Baby Registry
Last weekend I went to Babies R Us and went scan-happy selecting everything and anything that I thought my baby may need. From strollers to car seats, diapers to bottles, clothing to swaddlers, breast pumps to monitors–I think I finally got it all done. Phew!
I did some research on ConsumerSearch.com before going to the store and found the top rated & reviewed brand of every single thing that anyone has ever bought for their baby. It was time consuming to search item by item, print the page and highlight the best reviewed product, but it was so easy to reference those print-outs while in the store. It took a little over an hour for me to get about 85% of it done in the store and I got the rest of it done online. I am convinced it would have taken me so much longer if I hadn’t done the product research prior to going.
One thing I did not research was bottles & diapers. That was a tricky area because every mom has a preference and usually they get that preference from trial and error. I thought I would just pick something in the store, but who knew there were so many different kinds of bottles & diapers?! In an effort to figure it all out before my bouncing baby boy comes into the world, I texted three friends of mine (all situated in different parts of the country) who recently had babies. They gave me great advice on which diapers they liked the best, which ones they loathed and which ones were good quality and decently priced.
Surprisingly, two of the women I questioned about bottle preferences came back with the exact same brand. One of the women lives in California and the other lives in Massachusetts. I figured that this must be a decent brand of bottle of two different moms in two different parts of the country recommended it.
Now that the big/basic items are all selected on my registry, I check in on the Babies R Us website every morning and scan through the clothes. I wanted to have some clothing items selected, even though I know that baby clothes are a given when getting & receiving gifts at a baby shower. Whether you register for clothes or not, someone is bound to pick some out for you. I tried to select items that were for ages 3-6, 6-9 and 9-12 months old. A common complaint I heard from new moms is that they get so much newborn stuff at their shower that their babies grow out of these clothes almost immediately and then they have to go out and buy bigger clothes right away. So I tried to stay away from the newborn sizes for that very reason. I know I will get a plethora of onesies and let’s face it, in mid June in sunny California when I give birth, my little boy won’t want to be wearing more than a diaper and a onesie anyway!
The Babies R Us store that I started my registry at is located in Calabasas, CA and they had the cutest line of FAO Schwartz clothing. From vest-suit-outfits to overalls, everything was in that pale brown/blue/off-white color–just adorable! I wish I had scanned some of these items when I was at the store because the website does not recognize this brand online. I think it has something to do with different areas of the country. While some stores out West have cute lines of clothing (like FAO Schwartz) that are not available online or in other parts of the country, stores out East will have other designer clothing that I can’t find in California. But I am confident my family and friends will find some to die for outfits for my little man.
