Comment by Sarah

September 28, 2011 @ 10:19 am

just a few notes…

Bed in a bag – their argument is that an infant doesn’t need any of the items, however many older babies and toddlers are still in their crib. We went out and bought a bumper after my son kept waking himself up in the middle of the night b/c he would squirm over to the edge and hit his head on the rails. once we had a bumper, he would sleep all night. The “wearable blankets” are only 0-9 months – I don’t think there is anything wrong with a 2 year old having a blanket.

Convertible cribs – money waster because the full size bed it turns into might not fit into the room? What about the toddler bed it also turns into?

Also, pet gates and baby gates tend to cost exactly the same from what I’ve seen.

Comment by Christy

September 28, 2011 @ 10:32 pm

We purposely avoided getting a crib for our son because I figured it was just going to be something huge I would have to store between kids. We went with a pack and play, and he generally slept in our room with us. I guess you could chalk it up to being a nervous first time mom/wanting to do attachment parenting, etc.. As he transitioned out of our bed, and the pack n play, we moved him to a mattress on the floor. Which we then put on a frame when he was old enough to climb into, and not roll out of at night.
Another money waster I’ve seen (and I confess I considered buying at one point…) is a little barrier for co-sleeping with the baby in your bed. The point is to be able to have the baby in the bed with you keeping warm, snuggling, nursing, etc.. Not fighting with a stupid plastic frame in the middle of your bed. I got around that with a simple pool noodle stuffed in a U shape into a standard pillowcase. $2.00 on a noodle, and stuff the thing into a pillowcase I already owned.. I never worried about my daughter rolling out of the bed while she was laying on/in it. It simply was there to provide me the peace of mind in the middle of the night for my poor sleep deprived brain. And it was much easier to nurse around when it came down to it, therefore less sleep deprivation for everyone! WIN!

Comment by Wendy

September 29, 2011 @ 6:50 am

I generally agree…some of this stuff is so useless and overpriced it’s actually kind of infuriating. The color changing spoons don’t bother me as much, as long as they are close to the price of a normal baby spoon. I think it has more to do with my feeling that color-change stuff is fun though (I’ve also gone through mood rings, color-change shirts, color-change cups, color-change Barbie bathing suits and color-change straws, growing up. I also loved putting white carnations or celery into glasses of colored water to see them change.) I just fed my daughter room temperature baby food if I recall correctly.

Comment by kmd

October 13, 2011 @ 9:58 pm

Eh, we actually like our $80 Ikea crib that we recently converted into a toddler bed. My daughter gets a little freaked out when we try to put her in a bigger twin-size bed, so the fact that we could turn her familiar old crib into a transitional bed has been a God send. Not to mention we’ll get a little more use out of the more-than-$80 mattress we bought to go with it.

Comment by MrsElleB

November 2, 2011 @ 1:43 pm

I’m with KMD.. I like the crib we got, it coverts into a toddler bed, and then into a full size bed. It help a lot when we transition our daughter from a crib to a toddler bed. She loved the idea that is was her “big girl bed” as well as her old familiar crib. And even if you don’t use it as a full size bed, it’s still cheaper to get it..rather than buying a crib, and then a toddler bed. I don’t know of many people that put their children from a crib to a full sized bed. As for a lot of other things on that list.. yeah waste of money. Except for the baby einstein movies..my daughter LOVED those movies.. and it would sometimes give me a much needed 10 minute break throughout the day! Also the pet/baby gate thing.. Um, pretty sure they all cost the same. Or at least they do where I live!!

Comment by Julie

November 10, 2011 @ 6:51 pm

@Sarah – you should know wearable blankets for sure come in more than one size. You can even purchase them at Target.com all the way into size 5T.

Comment by Susanne

April 17, 2012 @ 9:23 pm

Disposable diapers!!! If you can sew a straight line you can sew cloth diapers. I made a bunch out of bag-sale thrifted “hefty cotton” t’s and old towels, and used shrunken wool sweaters to make covers.