A happily childless friend recently asked me to help her shop for baby shower gifts. When it comes to baby gifts, I err on the side of practicality. Because once you have a baby, clutter gon’ clut something vicious.
We arrived at Buy Buy Baby and as I was teaching her how to navigate the baby superstore, I thought Wow, this is useful information that I can stupidly share for free without ever reaping the benefits of sponsorship because a) I cuss too much and b) I’m way too honest. So with that, bookmark this shit if you’re with child or you plan on having one in the future. Or just read this and continue enjoying your autonomy because as I write this a huge, heavy, sweaty toddler with teeth is nursing while napping on my chest so there’s that.
When you get to Buy Buy Baby, find a parking spot in the back with fewer cars surrounding you. Trust me. If you park in a good spot near the front, I’m telling you there will be problems. After you’ve wasted a good two hours and $576 in there, you don’t want to have to wield a knife at the impatient mom who’s watching, staring as you load a big ass bathtub and boxes of diapers. Her blinker is blink blonk blink blonk blink blonk blink blonk. You’re getting all antsy trying to rush this game of Tetris you’re playing with all this baby gear and then you snap. “Bitch, all these spots and you’re gonna sit here waiting for this one. Really?” You don’t want that. Not in front of the children. Just park in the back.
Now, upon arrival say hello to the security guard at the entrance. With your eyes. With a smile. If you have to come back to this motherfucker with a few returns in the next couple of hours or days or months, he will allow you to park in the fire zone without saying shit. On a rainy day, especially, with a newborn? Your politeness will pay off.
These superstores are set up a like a supermarket. The real shit, the necessities like fresh fruit, vegetables, stuff that won’t clog your arteries and give you a heart attack are on the outer aisles. In Buy Buy Baby or Why, Why Did I Agree To Have This Colicky No Sleeping Ass Second Bye Felicia Bye Baby, the diapers, onesies, toiletries, strollers and car seats are on the outer aisles. There’s no real reason to venture off into the middle lands. At the supermarket you find the empty calories in the middle lands. Same with the baby superstore. You don’t need a special wipe for the pacifier. Throw some water on that shit. You don’t need a special lavender scented bag for a shitty diaper. That shit will still stink and now you’ve made more trash for the landfill. In fact, you don’t need the Diaper Genie. It’s just vacuum sealing a big old pile of ammonia stench in the corner of the baby’s room. If your partner takes the trash out every day like he’s supposed to, you don’t have a need for this item. That thing is especially wasteful because it’s like used bra and underwear. You really gonna donate the shitty diaper container? Yes, it was expensive and yes you wish you could repurpose it or make someone’s life brighter with it but it ain’t happening so throw it in the woodchipper.
Now, I’m super into babies and toddlers. What I’m not into is their stuff. Yes, I am a mom. Yes, I will fucking stab you in the chest plate if you try it with my babies. But I’m not trying to have my living space look like the baby pays the mortgage. He can have his weights in the corner of the closet because he pays these here bills. Maja, you cannot have that big ass plastic noise-making door you crawl through all damn day smack dab in the middle of this dining room. No ma’am. I feel this same way about my personal space. I am not carrying around a big ass diaper bag full of unnecessary shit. Why the fuck do I need a special container for the pacifier? The container is the baby’s mouth or my pocket, right? I need a special Tupperware for the Cheerios shaped like a Cheerio with two separate openings on the lid? The baby is gonna spill the shit all over the stroller or car seat regardless of the packaging so here’s this small Ziploc bag you can’t manage to fit over your face. Eat your Cheerios. Hush now. I’m trying to hear Partition, which I’m playing on the lowest workable volume so you and the napping baby can’t hear it but I can. Shhh, hush now.
OK. So you have the proper mindset to enter the store. Onto my list of essentials.
