What do you actually need to survive your first few months postpartum? Assuming you already have the basics like diapers and wipes, here are five things I used almost every single day:
A baby carrier specific for newborns. We tried three (yes, we’re that level of crazy) and we landed on the BabyBjorn Mini for the first ~3 months. It was super easy to put on, easy to adjust between when I wore it and my husband wore it, and we felt like our little one was super secure and comfy. The carrier does put most of the weight on your shoulders so as our son got bigger (I’d say over 15 lbs), the carrier slowly started to get uncomfortable.
Someone gifted us Ms. Mouth’s Messy Eater Stain Treater Spray (https://amzn.to/45G7T4j) and it’s going in every newborn gift bag we give in the future. This stuff is absolutely amazing — our son is 7 months old and he has exactly one stained outfit (which we forgot to put the stain treater on). I’m not usually one to go overboard but I keep one bottle in the nursery and one near the laundry.
I don’t remember the first time I put our son under a play gym but it was probably around 6 weeks. From then on, we’ve used this one every single day: https://amzn.to/3XDBklp. It still blows my mind how entertained my son is by it. In those early postpartum weeks, I could put him under it and have an entire one-hour Zoom therapy session with him being completely content.
I talk about the SNOO in greater detail here but this magic bassinet allowed us to all sleep at night. At two months, our son was sleeping a full 12 hours/night without waking). Not only did my husband and I get more hours of sleep at night, we also had better quality sleep knowing our son couldn’t roll over. The price tag is enormous but they have a great rental program and they also sell pre-loved options at a steep discount.
We had several friends suggest getting a mini fridge in our room so that I didn’t have to go back and forth to the fridge in the middle of the night for pump parts/storing milk. We live in a one-story house so this felt totally unnecessary BUT those 3 AM steps to the fridge also felt like cruel and unusual punishment on top of my pumping sessions. As a great workaround, we ended up buying Willow’s Portable Breast Milk Cooler (https://amzn.to/3RV9NYX) and it’s been great! I freeze the inner chamber during the day and keep it on my bedside at night for any milk that I pump.
Honorable mention goes to the Frida Nose-Sucker (https://amzn.to/3VK1Sia) which felt like a literal life-saver when our son came down with his first cold.
