The WM Parenting Connection

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When you’re a first-time mom, you get bombarded with advice about the things you’ll need when your baby comes. Merchandisers and commercial websites are especially good at compiling huge lists of all the things they want you to buy in preparation for your baby’s arrival.

Of course you want to do the best for your child, so it’s easy for new moms to run out and buy tons of stuff they don’t really need.

After that first baby though, you pretty much figure out what you do or don’t need. Below is my take on recommended baby gear that you can skip.

Changing table – When I found out I was pregnant with my first baby, I couldn’t wait to buy a beautiful changing table that I saw at a well-known baby store. It was gorgeous, and expensive, and utterly useless. Trust me, you will be changing baby dozens of times every day. And you will change baby right where you are, you’re not going to run up and down stairs or lug baby into another room to do it. So do yourself a favor and set up a station with wipes, diapers and waterproof pads in the room or area where you’ll spend the most time with baby and skip the expensive changing table.

Bottle Warmer – My third baby drank formula. If he didn’t finish a bottle, we’d put it in the fridge for later, but he hated cold formula! I sent my husband to the store to get a bottle warmer and it turned out to be completely useless. It warmed the bottle inconsistently and took a ridiculously long time to heat up. Not something you want to mess with at 2AM when you’re trying to feed baby so you can go back to sleep. Know what works? A coffee mug and hot tap water. Pop the prepared bottle in the mug for a minute and voila – you’ve found another useless item you can cross off your registry.

Baby oil/petroleum jelly – Do you know what this stuff is? The result of decades of careful marketing. If they called it what it really is – gasoline waste product – no one would buy it. Don’t be fooled. Both of these cosmetics are made from mineral oil, the by-product of extracting gasoline from crude oil. Mineral oil suffocates the skin by blocking pores and interferes with the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins such as Vitamins A, D and K. It has even been associated with pneumonia-like illnesses and infant deaths. Mineral oil is touted for babies and children with eczema, but tend to cause more skin problems by sealing the skin and not allowing it to breath naturally. Skin is our biggest organ of detoxification and if not allowed to breathe, toxins stay in the system instead of being properly removed. If you feel for some reason you must slather your infant with oils, pick natural vegetable oils and cross this stuff off your list.

Sleep positioners – For years now we’ve been hearing how sleep positioners protect your baby from SIDS. Turns out they got us to buy these things by manipulating our biggest fears – that our babies might die from SIDS if we didn’t use a positioner! As it turns out, these are associated with infant suffocation and are just plain dangerous. The Consumer Products Safety Commission and FDA are now urging parents to not use these products. Ever.

http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/Safety/AlertsandNotices/ucm227301.htm

Microwave Bottle Sterilizer – Seriously folks, you don’t need to sterilize baby bottles after each use unless you’re living before 1950 or getting your water from a well or cistern. Study after study has shown that formula in a bottle washed with soap and water or in a dishwasher is perfectly safe, yet for some reason this myth just won’t go away. Read this article and cross that sterilizer off your list.

http://www.ivillage.com/do-you-need-sterilize-baby-bottles/6-n-137555

Experienced moms – what do you think? Do you agree with my list? Or would you put something else on your list of useless baby gear?

Five Baby Gadgets You Can Live Without