Our Must Have Baby Items That We’re Happy We Invested In

When you’re a first time parent it’s so hard to know what baby items to buy. And even if you’re not a first time parent, all babies are different. Last month I spoke about some of the things I feel like I wasted money on for our baby, but we did make lots of smart purchases. I wanted to talk about the must have baby items that we’re happy we invested in. Now there’s no guarantee if they work for us that they’ll work for you, but I knew these kinds of posts helped me when I was pregnant.

Must have baby items for sleep

From the very first day we had our baby girl at home we used the Love to Dream sleeping bags. Personally I didn’t love the idea of swaddling but I wanted something comfy and warm for sleeping.

We didn’t get to use the newborn size, but she started in small. She’s now wearing medium as we wanted to give her some extra room. She sleeps really well in them and they keep her warm throughout the night. We’re lucky that our bedroom is climate controlled as we had air conditioning/ heating so we use 2.5 tog bags all year round as our room is always the same temperature.

Currently to give her a bit more movement we’ve been using the transitional bags where her arms are free. And if you’re not sure what your baby will enjoy I’d definitely recommend them as you can try arms in or out and see what they prefer.

Sleeping downstairs

We debated getting a moses basket but decided against it at the start as we knew she wouldn’t fit in it for long. But a friend of mine lent us hers and it was a god send for the first 2 and a half months.

We didn’t want to get into the habit of only doing contact naps downstairs, and we didn’t want her to only be able to sleep on us. And the moses basket has been a huge help to keep her comfy while daytime napping. Having used one it’s a must have baby item that we’d buy again if we needed to.

Our must have baby items for night time bottle feeding

Breastfeeding wasn’t right for me and baby so we moved straight to formula feeding from day two. And this does involve a lot of extra items, especially for night time feeds. We have the bottles and formula pots etc, but the two things that have been game changers are a boiling water preparation machine and our nuby rapid cools.

We do the hot shot method so add some boiling water to mix with the formula, and then cooled boiling water mixed in. The boiling urn keeps water at whatever temperature you want, so we use the WHO recommended 73 degree. And you can set exactly how much is dispensed, so we do 50ml as we make 5 scoop bottles now. We tried flasks to keep boiling water hot but half way through the night it would dip too low. But this means we always have it perfectly warmed at hand.

And then we put boiling water in the Nuby bottles and top up using that as it’s steralised cooled boiling water. So we can make a perfect bottle in a few seconds which is a must during the night when you have a crying baby.

Other must have baby items we couldn’t be without

We have the Vitalbaby bottle drier and UV steriliser and love it. Yes you can steralise bottles in the microwave, but this machine just makes life so much easier for us. We set it up first thing and have bottles throughout the day. Then we do the same again before we go up to sleep.

The Mam milk powder boxes make night time feeding so much easier as well. We fit up the exact right amount of formula in each section so we can just pour it in when needed and it doesn’t matter if we’re half asleep.

We couldn’t be without an electric baby nail trimmer as the idea of using clippers scares me. I actually bought ours off the Tik Tok Shop but it’s pretty much identical to this Tommee Tipee set. It makes trimming her nails so much easier.

If you have little ones what were your must have baby items that you were glad you invested in?