Pre-Baby Baby Planners: The Next Frontier

Somebody to knock some sense into us and tell us not to buy so much crap before our first kid would have been worth their weight in gold

Parenthood has turned into a huge marketing scheme. I know with my first, I really thought I had to have everything, and everything had to be new, or I wasn’t doing it right. Or maybe I wasn’t going to love my baby enough or correctly or something. Those insecure feelings of mothers-to-be are feasted upon by marketers. There is so much waste created, and so much money wasted, by the expectations of new parents that it has become obscene.

This sounds like stuff that the parents-to-be’s moms and aunts and friends with kids would have done back in the day. Do we really need a professional for this?

I am expecting my third in June. I will be buying absolutely nothing for this child because: 1) I have hand-me-downs from my two previous children and (more importantly) 2) I discovered that we don’t really need 90% of the things that we were told we HAD to have. Diaper changing station-worthless. Who wants to trek up two flights of stairs to change a diaper every hour? Mobile – even more worthless, as both kids hated it. Mittens to keep them from scratching their faces- what a joke. They learned how to flail their little hands hard enough to whip them off. Other useless items that we were told we wold DIE without included: tummy time surfboard, sleep positioner, vibrating baby seat, Bumbo, fleece carseat cover and bottle sanitizing microwave bags. I would love to have all the money back that was spent on all that junk. It is sickening to me to think that most people are convinced that they need to have these things in order to be good parents. It is absolutely not the case.

My first reaction is that this is ridiculous — orders of magnitude more ridiculous than the concept of the wedding planner (which I also find pretty ridiculous).

But if, on the other hand, a baby planner turned out to be that one person willing to say, for example, “Dude. Get a grip. You do NOT need a $300 bassinet, a $600 crib, and a $150 Moses basket” or “There is seriously nothing your baby could care less about than whether the nursery wallpaper matches the nursery curtains”, then that would be a Good Thing …

And you know, when the baby gets a bit older, you can hire someone to childproof your house. You know, if you’re not bright enough on your own to figure out that you should put the Steuben glass up high. Sometimes I think maybe I missed my calling.

You can also, by the way, hire someone to consult as you name your child. To choose the “right” name (that’ll look good on the college application?)

Denise

(Suprised someone remembered Super Dave Osborn!)

Silly silly stuff, when I was expecting my son we really did nopt have anyone to help us out, but we managed to get prepared for the baby. Women don’t need hired proffessionals, just do your own research and know your options.

Krista, I reccomend you at least get a crib, the mats in play pens are flat and hard, kinda crappy for sleeping on. They only last so long, mine until he was 9 months(walked by 8 1/2, though), and had to convert

“”Both my husband and I have intense professional jobs,” Blair said. “A lot of the things April does you can also do yourself, but it does take a lot of time and we just did not have it. ”

This person doesn’t have time to choose a crib, but she thinks she has time to be a mother? She is in for a rude awakening (every hour or two for months, in fact)

We were pretty low-key with #1 and I still think we ended up buying stuff we didn’t need. I remember looking at the baby registry for the wife of a college friend and being freaked at all the stuff she thought she needed. 2 baby monitors. A pad to tell you if the baby stopped moving for more than 20 seconds. An electronic reminder thingy for feeding, changing, sleeping (hint, the baby will let you know). actually she had 4 different registries–we didn’t even have one, which was a great thing in the end.

To the people who said OMG I don’t know what to buy for my child’s nursery…

It’s called a book. They’re made of paper with squiggles some of us refer to as “words” on them. They explain in great detail what pregnancy is like and what all the tests you’re getting done are for. They give advice. There are other books for when the baby comes out…and several even discuss which products are good and which ones aren’t. For those of you who are allergic to paper, I humbly submit that there are BLOGS and WEBSITES with the same info.

Why you would let BRU tell you anything is beyond me. They’re a store. They don’t exist unless you spend money. Therefore, they’re going to try to get you to spend as much as humanly possible.

