So it has been nearly 17 years since my last baby was born, but I remember just nearly 19 years ago before our first son was born going through many discussions with family and friends about what we ‘must have‘. Now that discussion has moved online, and there is a recent survey with results from BuzzFeed!
When our first son was born in 1996 one of the hottest new products was the Diaper Genie, which had only been out for about a year at that point. The concept was simple – you put a used diaper into an opening and individually wrap them by twisting the top, thereby (mostly) sealing in the odor. Of course once you open up the system to empty it things can get pretty nasty, and as you can see from the results opinion is divided. There are definitely those like this guy at the SFGate blog who says:
And I detested the idea of a huge pile of crap sitting in the corner of the room, which had to be emptied every week or so in the form of a giant feces sausage.
But for me it was worth the occasional dealing with odors – especially during the summer. I would still put that on my “must have” list!
On the other hand, when we had kids the term ‘baby monitor’ pretty much meant a Fisher Price base station speaker with a rotary volume knob and a smaller microphone station that went in the child’s room. You could plug in or use batteries for both the base and monitor, making them great for at home and on-the-go. Video monitors in the form of modified security cameras did exist, but they were atrocious and horrifically expensive. So everyone had pretty much the same ones we did.
When we got ours, we heard conflicting stories about whether or not ‘over monitoring’ was going to ruin our children. Pretty much like everything else, really. What it DID do was make you hyper-aware for a short time, and then you figure out what is ‘normal’.
Funny story – in the mid-90s, many home cordless phones were still on the 49MHz frequency, which tended to also be used by everything else. Including baby monitors. So we were in our kitchen one day while our son was napping (before #2 arrived) and started to hear voices over the monitor, which is the type of thing that freaks you out – so we head upstairs to check and everything is fine. Nor is it coming from outside through the windows … no, in fact after listening for a bit (go ahead, tell me you wouldn’t!) we realized it was a neighbor across the street diagonally talking on her cordless phone. We only got one side of the conversation, but let’s just say that summer we learned more about the issues they were having with their kids through casual listening than we ever wanted to know!
You can still take the survey here, and it will continue to tally your results. It would be interesting to see how the results change (or don’t) in another couple of weeks or months!
So what are your “must have” or “waste of money” things for new parents?