If you need to give a gift and you know the mom is going to diaper her baby in such a way that is convenient and destroys the earth, two boxes of diapers are a great and thoughtful gift. That’s about $75 to $100! When you’re spending one hundred of your own dollars on an item that collects fecal matter and gets thrown in the garbage, you’re so appreciative when it’s someone else’s hundred dollars. It’s psychological! Get one small box of the newborn size because there’s nothing worse than leftover newbie diapers. You’ll hang on to them. In three months, you’ll pull them out of the drawer and admire them. So small, so precious. Then, in two or three years, you’re diapering a Cabbage Patch Kid at the demands of this once baby now toddler. You’re putting a 25-cent expensive ass diaper on a doll. Yeah, so get the small box of newborn diapers. Then get a large box of the size 1s. I opt for the diapers with the wetness indicator.
The yellow line turns green when the baby is wet. For a first time mom, this little line is a big deal. The baby will be crying and you’re gonna think, “Is she wet?” You won’t yet know to just feel for mush. You might even be ridiculous enough to untab the diaper and actually open it to check. Bless you. You’re gonna want an indicator that tells you your gut instinct to change the wet baby was right. It’s a small pat on the back that you’ll need because you might be alone with that baby all day wondering if you’re fucking her life up, if every move you make will ultimately send her down a path lined with black tar heroin and ripped fishnet stockings in an alley. All small reassurances that you’re doing the right thing are welcome. Wetness indicator, go for it.
Onesies. I’m a Carter’s person. But I don’t go for the onesie that snaps at the bottom until the baby’s belly button thing falls off. Picture yourself with a huge, protruding scab on your stomach. It’s sensitive. It’s hardening. It’s dangling. Are you going to put on a tight ass t-shirt, flush up against this wound? No. One false move and it’s a wrap. Before I put my baby in a onesie, I put her in the side snap shirt with little pants.
Keeping all pressure away from and off of the belly button gunk as I wait for it to fall off. When I see a tiny newborn baby in a onesie with the fabric all rubbed up and possibly sticking with blood and pus, “Ooh no,” I think. “Did your foolish daddy dress you today little mama? I’m sorry. Let me help you get comfortable, poor thing.” The thing with babies is you ask yourself what would you want if you were in their fragile little position? No, you don’t want shit rubbing against your open wounds.
I had to learn the hard way that my babies’ skin was sensitive. I love the smell of old school Johnson and Johnson products. The pink. The baby powder. The purple. The yellow. I love it. My babies however would get all splotchy and red if I layered them with fine-smelling. Also, don’t use baby powder on your child’s bottom or privates. The tiny granule of talcum powder can travel into her little system and you know how a pearl forms when an irritant is trapped in the oyster? Yeah that. I’m not a medical expert, but I bet that shit is true. Anyway, I switched to California Baby products. They smell great and they’re super gentle. They ain’t cheap so as a gift, they’re perfect. If you look at gifts as things you want badly, but would never splurge on for yourself, then this is a nice gift. Get the body wash and the lotion. If you’re really generous, get the sunblock. $24 for a little ass bottle, Maja goddamn!
Cradle cap is disgusting. As a new mom, you’re gonna be examining and Google-diagnosing your baby all day and all night. You will notice oily flakes on the child’s head. You will wash the scalp and this moldy film will still be there. You’re gonna listen to the Internet and get all kind of oils and combs and bullshit and the flakes will still be there. Then, you’ll ask Twitter and you’ll find out that all you ever needed was Mustela Foam Shampoo for Newborns.
One bottle lasts forever. I use it on the baby even without cradle cap because it smells amazing. Like what I imagine Blue Ivy’s wealthy neck folds smelled like when she was a baby.
The baby will cry. She might cry a lot. She might never want to be put down. At the four month mark, you’re gonna go, “Is she teething already?” Everybody will say “Oh no no. She’s too young for that.” You’ll know in your head that the baby could very well be teething because she’s your baby and what you say goes. Also, duh. The little teeth are down in there. Their only job is to make themselves seen. Your baby’s mouth could have bomb work ethic. You don’t know what that mouth do. Strikethrough. Strikethrough. But I’m saying. You’re gonna want to approach this holistically. You don’t want to rub a chemical ointment on your baby’s gums. You want to alleviate this problem with zero chemicals and a little bit of new mom flair. Enter these little ampoules.
