Obviously you have a bathroom just for your kids right? That's a whole other room in your house you have to decorate. Just kidding.  We live in a condo and we only have one bathroom.  When we had our first child we had to figure out how to fit all of her stuff into our already complete bathroom.  The biggest thing you're going to have to find space for is a bathtub (eventually toys too, but that is a topic for another day).

Bathtub

Tiny baby's first bath

We love our Karibu Folding Bath Tub.  It grows with your baby (no additional parts needed) and it folds flat so it can be stored out of the way.  It's pretty big, which means we were bathing our
daughter in it until she was 2 without having to fill up our whole tub (saving water - woot).

What about the competition?  Below are my opinions about some of the other popular options out there and why we rejected them.

1. 1.  The Fisher-Price Whale of a Tub and The First Years Tub with Sling are the most popular tub choices out there.  They do not fold.  There was simply ZERO places for me to put this in my one and only bathroom other than the middle of the floor. Also, both of these have pictures of people bathing their kids in the kitchen sink.  Who does this?  Is anyone's kitchen sink clear enough for this? Mine sure never ever is.

   

   Giant 1 year old toddler

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3. 2. The Puj Tub.  This tub does fold but requires a very specific configuration of your bathroom sink where you have a very high faucet for the baby to fit under it (not me!).  Alternatively, you can use your kitchen sink (again, ha! no).  Also this will only work until your baby is 4-5 months old.  At this point, if he or she is sitting reliably, then I guess you can fill up the big tub?  Otherwise, I don't know what you do.
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5. 3. The Boon Naked Collapsible Baby Bathtub.  For some reason all the baby stores around here carry this one.  It is foldable and it does accommodate a baby bigger than the palm of your hand.  However, if you read the reviews a number of people are complaining about it being slippery and babies sliding under the water - scary...

Odds and Ends

We found the Skip Hop Dunks Stacking Bath Toys really helpful for washing our babies.  You also want to get some wash clothes and hooded towels.  As for soap, we like Baby Shampoo and Body Wash by MD Moms.

You may also want a pad to kneel on for yourself if your knees tend to hurt.  We actually have the Aquatopia Deluxe Safety Easy Bath Kneeler, but I can't exactly recommend it.  When we got it, I didn't think about the fact that the part that hangs in the tub will constantly get wet because the tub is not just used for baby.  This means we end up only taking it out when we're giving the kids a bath, so the organizational potential of it is completely wasted on us.  Thus, if I had it to do over, I would almost certainly get the Skip Hop Moby Bath Kneeler instead.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a parent in possession of a good baby, must be in want of 10 minutes of peace to make and drink a cup of coffee. (That's how I remember the opening line to Pride and Prejudice.  Why? Do you remember it differently? hmmmm).  Thankfully we will not need an entire novel to answer that question.  Here the answer is quite simple - a play mat!  

Once a baby becomes alert to his or her surroundings (sometime time between 4-6 weeks) they really like to bat and kick at toys hanging over their heads.  They aren't mobile yet at that age, so by placing a play mat on the floor, it is a safe place to leave them and have them be entertained while the parent accomplishes a simple task (choose wisely how you want to spend your time, it is not infinite).  

The truth is that there are many excellent play mats out there.  We have Tiny Love Lights and Music Gymini Activity Gym .  It folds up small so it can be put away in the closet.  It has some parts that squeak or crinkle if you press on them, which is  fun for babies once they start doing tummy time.  It has a mirror for baby to look in, which is always a favorite for tiny tots.  Most importantly, the toys that hang look down on the baby.  For some reason many play mats fail on this criteria (I'm looking at you Skip Hop Treetop Friends Activity Gym).  Many such mats have toys that only look cute if you're looking from the side, the way an adult might and thus looking pretty lame from the baby's perspective.  And finally, the toys can come on and off the arches and attach easily to other things (like stroller straps) so if a child grows attached to one or more, they can play with it much longer than the lifespan of a mat like this.  It's a fantastic toy to have around for the first 6 months of life with a baby, but it's also a great thing to borrow from friends who have children of a different age than you.

Now stop reading this and go have that drink while it's still hot!

So you want to breastfeed your baby in the 21st century?  Well little lady, buckle up... this is going to take some equipment. (This is of course, assuming you want to leave your baby's side ever in their first year, or however long you want to breastfeed for).  We'll get to breast pumps and things you need to pump at work in some other posts, but this post will be about storing breast milk.

Should you find yourself lucky enough to have adequate supply to start a freezer stash, I would recommend doing so.  (If you do not find yourself lucky enough to have an adequate supply, worry not.  If you're reading this, I assume you find yourself living in or after 2015, a fantastic time in human history when we can just buy baby food in the grocery store and feed our babies.  The future is a pretty rad place to live.)   The freezer stash is great if your supply drops when you're sick (true for me and many, though not all, women).  It's also great if you need to travel or have the luxury to drop the kid off at the grandparents for the weekend or otherwise extended babysitting.  Every time I add a bag to my stash, I stroke the bags already in there and make the "my precious" sign, while mumbling to myself (I don't actually, but it does give me peace of mind that if I die, my husband could feed the baby for a couple of days before having to go out and buy formula).


