things we lived without

It is my totally opinionated opinion that babies today have way too much shit. Here is a short list of things we lived without (and we have the happiest, coolest baby I have ever met, not that I'm prejudiced or anything)...

crib

solution: maple sleeps with her parents (why is this considered weird again?)

baby bathtub

unless you don't have the use of your arms, it's easy to give baby a bath in a regular bathtub. you can even bathe with her! (note: also weird)

baby monitor

if you have a small enough house, you can actually hear the baby without the use of this technology. someone actually gave us one, and we used it a few times, but in the end we just used our ears.

diaper disposal system

garbage can? and when we used cloth diapers, we used the pail they gave us. when we quit cloth, we gave it back

swing

did you know you could hold your baby?

bouncy seat

okay we did have a vibrating rocking chair, which i guess is the same thing. we used this for a few months

pacifier

we used mama's boobs. when we quit that, we attempted to give maple a pacifier but i think she was too old. she looked at me like i was an emily-dickinson-reading-upper-middle-class-crack-addict when i gave it to her.

playpen

i guess these are called "playards" now, so as not to confuse them with a holding "pen" for animals (pre-slaughter). both seem unnecessary.

nursery

why does your baby need her own room? she's happier with you anyway!

okay i know this is snarky but my point is that you probably don't need all that shit. we are already inundated with stuff and we hardly bought anything. and we're giving most of it away now that maple is older -- the rocker, the baby bjorn, the infant car seat, and lots of clothes, all of which were very useful. we are also giving away a boppy, a ring sling, and a nursing footstool that weren't useful, for us anyway. but of course everyone is different, and every baby is different, and some of this crap is probably totally necessary for someone, somewhere, at some point.

well, that's my tirade on baby stuff. save your money for college. one baby bathtub in today's dollars is probably worth two calculus classes in 2027. and your kid is gonna need those two calc classes cause he watched too much baby einstein.