What's working & what isn't

Now that we're ten weeks into this parenting adventure, I thought I'd reflect on what, of all the baby stuff we received/bought/inherited, has proven to be worth the space it's taking up in our apartment.

WORKING

• Oeuf Baby Lounger: Baby Stewgler LOVES this thing. Turns out it's crucial to have someplace (other than the crib) to put the baby. Seriously, you don't want to have to hold 'em every minute. In shopping for a bouncy chair, we definitely prioritized the look of it and the size of its footprint. Yes, there are cheaper chairs (some of which bounce themselves), but this one is really well made, comfortable for the baby & it matches our design aesthetic. Bonus.
  
• G Diapers: Without a washer and dryer, we were hesitant to use cloth diapers, but we also felt really guilty about disposables. G diapers are a great middle ground. G's have three parts -- a cloth exterior, a impenetrable snap-in liner, and a flushable/disposable/compostable/biodegradable absorbent core. We mostly use them at home (we use 7th generation disposables when we anticipate changes out in the world) where we can flush and reset with ease. Sure, we have the occasional blow out & you can't be faint of heart if you're going to have to hand-wash the liners in the sink (Dr. Braunner's peppermint soap is working well), but all in all we're totally sold.
• Swaddlers: From the beginning, Baby IK has been sleeping in a swaddle. Mostly, swaddling helped to keep her moro reflex in check which has allowed her to sleep longer. Dr. Harvey Karp says that swaddling helps replicate the womb. In the beginning, the bambina was swaddled almost all the time, now she's just swaddled at night. They say she'll tell us when she'd had enough. We have lots of different swaddlers -- simple square blankets made with love by Aunt Maureen, the miracle blanket, Halo sleep sack swaddler, Swaddleme -- all of which work well. In our house, swaddling has helped to make our baby a good sleeper.
  

Not Working

• Aden + Anais muslin swaddle wraps: In theory, these are great. Swaddling a baby in summer feels tantamount to torture, so the prospect of a gauzy swaddler sounds awesome. The problem is that these wraps are huge -- once you have the baby swaddled, they're wrapped in so many layers of muslin it might as well be a wool blanket. I recently cut one of the wraps in half which makes it slightly more effective. I think the design of these wraps fell prey to serving too many masters -- I'd rather have a well-sized muslin swaddle wrap than a too large wrap meant to swaddle, serve as sun cover, breast feeding cover, emergency crib sheet, etc. I wish I'd bought my own muslin at $2.99 a yard.
  
• Graco SnugRide: Let me first say that I think this car seat is perfectly safe which all that matters in the end. My beef is with the handle -- moms NEVER have two hands to do anything so why would they design a car seat handle that takes two hands to adjust. There are two big, cheap-feeling, tough to engage "buttons" on each side of the handle and you need to push both of them at the same time in order to move the handle. Stupid. Totally stupid.
• Similac 2 oz "nursers": We bought a case of these ready to feed bottles to take on a trip where we wouldn't have a place to clean & sterilize bottles. They served us well in that regard. The bummer is that the nipples seem to have a pretty fast flow. Baby Stewgler is normally a pretty chill eater -- with those nursers she was coughing and sputtering and drooling formula all over the place. As added insult, I discovered that the bottles are made of number 7 plastic which is reported to infuse liquids with bisphenol A -- an endocrine mimic which is particularly damaging to babies and pregnant women. Awesome.

All in all, we're doing pretty well. We kept a pretty tight lid on our registry which means that we don't have much that we're not using (I fear there are some outfits that IK will never get around to wearing, but that's OK). I'm proud of that. I know now that I could have brought her home from the hospital owning nothing more than a baby sling, a crib & bedding, some diapers, a breast feeding pillow, some bottles, some formula (even if you swear you'll never use it -- trust me, you never know), a swaddler & an outfit or two. Everything else is gravy.