With the arrival of our second baby, we’ve realized what gear we actually use and what I’d recommend to other moms! In this article, I cover bedtime, feeding, play, and travel gear!
Baby bedtime must-haves
An absolute must is the Mom’s on Call book! It has the best guidelines for sleep training, and establishing a good feeding, sleeping, and playing routine overall! Both of our babies were sleeping through the night in 8 weeks! Moms on Call also has an app that updates based on her age, so that you can know how feedings and naps change as she gets older.
I also took a Taking Cara Babies class when Charlotte had a 5-month sleep regression, and I found her tips helpful too!
I also recommend the Swaddleme Swaddles for when they’re little. They have the easiest velcro tabs. Bring a couple with you to the hospital!
When they get a bit bigger through about a year, then it’s time to introduce my absolute favorite baby gift- the Kyte sleep sack! It’s super stretchy and soft, and so easy for quick diaper changes. They also make matching PJs that are my go-to. For my second child, he only has Kyte pajamas!
A big part of sleep training is having a sound machine! We really like our Hatch! She loves the white noise setting. “Mom’s on Call” routine suggests putting white noise on every time they sleep. It’s so easy to control this on your phone and it has a nightlight feature. Some parents even use the “green light” = you can get out of bed and come downstairs for breakfast feature when they get older!
As for baby monitors- there are SO MANY TO CHOOSE FROM!! And so many opinions from different moms. We really like the Infant Optix baby monitor! It works easily and the camera quality is great. Note it doesn’t connect to an app, but we like that because you can leave the video monitor with a babysitter/our parents, and we don’t have to get them to download an app.
Since having our second child, we have discovered you can hook up two cameras to the single monitor and switch back and forth to see both kids! How’s that for high tech?!
We also noticed another con, that it doesn’t work if your nursery is super far away from the master bedroom. So check the monitor distance on the packaging and make sure it will work for your home setup!
Feeding Baby
Our babies are proudly hybrid-fed! We do both breast milk and formula, and switched to formula once I went back to work full-time. #FedIsBest
We really like these Phillips Avent bottles. I’d recommend getting a few 4-ounce and a lot of the 8-ounce size. Note that you usually can’t bring glass bottles to daycare, so go with the plastic. I like these bottles for four key reasons!
- They screw into a Spectra breast pump and are WAY better and bigger bottles than what comes with the Spectra
- The little circle indention is the exact size of the Minted Circle Children Labels, so they look super cute for daycare
- They have several nipple flow options so you can speed up the flow of the milk as they grow. Every couple of months you can swap out the nipples, and feedings get a lot faster as they get older.
- Lastly, they screw into the portable Baby’s Brew bottle warmer perfectly without needing an adaptor! More on that in a moment!
My favorite bottle warmers are the Philips Avent Rapid Bottle Warmer. Seriously this makes it so easy and fast to heat up the bottles. This is a good one for your kitchen because it plugs into the wall. And for those of you who are scared to have your kitchen overrun by baby bottles- we actually did our baby bottle station on our baby’s bathroom counter! It was upstairs and that way the bottles were closer to her and the kitchen stayed bottle-free!
This Baby’s Brew Portable Bottle Warmer is the BEST! It’s a bit of a splurge, but we use this all the time! It fits in a car cupholder, it fits a Phillip Avent Bottle, and you can charge it in the car- what more could you ask for?! It is a little bit slow in heating the bottles up, but if you plan it right it works well! I wouldn’t use this for your primary bottle warmer since it is a little slower, but we would pop the bottle in the warmer in the car on the way to the restaurant, and boom! Hot and ready when we sat down!
Baby Playtime Gear
I am a minimalist and really have a hard time buying baby playtime gear because they just grow out of them so fast!! The two things I did keep after the first baby though were the Baby Delight bouncy seat and the Ingenuity Cozy Spot Activity Gym.
Baby Travel Gear
I swear by the Uppa Baby Vista Stroller. With two kids under three, it’s been amazing to have a quality product that has converted through our different life stages. You can have it as a single stroller with an infant car seat, bassinet, or toddler seat! And you can add a second seat for baby #2! It’s also great on streets and tough terrain. There’s a reason you see them everywhere! We love ours!
One thing to note about the stroller/ car seat situation is that most babies outgrow the bassinet around 6 months and outgrow the car seat around 9 months. Those are short-lived attachments. We quickly moved into the double toddler seat phase with our two little ones!
This stroller lives in our garage and we take it out on walks almost every day. We have checked this on a plane before and I’d recommend getting this red stroller cover bag from Target. They also make them for car seats.
After baby #2, my only drawback of the Uppa Baby Vista is that with both seats, it is quite large and cumbersome to get into my trunk. So, I ended up getting a travel Capucci stroller to keep in the back of my car for quick trips to errands like a coffee shop, boutique, haircut, etc. where I want my 10-month-old to be contained, and they don’t have grocery carts with a kid seat for him. He’s too big for a bassinet or baby car seat at this point, so he’s in the toddler seat regardless. My toddler is 2 and refuses the stroller now, so she just walks with us.
This Capucci stroller also fits in an overhead bin, so it’s MUCH easier to travel with than the Uppa baby.
As for baby carriers, my children never liked the cloth ones. I also had super large babies, so those models just weren’t supportive enough. I’m a fan of ErgoBaby Omni 360 Baby Carrier. High quality. Easy to wear. Easy to wash. It also has this cool little shade that unfurls to cover your baby from the sun.
Pro tip for the Ergobaby that no one tells you- most of their models require that you BUY THE INFANT INSERT!! It’s super helpful in being able to use the carrier for the first few months. I think I remember reading that the insert is used when the baby is around 7-15 pounds. This one linked above doesn’t require an infant insert.
Once your baby is about 9 months old, it will be time to start researching transitional car seats! My husband and I like the Diono! It has a steal frame and is super safe. It’s also sleek and you can fit 3 in a row across a back seat.
Last on my baby gear list is the pack-n-play. This is a “save” for me. We have really used our pack-in-play so sparingly- a beach house rental, grandma’s house, and a few other times here and there- it doesn’t have to look aesthetically pleasing! For us, no one ever really sees it. And this model is super easy to collapse and set up.
Also, our daughter switched to a twin bed around 18 months old, which is a little earlier than most kids, so the pack-in-play phase was kind of short-lived!
Tine Murray 