That is quite hilarious. Maybe they could also offer counseling on buying the perfect push present and which tutor to hire to get your kid through the interview for pre-school.

Ok, I feel compelled to defend my profession. I am one of those hated wedding planners, and it drives me nuts how many people are willing to bash what I do when they have no idea what service I provide.

The simple fact of the matter is that it is incredibly rare for a woman to get married in the small town she’s lived in her whole life, which her friends and parents are still living in, and where she’s been to enough weddings to know who all the good vendors are OR have family with the time and resources to throw a wedding.

On the day of a wedding I spend hours (usually 6 or more) setting up both the ceremony and reception location. For the record, at least where I live, the venue WILL NOT do that. Do you want your mom and friends (who presumably are coming in from out of town) to spend the morning of your wedding stringing lights from the ceiling?

Most vendors refuse to do some of the presumed functions of their job. I have yet to find a DJ who’ll actually set the schedule of a wedding reception and follow it, or a hotel that will actually make sure the wedding is set up according to plan and on time. And then if you get married at a place that doesn’t have coordinator, like your local park district, you need someone there to actually set everything up.

Also, what if you’re the first of your friends to get married, or never been to a wedding in your adult life (true for me when I got married)? How will you know who’s good and who’s not in your town? Well, I do. My knowledge saves brides money, and for every single full service wedding I’ve done, I’ve more than paid for myself. The last one I charged $900 and I estimate I saved her $1500.

Almost all of my clients have been busy or in otherwise ‘non-traditional’ situations. One was building a house, physically, while planning a wedding. Several were grad students. One has a disabled mother and was living on the other end of the world (I”m in the US, she’s in Australia). Many have had kids and and every client of mine had full time jobs with friend with full time jobs and parents with full time jobs. Most haven’t had a creative bone in their body and wanted to spend somewhere between $50-$300 on non-floral centerpieces (which I construct, transport, etc.) instead of the $1000 minimum on those made by a florist. Also, almost all of them had guests who expected the moon; I had one guest once tell me to my face that my job was “bullshit” but this was the same person who expected everything to be set up prior to their arrival at an outdoor wedding, despite the fact that it’d been pouring out all day (and stopped one hour before the wedding started.).

So really, hiring a wedding planner isn’t a luxury, stupid, or frivolous. It recognizes the changing nature of our society (seriously, who here lives in teh same town they grew up in, that their parents and all close friends live in) and saves you money and countless headaches.

*******

Back on topic, baby planners what/!?!

I agree with what some people wrote here – that if this baby planner was going to be someone who would tell the mom she did NOT need 90% of the stuff in Babies R Us in order to keep her kids alive and mentally stimulated, it isn’t all bad. But somehow, I have a feeling these are more going to be the ones suggesting matching nursery sets and top of the line everything. After all, if you can pay for a baby planner, you can probably pay for the rest of it, even if you don’t need it.

In our case, baby number 3 is due in about six weeks and we haven’t even pulled the crib out of storage yet. We’ll get to it, either before she’s born or while I am in the hospital before she comes home. Oh, and her nursery? My room. I think she’ll survive. 🙂

Having been a professional nanny for 11 years before my daughter was born I didn’t get suckered into buying a bunch of unnecessary stuff for her. Her crib came from a yard sale, most of her clothes from consignment shops, her highchair, car seat and travel crib came from a parents swap meet at a neighborhood church. I highly recommend parents swap meets. A lot of quality sometimes barely used things for very little money can be found there. The only wasted expense was buying bottles and pacifiers; she would have nothing to do with either.

She’s now a happy, healthy, witty, sarcastic 11 year old with no lasting memory or permanent psychological damage from her hand-me-down infancy.

Denise, it’s funny that you mention the Steuben glass. MIL actually has a collection that she kept on a series of low shelves in their living room, and she was bound and determined that it’d stay there. FIL intervened, and it’s put up high now.