They look really cool. They’re easy to carry around. Other moms in your presence might say, “Oh what’s that?” And you’ll say, “Just some organic stuff for her colic. To ease her teething pain.” The other moms’ eyes will ooh and aaah. It’s like taking out a gold pack of Nat Sherman cigarettes and lighting up a pink one. It’s not cool at all, but it looks fashionable as fuck. Does this stuff work? Who fucking knows? But emotionally, you’ll get a rush out of trying to solve the problem all organic and mindful like. And like I said, these look cool. You’ll even lie to yourself. “Her tantrum was Richter scaling at an 8. I’d say it’s a 6.5 after I dropped this stuff in her mouth. For sure, for sure. You hear that? I can hear my thoughts again. Shit works!”
The Aden and Anais blankets are amazing and multipurpose as fuck. You can use them to keep the baby warm. For swaddling. As a nursing cover if you’re into that. As a cover over the top of the newborn car seat carrier as you run errands and want to keep the world’s vermin off your baby. As a picnic blanket. As a headwrap at the beach (I’ve done it). As a cover on the hot ass driver seat in the summer if you have a short skirt on and don’t want to burn your thigh skin. They fold up tiny. The material is lightweight and gauzy. And when your baby isn’t a baby anymore, if you got the plain white or the jewel toned ones, you will find other ways to use these. They’re expensive but worth it.
The high chairs at restaurants are vile. Do they even wipe them down? Cool splinters. Cool filthy seat belt. I had to work on my face when a hostess, seeing me with my baby, would ask me if I needed a high chair. My screw face was strong. I’ve toned it down, but yeah, that’s how offended I am by community high chairs. This is why the Phil&Ted Lobster high chair is amazing. You can wipe it down. Windex it. Clorox spray it, whatever. And it folds flat, taking up very little space in the trunk. Plus baby feels like she’s a part of the family as she sits at the table and enjoys dinner. Not like a noisy food-sputtering eight-armed burden on the rest of the establishment just floating out there, close enough to your table.
If you’ve ever found yourself in a YouTube vortex of ingrown toenail removal. Or blackhead popping. Or ear candling, chances are you will love the NoseFrida. Don’t be put off by the fact that you have to use your own mouth to make it work because it’s the only nasal aspirator that actually does work. Satisfyingly so.
It is better than the expensive battery operated ones that sing songs. It is way better than the disgusting bulb they give you at the hospital. Cut that thing open after a couple uses and see what kind of nasty is in there. Go ahead. The NoseFrida is just… So much shit will come out of your baby’s face with this thing. When she’s stuffed up with a cold you’re gonna be so excited to use this. For every sniffle, Frida. Freaking amazing. Cheap. All you need to do is buy the little blue spongy replacement filters every now and again. And I run this through the dishwasher after a long day of snot removal.
I’m a person that thought my child would only play with wooden toys made locally in Brooklyn by some secretly wealthy poor-looking lady who uses crystal deodorant and wore Birkenstocks before this Normcore Movement took off. I really thought I was going to adhere to this organic bullshit plan. “Battery operated? Oh no no.” Well, shit bitch, you need this seahorse. My baby is now 16 months old and still has never slept through the night. But I insist this seahorse is a necessity. There’s gotta be some kind of scientific magic to this thing. It can cut her irritability down from a level 2000 to at least a 1993 for few minutes at max. Amazon reviews will tell you to be wary of a short circuiting battery that may cause sparks, flesh wounds and house fires but I’m telling you, the shit is soothing if you use it properly. Everybody says you need that pretty little hipster giraffe and its adorable squeaky cousins, but those are for decoration, status and Instagram. This seahorse is putting in real work.
Not as much work as you’ll put in for the next 18 30 years as you take care of your babies protecting them from the world’s seven worst dangers to our children today – wind, strangers, drugs, fast cars, dogs, social media and low self-esteem – but this is a nice, practical start.
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