Baby Equipment Part 2: Clothing, Bathing and Changing

Last time I talked about Sleeping arrangements for baby, this time I'm going to look a bit more in depth about what I've learn on Clothing, Bathing and Changing from Boo.

Clothing

I have a vest hack for you: if there is a disastrous nappy event, vests have that doubled over top so that you can take them off down the baby instead of dragging poo over their head, took us a while to notice it, but it is my gift to you!

A member of my local sure start team back when my husband and I were living with his parents, advised that if we didn't plan to use sleep suits for a second child, cutting the feet off would make them last longer once they started to get a bit snug on the toes.

Going through our clothes we've got a bit of a mismatch, but fairly consistently more vests than sleep suits as vests are more likely to fall victim to nasty nappies and are useful for layering under outfits. by 6 months Boo was fairly consistently(from what I recall) only using sleep suits for night time, and even then they were being traded out for traditional Pj's. We definitely had too many sleep suits and vests though once we started putting Boo into outfits, we may even have some sleep suits that still have tags. My advice would be 12 vests and 8 sleep suits in each size if you're also going to put baby into outfits, if you're willing to do washing loads more often then you can probably get away with less, especially in the smaller sizes where they grow out of stuff so fast the general wear and tare will be less noticeable than in say 12-18 month or 18-24 month clothing.

I highly suggest poppers over buttons. Buttons are fiddly in a hurry and the buttons holes tend to shrink a bit, not to mention the potential for errant buttons.

Some clothing stores have adjustable waists on bottoms which are very useful, especially given the varying nature of small folks waistlines!

With clothing there is little real need to boil wash, soak anything that looks like it might stain in a bucket, treat with vanish (or a little Daz if you're not worried about biological washing liquids) before the wash then bung it in with the rest of the washing at your standard temperature. I also found a stain removal bar to be quite useful, I'd use that on reusable wipes and nappies with great effect. The sun also does a good job of getting out stains, we've noticed little to no sun fading on coloured clothes despite it doing away with whatever stains we couldn't get out in the wash.

Bathing

top and tail bowl. I still don't fully understand the purpose of a top and tail bowl, it was far easier to have a bowl of water and take a stack of cotton wool balls from the packet, use them and pop them straight into a nappy sack, I have no idea where ours has gone but won't be going out of my way to dig it out.

baby bath this was fairly useful when Boo was teeny, and great for soaking clothes in, but not really a neccessity, as it's about I'll use it initially, especially as our bath is pretty deep now and leaning into it would be a pain.

baby bath seat. This was pretty fab, and allowed us to do away with the baby bath for actually bathing Boo, this time I'm looking at something like an Aqua Pod for when Bel can sit fairly confidently so I can bath the girls together.

hooded towels x 6. Babies loose heat through their heads, so it's useful to be able to get their heads covered when they've just come out of the bath. Boo is far too big for them now, but they're all clean and ready for Bel. We almost definitely have too many though!

Johnson's top to toe wash. This is a nice gentle wash for use in the early days.

baby shampoo

baby oil. Boo and I went to baby massage classes organised through our local Sure Start centre, so baby oil came in handly for putting the techniques we learn in class into practice, especially the lavender scented sleep time baby oil, which was quite useful for encouraging Boo to have a nap.

oilatum bath and cream. We have this is bucket loads, it's quite expensive to buy, so I wouldn't encourage rushing out and buying it unnecessarily, but Boo has dry skin that's prone to eczema and Oilatuml is the only thing that remotely keeps it under control.

Bath toys x infinity. Bath toys aren't particularly useful initially, but once your baby can sit up in the bath they'll love them, however anything squeezy or otherwise hollow with holes gets full of black mildew yuck (especially with oilatum) so we're forever replacing Boo's bath toys, kitchen tupperware makes a good alternative at a pinch and can be put in the dishwasher!

We know a lot of people who got on really well with Burts Bees baby and Neils Yard also does a baby range that I fairly often see recommended, though we haven't tried either personally.

Changing

Changing bag. We went with a Pink Lining Yummy Mummy bag when Boo was teeny, and as we ended up feeding from a bottle the many bottle pockets were pretty useful, but now she's bigger only one of the outside pockets gets used (if at all) and there's a lot of dead space in the bag. I am a glutton for Pink Lining though, so this time round we've bought a Bramley tote with 2 nappy pockets and a removable bottle holder, and of course we picked up the matching purse! (beware there are two different interiors for this bag, so make sure you look carefully at the product description, I wasn't that clever, and my husband didn't pick up it either) The Red with bows version is currently highly reduced on the Pink Lining website along with a few of the other bags in that colour scheme, so if you're thinking about nappy bags I'd advise having a look as the quality is fab!

Changing mat. Obviously. Also travel changing mats x 2 One is part of the changing bag, but we got another small fold up one free with a magazine, so it's great for keeping in the lounge with a couple of nappies, some wipes and some nappy sacks wrapped in it if I'm feeling too lazy to traipse upstairs.

Nappies. I have this vain hope that with two of them in nappies the birth to potty reusable nappies will see some serious use, but disposable nappies are far more practical initially for the hospital, and I never managed to get reusable nappies to work over night with Boo, so we have a hodge-podge mix of Reusable and Disposable nappies (and some that are a bit of both, oh my!) This is accompanied by a hodge-podge of reusable Cheeky Wipes and Sainsbury's sensitive disposable wipes.

Cotton wool for 'top and tail' style cleaning and newborn bottom changes. Though if you'd rather use wipes it might be worth looking at water wipes, one of the ladies in one of my pregnancy groups says her hospitals NICU ward had been trailing using them, and they've got far less nasties in than some of the other brands.

When it comes to nappy bin systems, we have a nappy bin for dry paling our reusable nappies alongside a couple of boxes for clean and dirty reusable wipes to be stored wet. We didn't bother with any proper system for disposable nappies, early nappies aren't that unpleasant however once solid food is on the cards they can get a bit unpleasant, especially if (like Boo) a child is found to have an intolerance or allergy, but we put dirty nappies in a standard swing bin in the cloakroom and then chuck out the bin bag each day and that solved most of the odour issues, especially when a bit of Rockin' Green Shake it up powder is added into the mix, our bag has lasted us over a year, so a little really does go a long way.

Here ends todays instalment, keep an eye out for part three: Feeding, Traveling and Play!