“Mrs. H, I love this point. But chances are, she will just hire somebody to raise the kid, too.”

But when will she have time to give birth?

“Sometimes I think that parents feel that if they buy a lot of pricey and name brand things, it’s compensastion for the feelings of inadequacy that parenthood brings.”

Probably true – but I don’t think it would bring such strong feelings of inadequacy if there wasn’t an entire industry out there telling moms that they cannot trust their own instincts, that unless they do things a certain way and buy certain products they are harming their children, and that EVERY SINGLE THING is likely to kill those children if the experts aren’t heeded at every turn.

I swear there was a time when people figured mothers knew what they were doing, even if they were pretty new mothers. And if they didn’t, they asked their families. Now we’re supposed to ignore everyone but the experts. No wonder mothers are feeling so inadequate when it comes to the job of parenting – yes, it’s hard no matter what, but make a new mom feel like she can’t trust her own instincts, and it’s a LOT harder.

I think services like this are just more evidence in the breakdown of community. Once upon a time (and hopefully still for many of us), you would be given this help by the people around you– for free.

Related to this though is the fact that although there are many items that are a waste, there are others that are really useful precisely because the culture we live in has less community. When I gave birth last year, I too went the basic route like many of you. I had almost nothing when the baby was born, and then received lots of hand-me-down clothes and loaned items, which was great. But I have to say that for all the people who said before my daughter was born: “You don’t need anything! She can sleep in a box!” I found that certain items were totally crucial for helping us to survive in the first year. The fact is that when you don’t have a community of aunts and cousins and your mom living right next door to pass the baby off to when you need a break, that the used swing comes in really handy and the borrowed exersaucer helped keep me sane.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think this would be a good job for me. I mean, my minimalist approach to getting ready for a baby would save people a TON of money. “Don’t buy a crib now,” I’d tell them. “Wait a few months until you figure out whether the baby’s ever going to sleep in it. Do you have any friends you could borrow a bassinet from? Great! We can cross that off the list. You don’t need fitted sheets for the bassinet; just use a clean pillowcase. Here’s a list of stores that sell second-hand baby stuff; you should be able to get three kinds of baby carriers second-hand for the price of one new one, so you won’t be stuck with an expensive one that you hate. You don’t really want that stroller, do you? Look at it, it’s the size of a Humvee! And anyway, those crappy wheels are going to get stuck in the snow in about two seconds.” And so on.

@Ashley — I’m sure wedding planners are very helpful for some people. I just can’t see paying someone to plan my wedding when my mom was so happy to do it for free 🙂 Of course, I got married 12 years ago, so what do I know?

I have a 14-month-old, and I live with extended family, so the idea of “baby proofing” is a joke. There are eight of us. There are so many objects belonging to soooo many people lying in sooooooooo many places… there’s NO way.

Solution? We taught him to leave stuff alone.

No, we don’t leave him unattended in the kitchen for hours at a time, but when we’re in the living room and he’s playing on the floor, he knows which areas/items will get him yelled at and which ones are his toys.

I also didn’t buy anything new; actually, not anything at all, if I remember correctly, other than a couple of cutesy outfits that I found on clearance at Wal-Mart. We do lots of consignment sales, and when he outgrows the stuff, we sell it again and get older-kid items at the same sales. I’ve been spending the same exact $200 on the boy since he was born!

My friends know me well enough to have been okay with the idea of even giving me some used stuff as gifts at my baby shower — from used bibs to a hand-me-down bassinet that several of my relatives slept in — and I loved that about those folks, that they knew me that well. Other friends bought new items, (which, hey, I also loved — free stuff that they didn’t have to get me!), but those friends were also parents, and therefore knew which things actually mattered: warm clothes, a few different styles of bottles so we could see which he would cooperate with, and seven or eight mega-boxes of Costco diapers. I don’t think I actually BOUGHT a single pack of diapers until the child was six months old, and wipes until even later.

