Babies Part 1: Pregnancy

The two categories we focused on were safety and ease of install / transfer. This also plays some role in the Stroller selection as you will likely want to be able to pop the infant seat in the stroller.Britax B-Safe Infant Car Seat with Anti-Rebound Bar - This seat had pretty high safety ratings, and offered a nice anti-rebound bar feature for bonus safety.Britax One4Life ClickTight All-in-One - While this claims it will work for infants, we waited on this one until it was time to move our oldest out of the infant carrier.Diono Radian 3QXT+ - This popped up on our radar recently as we consider how in the world will we fit 3 car seats in the back seat of a car...While you are here you should consider a car seat mirror. 

This section will largely depend on your budget and lifestyle, we sort of enjoyed having one smaller stroller (travel) and one larger nicer stroller (and for jogging).BOB Gear Revolution Flex 3.0 Jogging Stroller - The ride on this is so smooth, its hard to transition back to the smaller ones since they get stuck on pebbles where this one is willing to climb mountains. That said its the size of a mountain.Mockingbird - This stroller system came up on our radar recently as we have been thinking about how / if we want to be able to transport 3 kids. It looks like a reasonable option for a non jogger.Doona Seat & Stroller - This was something we had an eye on but never landed on. Depending on your situation could be a nice infant sized stroller.

Having the option to carry the little ones on our chest or back is huge, especially in cases where a stroller isn't feasible. Additionally for newborns this closeness is great for bonding.Moby Wrap - This was tricky to get the hang of wrapping and tying, but was a nice cheap carrier for newborn days.LÍLLÉbaby Complete or BabyBjorn One Carrier - Both of these more complete carriers are breathable and light, and have tons of flexiblity for how to carry even toddlers.

We were very interested in being able to keep an eye on the baby in her crib, and invested in the Nanit breathing system. Word of warning, it does come with a subscription model for some of the advanced features.Nanit Baby MonitorHaving the comfort of knowing that Nanit is monitoring baby's breathing overnight, and letting us know if there is a problem was a big comfort for us. In using the Nanit for two kids so far across probably 3 years of breathing monitoring we have only had maybe 3 false alarms from the band being too loose.We love being able to see and hear the little ones via our phone, and although our oldest has graduated to not use breathing monitoring we still use it to see if she's awake or not. Additionally babysitters / grandparents / etc can be invited to help monitor the little ones if they are watching them while you are away.You have a variety of mounting options when it comes to Nanit, we generally use the wall mount with the flex mount for travel, but they also have a floor stand if the crib is likely to move or isn't against a wall.We had considered a product like the Owlet socks, but had heard some horror stories from friends about too many false alarms from the sock falling off and not registering a signal. This easily could have been mis-use or something that they addressed in a more recent release, but we have been extremely happy with the Nanit.

Sydney is a very light sleeper, and we knew this would present an issue if we tried doing a bassinet in our bedroom for the little one because she would literally never sleep.So we opted for both girls to basically immediately get them in to their crib in the nursery and just monitor via the Nanit. Your mileage may vary, but this was a huge success for us, and is our plan for baby number 3.Also wow, settling on a crib style that both Sydney and I liked was a nightmare. She very strongly wanted something more classic with curves and design, where I wanted something simple and symmetrical.Graco Remi All-in-One Convertible - This style was what we settled on, and while the attached table / drawers were great in theory we definitely wouldn't choose to buy it again. If we were to do it all again we'd just stick with a convertible crib on its own and a large dresser that we could use for changing and storage.Newton Baby Mattress - This very nearly warranted it's own category, but I'll give it an honorable mention here. The breathable, washable, and firm mattress for the crib were a huge success. Bonus tip we stacked sheet, waterproof cover, and sheet so any time we had a messy accident in the middle of the night we could just pop off the cover and sheet and put the kiddo back to sleep with no drama.

Cool Mist Humidifier - We run humidifiers for both girls which especially helps when they aren't feeling well or have a stuffy nose. Takes a bit of maintenance and filling but it's totally worth it.Wipe Warmer - Unless you want to be peed on, babies don't love cold wipes.Muslins - You are going to want a bunch of these, they make great light blankets, and are great at cleaning up baby messes.Swaddles & Sleep Bag - Even if you don't go the Nanit route, you definitely will want to pick up swaddles for infants and or sleep bags for them as they get a bit older.

Bottle Variety Pack - Start with variety since you don't know what baby will like. Start with Slow Flow or Stage 1 to help prevent them from deciding bottles are easier than breastfeeding.Bottle Drying Rack - Easier drying.Bottle Brush - Better cleaning.Baby Brezza Food Maker - This won't be super useful until 6 months, but has been huge for us. Quick fun story, many commercial baby foods have kind of spooky levels of things like arsenic, lead, and mercury... as such it's safer for us to make our own baby food. This food maker helps steam and blend food that can then be frozen in to "food cubes" or stored in jars until needed.High Chair - This particular high chair has been very flexible especially as we now have two kiddos. Being able to mix and match the chair and the booster seat have been great as its grown with the girls and our family.Baby Brezza Formula Pro Advanced - If you end up needing to go the formula route, this seems like a lifesaver. We haven't needed this ourselves, but it comes with some massive recommendations on ease of mixing and warming formula bottles.

Whale Bath - This lasted for a good while before the kiddos could sit up on their own in the full bath.Blooming Bath Flower Pad - This didn't get a ton of mileage, but was definitley nice for the first few months of bathing the infant.Spout Whale Cover - Cute and saves them from bonking their heads.Head Scrubber - Baby dandruff and cradle cap needs some scrubbing, and this was a nice solution.

Pack 'n Play - Having a portable crib that we can take to grandparents houses, or on vacation has been a life-saver. You could also consider something like the Guava Family Lotus Travel Crib.Mini Crib Mattress - I'm about to make a recommendation that goes against their safety recommendations, but I think its safe enough anyway. This is an amazing addition to the pack 'n play and is a familiar sleeping surface for travel. They recommend only using it in ridged sided mini-cribs, but what can I say, we are rebels.