So many products, so much to learn

One of the weird baby products I discovered I might need: a nasal aspirator.

I had a fun, yet overwhelming experience last night: creating a baby gift registry. We'd already been getting questions from some people who want to get us gifts, so we decided to set up our first registry at Target. We'll likely also register somewhere else as well, probably online, but this was a good start (FYI, it's not complete -- there will be more to come).

Since I know next to nothing about what most of this baby stuff is, and even less about what I might actually need, I recruited two of my mom friends to come along and help me sort if all out. Thanks to Beth and Kobbi, who both have two kids, I was able to go aisle by aisle and learn which items might be vital and which ones were complete junk.

As I said, it was really fun to look at all the products and start thinking more about what I might use with my baby. But at the same time, it was very overwhelming, because it sometimes felt like I might need everything, there were several important things I didn't even bother registering for yet because I need to do more research, and more to the point, I learned that I might need all these things I hadn't heard of or even imagined. Beth and Kobbi taught me about all kinds of new things, like the fact that I would probably need lanolin and gel pads to keep my breasts from getting sore after breastfeeding, that I should consider a portable crib for when we travel, and that babies basically want to puke and pee everywhere and buying covers for everything is wise so that I'm not constantly washing bedding, etc.

I kept thinking back to my original feelings about baby products (which I explored a bit in my last post): sometimes you can go a bit overboard with all this stuff. Is it all really necessary? No. But it sure is nice to know there are things out there that will make my life easier if I want them.

My parenting learning curve is still quite high, as I discovered again last night. But what was overwhelming was also comforting, because Beth and Kobbi also told me over and over that every baby and parent is different, and products that are vital to one kid can be useless to another. This is comforting because it reminded me that in the end I can just go with the flow, get to know my parenting style and my baby, and figure out what we need as we go along.

And there's nothing wrong with that.