology on the video ones is not worth it.

Pack 'n Play with Extras. We got a fairly standard pack 'n play, but it came with all kinds of extras I didn't expect. It has a cradle type attachment on top, a pad that raises the mattress so it can be hooked up to a vibrator and music and probably a DVD player for all I know. We've definitely gotten our use out of the pack 'n play and I'm sure we will continue to, but we didn't need the one with extras. Now they are sitting under his bed taking up space. If I could do it over again I would get a PeaPod. Have you seen these? They are like a baby tent with an air mattress that collapses down small enough to fit in a suitcase. Genius!

Halo Sleep Sack. The memories I have from Liam's first week sometimes just make me laugh. Who lets people go home from the hospital with this helpless being? It's so good babies don't remember when happens to them when they are so little. The Halo Sleep Sack ranks up there with humorous mistakes we made. Basically the one we got was a sleeveless, zippered gown that was closed in at the bottom. Then, it had this piece of fabric that velcroed to the back of the gown and came around the arms to create a swaddle. One of the first nights we tried to use this thing and halfway through the night, as babies are known to do, he pooped everywhere and got the gown part all dirty. Silly me, I only had one of these contraptions so my mom and I rigged up some other pajamas that we then wrapped the swaddle part around his arms again. Of course there wasn't any velcro for it to stick to, so just a few hours later Liam had either wiggled out of it or somehow it was all funky around him. It did not work. I clearly remember my mom coming in his room in the morning and saying, "We need to get this pajama situation figured out." She promptly went to Wal-Mart and bought Liam six, long-sleeve sleeping gowns and we never looked back. Sure, he looked like he was wearing a dress, but at 2 am when there is a dirty diaper and no snaps or velcro swaddles, gowns are genius. I ended up selling the sleep sack at a consignment sale to some other poor soul who hopefully had better luck.

I'm sure there are more things we didn't use, but that's all I can think of now. I'm sure some of you have had great success with these things and that is great. Again, it's all about finding what your baby likes and what works for you. I'm completely on board with things that make your life easier!

Next up: Why I gave up on cloth diapers. Riveting, I know.