If you have read through our About Us section or the information about The Goldilocks Suit you may already realise that not only are we a team of medical professionals but parents too. That’s right, we have kids of our own and have gone through all the typical parenting blues that many adults face during their life.
It is why we designed The Goldilocks Suit because we wanted to help other parents have a less stressful experience. Although we are also realistic and we realise there are hundreds of amazing products available for parents to raise their kids, here are some of our suggestions below (and yes we are assuming that you have all the essentials, such as a stroller, car seat, cot, clothes, bottles, bibs, dummy etc)
1. Sleeping Bag
One of the best things we bought was a swaddle sleeping bag. Unless you’re a pro at swaddling with a blanket – our babies seemed to impersonate Houdini – this will be a game-changer in helping you calm your baby and help increase the length of their naps and nighttime sleep. It was one of the best purchases we made. The one we ended up going with was the Ergopouch.
2. Baby Carrier
A baby carrier can be a huge lifesaver as it helps you hold your baby while freeing up your hands to do other things, like cooking, washing dishes, apply makeup, or checking your phone while you’re walking. We used Baby Bjorn when they were young but ended up switching to an Ergo when they got a bit older. Our advice? Try a bunch of different options to see what works for you.
3. White Noise
We didn’t want our daughters waking up when we were talking, cooking, cleaning or watching TV. We used to set some white noise (rain/peaceful chimes) up to help them sleep through. We did this with a broken iPad we had, but some cots/rockers will come with speakers and soundtracks built-in. Don’t be too worried about your baby not being able to sleep without white noise later, research seems to suggest they grow out of it naturally.
4. Portable Changing Pad
Unfortunately, you quickly learn that you don’t always have ideal circumstances to change your babies nappy. We quickly found it was easier and frankly safer to change a nappy on the floor with a portable changing pad. Fortunately, our mum was handy with the sewing machine (we are both hopeless) and she made up something like this foldable changing pad.
5. Portable bassinet
We love visiting people and travelling, but unfortunately, you can’t take the crib with you everywhere. We initially used the bassinet in our pram but as our baby grew we ended up buying a portable cot. We initially were a bit worried about SIDs, but with a bit of research we removed so key risk factors like pillows and didn’t have any issues
6. Teddy
The intention is to provide a tangible item your infant can use to soothe themselves particularly at nap times but also beyond. We let our baby slow choose a teddy or blanket, we just made sure that they wouldn’t provide a choking hazard and when we saw them become attached to one we went and bought several of them to have backups if they got lost. One of our daughters chose a blanket another chose a teddy.
7. Baby Gym
A basic activity playset is a great item to have on hand to keep your little one occupied while you’re folding laundry, cooking dinner, applying makeup, etc. This won’t work every day, sometimes only the carrier will work, but just occasionally enough the play mat did work. Just from personal preference, we opted for something more basic like this beautiful playset.
8. Car Mirror
Our second child did not like car trips, so we invested in a car mirror. This allowed us to check on our baby in the rear-view mirror whilst driving and helped us capture her attention. This didn’t fix the problem by any stretch of the imagination but helped us deal with the stress of a screaming child in the back seat.
9. Breast Pump
We were blessed enough to have children who were breastfed. However, there were times when our baby needed a feed when we weren’t around, such as; date night, part-time work or one-off meetings. And so, we invested in a cheap, portable and easy to use breast pump. Because we weren’t using it regularly we didn’t want to break the bank so purchased this breast pump.
10. A baby monitor
Ok, so this article isn’t going to be complete without mentioning our own product right? There are lots of different baby monitors available that can do all kinds of things. Although we designed The Goldilocks Suit to not only monitor things like temperature, breathing and sleeping, it can track feeding cycles and record everything for later reference.
It even gathers that information to give you helpful advice and tips with video clips and other information curated from experts like WINK and Mother Nurture. So it means you get lots of great information in the palm of your hand via a simple to use a smartphone app for iOS or Android that monitors your baby’s wellbeing.
