There are obviously certain necessities when it comes to taking care of a baby. The whole “food, shelter, love” (and of course a car seat and diapers - preferably cloth) is pretty clear. But, when you’re getting ready for your little bundle of joy to join your family and you’re trying to prepare as much as possible, it’s easy to fall prey to the “buy all the things” syndrome. Or, for some of us, fall prey to the “a particular someone likes to ‘buy all the things’ for me whether I wanted them or not” syndrome...which is a whole other topic for our therapists. Back to baby prep. It gets tricky because one item that works great for one child may not work for another, or what one family used for all its kids may not be what you’d like to use. Then, you also have the advice and products that fall out of favor (or now pose a safety hazard even though your parents thought they were “perfectly safe” when you were a child). In our case, one of the biggest things I’ve prepped for (TWICE, knowing full well that we didn’t use it with our first child and going ahead with the idea anyway) but didn’t use was our changing table. In earnest, our son’s was his dresser with a changing pad attached; our daughter’s is a 6-square storage unit with the same changing pad secured. And neither got any use. Oh, sure, we’re using the insides of the dresser and storage unit for clothes and blankets and sheets and...well, useful stuff. The changing table idea, though? Not so useful. What is useful for this purpose? An old blanket or our travel changing mat on the floor or in the pack ‘n play. Just as quick and easy (possibly more so), really. What else do we not use that we were super excited to get? Our Bumbo. With Child #1, he was just huge for his age, so the one time we tried it it got super stuck on his legs. With Child #2, she’s a perfectly-sized little sweetheart...except for her thighs. Back to the drawing board. #babythunderthighs #sosquishable Oh, and while it's nice to have for a few very particular purposes, the double stroller we asked for when we were expecting our daughter has been used less than a handful of times. Hooray for co-sleeping; not so much for hauling a humongous monstrosity around and praying that you can make it fit the ONE AND ONLY ONE WAY that it'll fit in our wayback. Like I said, though, what works for one family doesn’t always work for another. You may love your changing area set-up and think we’re barbarians for the way we change our little one.  You may swear by your Bumbo. Heck, we’ve JUST recently started using our hand-me-down crib with our 9-month-old.

That said, we’d love to hear from you. Did you ever use a changing table set-up? What was your biggest “I totally didn’t need that” baby item? Wipe warmer? About 3x the number of actually necessary baby clothes? Do tell!   Save