Diaries of the Newly Enciente: Baby Lists!
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| A visual of our loot from this shopping spree... |
There are lists to be followed and lists to be ignored. For this one, I think I fell safely in the middle.
Shopping for babies in NZ is not particularly appealing. You kind of get the feeling that there is not enough interest in all the bits and baubles of babyland and everything is so overpriced! A good example of this is how Mothercare recently closed its operations in NZ for lack of sufficient market. This, despite the abundance of babies to be found cavorting on the streets. It simply boggles the mind!
Last August, we booked a trip to the USA for our annual biggie vacay and shopping spree only to realize four months later that I'll be at the tail end of my 2nd trimester when we finally make the trip. The trip's focus instantly changed at that point from "me, me, me" to "baby, baby, baby".
If we thought buying on Amazon was cheaper than buying locally even with shipping costs, imagine how much more fun it would be to shop from the source??
So off we went to the US and shopped for little Aoife.
By the end of the trip we were good to go on the necessities and the not so necessary. We even found $10 baby gates! Unfortunately, those wont fit in our luggage. With everything we bought, our estimated savings ranged from 35-60% per item! If baggage allowances were more flexible, I would have probably opted to buy the cot, pram, and car seat from the US as well.
In the end, we're still missing baby bottles, cot bedding, day wear, another pajama or two, more sleepwear, and possibly a thicker jacket as she's going to be a winter baby. But most of those should be Amazon available or easy to get here. Overall, I think we're pretty set!
PIC even picked out a few of the outfits himself which I thought was really cute. He complained about all the pink, kept picking out boyish colors, and had to be reminded that his baby's a girl but otherwise all good.
And yes, there will always be people who will tell you to just get pre-owned items -- while that's a great cost saving idea, don't feel guilty if you want to splurge on your baby. You only get to be a first time mom once and if your predecessors were able to bask in the joy of overindulging their precious bundles, you should be able to do the same too (within your natural budgets of course!) :)
For all you expectant moms out there, here are a few links I visited to compile my own baby list. Hopefully this will help get you set up with your own personalized one:
My Mom Friday
Baby Center
Emma's Diary
Parents
Babycity list
Happy Shopping!
After all the shopping, you still missed the bottles and beddings! Haahahaha... but not too much bottles esp if you will try to breastfeed -- almost no need for bottles except for storing expressed breastmilk. That's another story and blog post altogether. :D
ReplyDeleteGood thing you mentioned having all pink-- I will throw in some blue to the loot I will be sending you, since girls can wear any color you can imagine!
Good luck with the closet space!
I'm excited for both of you!
haha mostly because we are picky with the bottles and have decided to pick life factory glass bottles but they weren't stocked in the stores we visited... good thing they're on Amazon so no biggie. As for the bedding, those we really need to get here as apparently cots are sized differently in the US and the UK... since NZ uses UK sizing, so we have no choice but to get them here... Sayang as we saw some really cute ones pa naman...
ReplyDeleteThanks in advance sa clothes! The more the merrier! I have a feeling when she comes it would be the perfect time to practice my photography again so the more costumes the better :)