The Baby Products I Used the Most for 0-12 Months: Nursery & Diapering Edition

In my third trimester of pregnancy, I spent an embarrassing amount of time on Pinterest looking for nursery design ideas and essentials for that room. A lot of the room inspo I found on Pinterest looked beautiful, but I failed to find a comprehensive list of products I’d actually need that also suited the look we were going for. This is a list of the nursery (and diapering) items that we used the most in the first year of our baby’s life.

Furniture

Crib: This was a bigger purchase for us but since it converts from a bassinet to a crib to a toddler bed, we saw it as a piece of furniture we’d be investing in. We went with the Nestig one in white and we love it – it looks great, it’s easily adjustable and it has wheels so you can move it from room to room if you need to. We’re still using it in its crib form, and in about a year we’ll convert it to the toddler bed.                                                                                                       

Dresser: This one is close to the one we bought from Wayfair – in retrospect, I probably should have gotten a taller one with more drawers, but we ended up using the top of the dresser as our changing table (more on those products further down in this post), so we intentionally went with one that would be closer to this kind of height.

Nursing Chair: This was a purchase that I was 100% influenced into, but it ended up being one of the best ones we made. We went with this one from Nurture& and this thing saved my life (and my husband’s) when it came to feeding. I’ve taken lots of naps in this chair and when we no longer have a need for it in my son’s room it’s probably coming to our bedroom.  

Diapering

Changing pad: We purchased two of these, one for our son’s room and one for our living room. One other hack: we use puppy pee pads to put over the changing pad and switch them out as needed. For us, this has been a lot more hygienic than using one of the reusable plastic ones.

Products: We use water wipes, A&D cream, a butt spatula, and Sassy bags for dirty diapers.

Ubbi diaper pail: We like these, and we just use normal trash bags in them, instead of buying the specific bags from this brand. We stationed one of these in our son’s room and another one downstairs in the living room so we would have the option to change his diapers downstairs.

Sleeping

Sleep sacks: After our son was out of the Snoo and his portable bassinet (at six months), these were a great way to transition out of the swaddle situation.

Hatch sound machine: I did a lot of asking around about this product and ended up getting it – and two and a half years later we’re still using it. Have a specific sound and light for naptime and then another combination for bedtime was a big part of solidifying our bedtime routine. There is an associated app you’ll need to purchase, but for us it’s been a worthwhile purchase.

Baby monitor: There are a ton of these out on the market, but we went with the Wyze system so we could have the same camera system throughout the house. We’ve liked it and the app (which does come with a purchase) is pretty easy to use.

The last installment in this series will be on travel essentials!