All that said, I will admit to being one of those who used a Angelcare monitor (the one with the motion detector and alarm if the baby stops moving and/or breathing that someone mentioned.)

Reason? I have a backstory — that I won’t get into here — with infant bereavement (though I haven’t lost a child myself), and I also had paranoid first-time mom post-preg hormones coursing through my blood. You know that thing where you wake up in the middle of the night those first few months, and watch the chest rise and fall, just in case? I did that about HALF as much once we had the monitor.

Do you know how much more sleep that got me, an exhausted post-C-section mother!? TOTALLY worth it. Totally.

Not to mention, it went off a few times on me… a couple of times were false alarms. Once wasn’t.

I think the lesson in Lenore’s post is to yeah, get the things that matter to you.

But for God’s sake, don’t get the things that matter to EVERYONE, and certainly not BRU!

I used a baby planner, correction … I married a baby planner. What can I say, my guy loves to (in equal measure ) research and shop.

Sure we over bought for our first child, but as we were planning on three it all worked out, esp our sleek Maclaren ($300!) stroller.

Back in the day I was about the only mom in the South who wasn’t pushing around a baby-SUV.

I guess I was just too practical to buy a lot of stupid stuff. The best thing i did buy that I thought was indispensible was my glider rocker with the footstool. Wow. It was great. When my second was on the way I thought I just “had” to have a double stroller or I wouldn’t survive. We found a very inexpensive used one. The few times I used it at the mall it was more trouble than it was worth and that was about the time my first decided he didn’t want to ride anymore. If I was a baby planner I’d tell the moms to wait until the baby is actually here and then figure out what you might want.

When I was pregnant folks would ask me what “theme” I had picked out for my nursery. I would answer that my “theme” was “whatever anyone gives us for free” . . .

When I had my first child, I had to push against the current standards. I begged, borrowed, and bought used many things. People were shocked. “A used crib could be dangerous!” Nope, a NEW crib could be dangerous. A used crib had been of the market long enough that it had been test-driven by thousands of consumers. I can call the company and check for recalls, and if it HAD been recalled, I could have it fixed or replaced for free. a NEW crib hasn’t been test-driven yet, and could get recalled in the next few years.

Yes, I put my kids in adorable outfits I found at yard sales. Why spend $50 for an outfit they outgrow in 2 months, when I can spend $2 for the same outfit at a yard sale?

Temperature testers for the bath or for food? A complete waste of money. Diaper genies are actually pretty gross, a regular trashcan with a lid, and taking the trash out regularly, works just as well.

@Karen — LOL! I got a bit of that from the in-laws. Then I would remind them that we lived in a one-bedroom flat and there wasn’t going to be a nursery, and then I would laugh my a$$ off when they followed up by suggesting that we should buy a nice crib and put it in the living room “so we could have our space”. o_O

As an aside, I just want to point out that for some of us in snowy walking cities, the huge stroller with the big wheels is necessary if you actually want to be able to get out of the house and cross the street (over the huge snow banks). I get a little defensive about my stroller sometimes when I’m in warmer climates with it and it looks like I’m pushing a dune buggy. But in an urban area that stroller is our car!

Which is why although I’m not a fan at all of consumer culture, I am into products that help make a moms lives easier and less stressful (and less isolating). And for each mom (and dad) those items are often going to vary completely–what is one person’s indispensable is another person’s waste of time and money. Which is why we should all lend each other these things to be able to try them out first.

My first kid: full nursery, crib, changing table, monitor, stuff, mounds of plastic crap. Had a carrier, swing, seats, and other household obstacles. We had a duffel-sized diaper bag with all kinds of stuff and nonsense.

By the third kid – I’d narrowed things down a bit: he co-slept (had a travel-yard in our room for naps), had some onesies, receiving blankets, and a few diapers (an extra and a baggie with a few wipes for travel, my breasts were always along). We changed him on our bathroom counter (on a pad), and carried him in a sling. He played on the floor with the dog.

