Sunday, January 4, 2009

New Mom Help Post #1

As a first-time mom-to-be, Babies R Us is quite overwhelming! I received some good advice from a mom of 3: while waiting to find out the baby's sex, you can still register for all the other practical non-gender specific items, and it's much less overwhelming if you just tackle one section/category at a time, rather than trying to do it all in a day.

So, I'm going to try that approach while I'm still in these early weeks. But I need your help! Once a week, I am going to pick a baby product category and post it here, and I'm asking all of you experienced parents to give me your input on products you loved or hated. I would really appreciate your input... so will you help me out?! :)


CATEGORY ONE: Baby Monitors
  • Preferred brands?
  • Helpful features?
  • Things that are unnecessary?
  • Video, motion sensor, or audio only?

Thanks for your help! :)

6 comments:

The Esperats said...

Make sure that the there are atleast 2 receiving monitors, otherwise you constantly take it from your bedroom upstairs to downstairs when you're cooking. Up, down, up, down. Drove me nuts. Loved it when we got one with 2 receivers so one could stay up, the other down.

Erik Burckart said...

Does that mean dads cannot give you input?

Erik Burckart said...

Does that mean dads cannot give you input?

Erik Burckart said...

this is a great idea, BTW, Heather wrote a bunch of reviews as we used things and before Madelyn was born, I listed them here.

As for a monitor, we went for inexpensive audio only that didn't interfere with any of our home phones (get them on a different frequency such as 2.4 GHz vs 900 MHz).

When moving Anna to her "big girl bed" we wished for the first time that we had a video monitor because we would have liked to see what she was up to, more for curiosity sake and it wouldn't have been a necessity.

The other thing we had at times wished we had was a long distance monitor. This was when we were away from home and in a hotel with family members where we were sitting in a room a bit away and the monitor didn't hold a good signal. This has happened twice in our lives...so not sure it was worth the extra money.

We never really used 2 monitors but that could be partially cause we lost the second charging cable when Anna was a couple months old. I think its most important to have a monitor that is small with rechargeable batteries so you can take it on the go, belt clips are nice.

Childress Family said...

Maybe 3 years later now everything is smaller and more compact (haven't checked them out lately), but our monitor (a Fisher Price) had a really tall antennae and made it too bulky. It was always falling over and that was a small annoyance. I agree with Ali on the 2 receivers. The video one always seems a bit too hyper-parent to me. You do need a break and to be able to let go sometimes!

Elsie Hall said...

We used Fisher Price Sound and Lights. It worked well for awhile, but by the 2nd year of use it got to the point where the one by my bed became extremely sensitive when I touched the volume button...We're going to have to get a new one for this baby. I was disappointed that it didn't last through more than one baby, but other than that, the sound and lights is good...and there are two receivers so you can leave one plugged in by your bed and keep the other one on your main living floor. Also had the belt hooks and that was handy. Oh, and it had the option to turn it to vibrate--nice if you're hosting a loud party and you won't be able to hear the monitor--I used that feature a number of times.

The video monitor is one that I wished I had...but they are expensive. It just would have been nice to be able to see if he was sleeping, or just laying there awake...also would have helped to know if he was crying in his sleep (which he does fairly often) or out of a real need...So that's a thought too.