Registry Help: Sleepy Time

I've already told you about all of my favorite, must-have baby gear, but I recently helped a friend work on her registry and have some more in-depth advice.   I've taken the Babies R' Us registry check-list category, by category, and given advice.


Sleepy Time

Furniture:  

• We bought a crib and a dresser with a changing pad topper for his room.  I didn't want to buy a stand alone changing table because that wouldn't get as much use as an actual dresser. 
• We have the Graco Pack N' Play Playard Simple Solutions. We keep it set-up downstairs for daytime naps (since all of the bedrooms are upstairs) and we also use this for when we go to a friends house or travel anywhere.  It folds up easily and very compact.  You can get ones with more gadgets, but I didn't think they were necessary and they were more pain to assemble.  We bought a set of Graco waterproof sheets to go with it.  I find that depending on how wet something gets, it still goes through the sheets a little, but overall they keep the mattress in good condition.  Some people buy a special "comfy" mattress to put in the Pack N' Play, but we are using what came with it and it works just fine and folds up for travel.
• I can't recommend the Fisher-Price Soothing Motion Bassinet enough!!!  It was a lifesaver for us.  In the beginning Jackson hated to sleep anywhere except on us. This helped us get him used to sleeping on a flat surface and we actually still use it.  This is what he sleeps in every night in our room.  It's nice and small and fits nicely next to our bed.  It's also nice and tall, so I can just roll over and grab him out of it when he needs to eat at night.  This was great when he was waking up every hour or two to eat.  The downside is that the vibrate function uses batteries quickly.
• On a related note, a heating pad was another lifesaver for us. If you don't have one, it may be a good thing to pick up.  We put it in the bassinet while we're getting him ready to sleep to get the mattress nice and warm.  We would let him fall asleep on us while he was nice and cozy.  Once we he was asleep, we'd take the heating pad off the mattress and then lay him down - it definitely helped!

Bedding:

• A crib bedding set is super unnecessary.  Most of them include a fitted sheet, a quilt, a diaper stacker and a dust ruffle.  We didn't use the diaper stacker at all, it's just a pain in the ass honestly.  They can't have a blanket in with them until they're over a year old, so the quilt is just sitting in the corner as decoration.  We have the dust ruffle on right now, but I don't know if we'll keep it once he starts sleeping in the crib.  Every time that you need to change the fitted sheet (which will be often) the dust ruffle will need to be adjusted, so I don't see that lasting very long.  I'd just get a bunch of cute fitted sheets and any blankets you want separately.  
• Changing table pad covers - we have 2, but a 3rd would definitely be nice.  There have definitely been nights where both of them have gotten dirty and then we had to through a blanket down to hold us over until we did laundry.
• Blankets:  They can't use them until they're at least a year old, so they're purely decorative at this point.   They all just sit in a basket and take up space in the nursery.  I did like having one smaller, but heavy blanket that I use to put over him when he's in the car seat.  I also don't let him sleep in the car seat when we are out eating, so I use the same blanket and lay it out on the table for him to sleep on.
• Swaddle Mes are the best thing ever!  Babies will startle themselves awake while sleeping so having them wrapped up as tight as possible prevents that.  You can just buy blankets and wrap them up like they do in the hospital, but we weren't very good at it and these are so much quicker and easier when it's 3AM, dark, and you've only had an hour of sleep.  We had 4 of these and that was a good amount .  I also wouldn't bother with any size bigger than the small since they aren't supposed to be swaddled once they are 8 weeks old.  Also, I only got cotton ones (not fleece) because I could always just add layers on underneath if it was cold.
• Receiving blankets - we have about a dozen of these and use them for anything and everything  (we have one four pack of the Aden +Anais muslin ones and the rest are fleece)  
• Gerber Prefold Birdseye 3-ply Cloth Diapers - again, we use these for everything.  Our changing table is upstairs in the nursery, so we used these as "changing pads" to set up a mini changing station downstairs.  These were also good to keep in the diaper bag to set down on whatever surface we were changing him on.  We have one 10-pack and that's sufficient.
• Changing Pad Liners - These were nice to lay down on top of the changing pad covers.  They protect the changing pad cover and we don't have to pull of the whole cover and can just wash one of these.  We have 3 packs of 3, so 9 total, but 6 would be sufficient. 

Accessories:

• I didn't bother buying hangers because I just used the ones that came with the clothing.  And we change clothes so frequently, that we don't hang up his current size, I just keep those in the dresser.  
• Hampers - I didn't buy any specific for him, I just threw his clothes in our hamper.  We did (and sometimes still do) laundry every day, so having just a single hamper of dirty clothes was sufficient.
• Humidifier - you can buy one of those cute animal ones - they have good reviews.  We had a spare, so we just stuck that in the nursery.  
• Monitor:  We have the Infant Optics DXR-8 and I think it works extremely well.  It's nothing fancy, but does what it needs to do and had excellent reviews.  
• I am paranoid and was terrified of SIDS, so we got a Snuza HERO and recently bought the Owlet 2.  I use them both and I think they were both worth the cost for the piece of mind they provided me with.