All three kids are doing fine. I don’t think we damaged the first too much with all of the extraneous devices.

@Mindy Stricke — I live in Toronto, where the snowplow-heaps are of legendary proportions, and your comment articulates exactly why I never used a stroller in the winter at all ;). I spent some serious money on a pair of really warm, grippy snow boots, though…

@Sylvia – Try Ottawa!! Bicycle/jogging trailer + a pair of boot grips were a necessity for getting my kids to school and preschool. Between the year I was pregnant with my second and my husband needed the car for work, the year of near-record snowfall, and the year of the bus strike, I wouldn’t have survived without those things. On the other hand … baby wipe warmer, WTF? I had one in my closet for years, that came as a hand-me-down, and I never figured out why anyone would feel the need for such a thing.

I think it would be handy to have someone say “Hey, you don’t need a $300 diaper pail” but something tells me professional baby planners probably just encourage you to buy more crap, not less.

Oh! On the bottle sanitizing microwave bag — useless for most people, but very valuable for a working mom who pumps milk 3 times a day and wants a fast clean up. 🙂

I’m also due with baby #3 in about 8 weeks (but the other two came early…) and we can’t find the bolts for the crib. Heck, the baby can sleep in a drawer or a laundry basket if she has to. The kids never liked the crib anyway…

I’m sure we bought way too much with #1. It really didn’t have to do with keeping up with the other people or anything. I was just scared and I like to over-plan. He was a pretty high-needs little thing, so having a bouncy chair and a sling and a rocker was actually helpful. 😀 But I’m sure there was other stuff we never used or could have lived without. 😛

@Mindy — strollers have probably evolved since I last used one (my daughter’s 7 now). I always found mine a giant pain in the a$$, but that may be largely because I used it so rarely that I never quite got the hang of folding it up one-handed (allegedly a feature) or manoeuvring it easily. I had friends and acquaintances who swore by their (various types of) strollers … I just found the sling and the Baby Trekker SO MUCH EASIER if we had to do anything other than walk around the neighbourhood not going into stores 😉

Best article. I like and happy.

I agree with the comment earlier that suggested that what every parent needs in a baby planner is someone to slap some sense into them and dissuade them from buying thousands of dollars of useless crap. And tell them what’s truly important, like avoiding the car seats that have a nasty history of decapitating its occupants in a side-impact collision (yes, you can get those at BRU!) and spending the money on something truly important.

It amazes me how so many parents will spend weeks agonizing over the perfect nursery decor, and then buy the first carseat they see without doing any research, because it had a cute pattern on it and it matched the interior of the Benz.

Ian B- I’d love to know what carseat decapitates kids…

Sadly, matching the interior of one’s Benz isn’t the only reason for not doing heaps of research- some people can only afford the cheapest options. It seems that when new technology comes out that makes carseats safer (ie higher side-impact ratings and hey, maybe not decapitating kids), it’s only available in higher-end products, the ones many people with kids just can’t afford.

Strangely enough, I’m willing to bet that if a company made a carseat that had an insanely high safety rating at a reasonable price, tons of people wouldn’t buy it simply because they felt like they needed to spend more money in order to be a good parent.

I’m expecting my first child, and have spent quite a bit of time perusing the stacks of childbirth books at Barnes & Noble. And yes, Virginia, there are pregnancy planners – which struck me as absolutely ludicrous! There’s only so much planning one can do before nature takes over and dumps all our plans on our head. But the illusion of control, it is seductive and pervasive…

I suppose one could say that these products are good for keeping track of things a mommy-to-be needs to buy, helpful hints and interesting articles, OB appointments, and important phone numbers. But I have other systems in place already to keep tabs on that stuff, so I figured why bother? I barely used my wedding planner, so I know it’d be a waste of money to by a preggo planner.