So back to the practical advice... I would recommend getting an organizer box to store your milk. The organizer box I recommend is the First Years Breastflow Milk Storage Organizer.  Why do I recommend this?  Well, if you freeze your milk in bags (which I also advocate, because freezing it in bottles takes up an insane amount of space and costs an insane amount of money spent on bottles), the bags freeze funny on their own and are difficult to store.  This convenient contraption makes them freeze flat and gives you handy box to store the neat flat bags.  You can even use the lid for additional storage space if you build up a big enough stash.  Also, any brand of bag will fit in the box so you don't have to commit to a "system".  The photo to the left shows the current milk contents of my freezer - a full lid, with space still left in the main box; currently one bag is in the process of freezing under pressure.  If you look carefully you'll see 2 different brands of freezer bags being used.

What about the competition? There are a number of popular "systems", none of which I can frankly recommend in good conscience.  Here's why.

1. 1.  The most popular solution I've seen based on extensive time spent in baby stores over the last couple of years is the Kiinde Breastmilk Storage Bag Holder and Organizer.  Their big pitch is that you can pump directly into their bags and their bags are recycle-able.  I'm super pro recycling, but that's where their goodness ends as far as I'm concerned.  There are a number of other brand bags that you can pump directly into.  For the same amount of space (approximately) that their solution stores 12 bags, the organizer in my freezer currently is storing about 20.
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3. 2. The other solution I frequently see is Medela Breast Milk Freezer Bottles.  These I personally find ridiculous.  They are 2oz each - an amount of milk most of my babies surpassed eating by 6 weeks.  That is a massive amount of freezer space to give up in order to store 24 ozes of milk.

General theory- Carriers are super useful in the first year of life, especially if you live in an urban area and like to go places not in a car.

In the first 2 months of life I really recommend an unstructured carrier (doubly for Mom). The benefits of an unstructured carrier in the beginning is that they tend to be easier to put on and adjust to the adult, especially when your'e still funny shaped from the pregnancy (though keep in mind, you won't be able to use the carrier for the first 2 weeks, but Grandparents and partners can). Also the structured carriers are all built to carry 3 year olds and so sometimes are hard to adjust to the little babies. 

With our first, we used a Moby Wrap. It's basically a very very long piece of fabric with instructions of how to wrap it around you and your baby. It was hard to learn how to put on (Lee never figured it out) but once I did figure it out, it was very comfortable, until she was about 3 months and then it suddenly got very uncomfortable (though I know people who use them with toddlers - god bless them).

The Moby comes in a ton of colors and fabric variants, plus many sports teams are available too, if that's your thing.

Photo Credit: Moby Dick under a Creative Commons license. 

General theory- Carriers are super useful in the first year of life, especially if you live in an urban area and like to go places not in a car.

In the first 2 months of life I really recommend an unstructured carrier (doubly for Mom).  You can see our review of the Moby and Infantino Mai Tai.

Once your baby is big enough though, you may want to get a structured carrier for your and their comfort.  When our first was born there was only one company that made "ergonomic" carriers, i.e. ones that were comfortable for the parents.  They called themselves "ergo" (get it?).  We got one and it was great.  It was an easy way to transport the baby, say onto an Amtrak train, and still have hands free for all your stuff. It also had a "sun hood", which was great not just to protect the baby from the sun but also to help her sleep when we needed her to nap on the go.  It also had a pocket in the front which was a convenient place to store your cell phone/keys etc. if you were just taking a walk around the neighborhood and didn't need that much stuff with you.  Our baby also just enjoyed hanging out in it while we did other stuff and often it was a way to get her to nap when she just plain didn't want to.  We used it with some frequency until the kid was about a year old. In fact we have so many pictures of us carrying her around in it (in the carrier at a wedding! at a train station! with dad working at a computer!), it was hard to just pick 2.

Overall, it was great but from my perspective it had 2 downsides:
1. There was no front facing option with the "original" carrier, which was the only one available at the time. Facing forward would have been much more fun for the kid once she got to be about 4 months old.  Both Ergo and other brands have since come out with structured carriers that have this feature.

2. When the baby is under 3 months, you have to use this really bulky and hot insert with them.  This one was the real bummer, especially since our first baby was born in June and our second in July.  Even in the most recent version of this ("the 360") they haven't fixed it.  Given that other options are available, if you think you'll want to use the carrier before the kid is 3 months, I would say it's definitely worth considering a different brand.

General theory- Carriers are super useful in the first year of life, especially if you live in an urban area and like to go places not in a car.

In the first 2 months of life I really recommend an unstructured carrier (doubly for Mom). The benefits of an unstructured carrier in the beginning is that they tend to be easier to put on and adjust to the adult, especially when your'e still funny shaped from the pregnancy (though keep in mind, you won't be able to use the carrier for the first 2 weeks, but Grandparents and partners can). Also the structured carriers are all built to carry 3 year olds and so sometimes are hard to adjust to the little babies. 

This time around we went with the Infantino Mai Tai. It is waaaay easier to put on than the Moby (Lee has used it all by himself)