"Congratulations on your new baby. Here's a whole lot of stuff. I hope you like stuff cos you are about to be surrounded by it for the rest of your life." That's what people should write in cards for new parents. In fact, I must start writing it.
Becuse kids are the ultimate accumulaters of stuff. From the moment we discovered we were pregnant with Noah, the accumulation of stuff begun. The purchasing of stuff...
Ha ha. The word stuff is beginning to sound funny.
Stuff, stuff, stuff.
Anyway. Pretty much, if it had baby written on it or, if it was designed to make baby rearing a tad bit easier, we had it. All the stuff.
I was a marketers dream.
And very early into my first pregnancy, I stumbled across a list, a checklist of "baby must haves that listed everything a newborn baby needs in one neat list. All the baby stuff listed from A to Z.
I like lists. So, I genuinely appreciated the brilliance of this list. All the hard work and research had been done for me {Yup, marketers dream!} This list became my friend. With every purchase, I would tick off each item and proudly exclaim to the shop assistants, "only 452 items to go".
And so the accumulation of stuff begun! Our house was filling with everything a baby needed to make him the smartest, cleanest and healthiest newborn on the block.
And then one day he outgrew all this stuff, so I put it all away. High up in the cupboards. Out of sight and out of mind.
With the news of baby two, I went to the cupboards and pulled out the baby stuff. I knew we had it all, all 453 items. The diaper geanie, the wipe warmer and bouncers. I proudly exclaimed to the husband that "we had everything for baby two and that we didn't need a thing." I had ticked all the lists back in 2009.
Well that was until I spotted a new must have baby list at the super-baby-mega-store. You know the one.
Oh, my!
That list had grown. And it was all sorts of techincal. On the list were pocket nannies, which promised to help a tired mummy care for her newborn baby. And mini fetal monitors to listen to your unborns heartbeat. Slings, sterilisers, and sound machines. This stuff was amazing. And it was promising to make parenting a dream.
I know the first time, scared out of my pants, marketing dream mum would have bought all these things and more. And as I looked around me I couldn't help but have a giggle as I watched the new bewildered mummies ticking the must have items off their list.
Me, I scrunched up that list and threw it in the bin. And I promptly banned myself from any future list viewing.
Love Jo xx
What newborn items did you buy for your first child? What's your must have baby list got on it?
If you like this, there's a fair chance you'll like this too:
http://poppiesforme.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/love-thy-neighbour-and-your-underpants.html?m=0