Help from you experienced parents!

Chriswil

Hi Folks,

My wife and I are having our first child in about 6 weeks, although from what i've read it could be between two and 8 weeks - eeek!

Anyway I was wondering if you had any experience with nappy wrappers (a machine that seals nappies) and baby monitors. The baby monitors range in price from about £15 to almost ten times that, and I was wondering what was best, and where you would recommend getting them from?

Any advice, greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

astonsmummy

Congratulatons!!
I was given a nappy wrapper but never used it, to be honest its no fuss putting the nappy in a nappy bag then just chucking it in the bin.

My monitor was about £24.99 - a tomy one, it does the trick! Its down to your own feelings really but the way i see it, as long as you can hear the baby through it ur fine xx

Cant really advise the best places to get these things DS is 2 now and cant even remember where i got the monitor! I'm sure there r lots of MSEers who will be able to give you some great advice xx

Chriswil

Thanks atonsmummy! I suppose i've been a bit swayed by the manufacturers arguments that with a non-digital monitor your neighbours can hear you talking about them! Ah what the hell - it's not my fault if they can cut their grass every day

Seriously though, did you find that you got a reasonable distance from your monitor - i'm just thinking of a summers evening sitting in our garden, probably about 20m from the baby through one brick wall and 4/5 plaster walls, up one level. Who am i kidding, sitting in the garden with a new baby....

Any advice, greatly appreciated...

EasilyAggravated

would have to agree with astonsmummy. because we're cheapskates, we buy boxes of lemon scented nappy bags from local pound shop. 200 in a box for a quid!!! it does the job we need it to so i cant see the need for spending any more. as for baby monitor, one around the £30 mark would suffice. the woman indoors got ours from boots for about that price. the receiving bit of it has batteries so whenever shes walking round the house she can take it with her. however with the size of juniors lungs its not really needed.
i found that if you get the right person on the right day in mothercare then they can be extremely helpful.

oh and congratulations. good luck with the lack of sleep

Chriswil

EasilyAggravated wrote:

good luck with the lack of sleep

I don't know what you mean - we are going to have the perfect baby, 7pm until 8am every night :doh: :rotfl:

Thanks for the advice over the nappy wrapping thingy. I suppose it comes down to your laziness, walk and put it in bin, cost negligable, or store it nearby, cost a lot more.

200 frangranced bags it is I think...

hobo28

Get the bags.

As for monitors, shouldn't be a problem. My old house was all brick walls and I could pick up from our garden. Unfortunately I could pick up my neighbours too sometimes!

Get one from Argos if your worried then at least if you can't pick up from the garden you can return it.

Chriswil

Thanks for that hobo28! Argos and their 16 day promise it is....

EasilyAggravated

Chriswil wrote:

I don't know what you mean - we are going to have the perfect baby, 7pm until 8am every night :doh: :rotfl:

Thanks for the advice over the nappy wrapping thingy. I suppose it comes down to your laziness, walk and put it in bin, cost negligable, or store it nearby, cost a lot more.

200 frangranced bags it is I think...

they do actually smell rather nice as well.
i also found that one of them baby bouncer things that vibrates works wonders with getting them to sleep.
its easy until they start crawling. feed. sleep. change nappy. sleep. feed. sleep. change nappy etc.

p.s. you will have the perfect baby. however one thing that can be assured is it will not at any point take into consideration the fact that you need sleep. not now, not ever. mines coming up to a year old. he insists on waking up, laying in his cot and jabbering as loud as possible knowing that we have the monitor on.

chaliepud

We found the nappy wrapper a complete waste of time and space, they don't smell as nice as you would think, the bags can get tangled so you ended up using a lot more of the bag than necessary and it was expensive too. We bought everything we possibly could for no. 1 and the nappy wrapper probably won the prize for being the most useless!

Re. the monitor, I was a paranoid Mum (actually still am despite eldest of 3 being 7 now!) so we bought a monitor with a sensor pad that slides under the cot mattress, it detects if the baby hasn't moved/breathed for apprx 20 secs, probably not necessary but helped me sleep easier (and no.1 child slept from 8 -8 every night).. Thought babies were a breeze and wondered why all my friends couldn't get their babies to sleep properly - then 20 months later no. 2 came along and all my illusions were shattered!

Good luck with your new bairn

H

(other good buys include anything that stops your baby from spending it's time laying in one postion for too long (like when they spend a long time in car seat, bouncy chairs, under gyms and in rockers) as babies can develop plagiocephaly (flat head syndrome). Give the baby plenty of "tummy time" when he /she is awake (always lay on the back to sleep) and try to alternate which side of the head he/she lays on. I have had 2 boys with this condition and it has been heartrending - and expensive - for something that could have been so easily avoided had we known about it.

Katinkka

They can be really faffy. I got one when I was expecting my first and had to have EVERYTHING. when baby comes you realise that its much easier to stick it in a bag and then chuck it in a bin.

Danni

I agree with the above posts- nappy bags from Poundland are the way to go My mother in law now uses them for her doggy, and they're portable (which nappy wrappers aren't... and you really don't want to be stuck with a dirty nappy away from a bin without something scented to put it in!).

As for monitors- we had a Tomy Walkabout or something for about £25. It worked, it covered our small house (and apparently the house a few doors down as we occasionally picked up their baby- we just changed channel though ) and we used it till about 9 months by which point DD's lungs were quite capable of waking us up, or letting us know from the garden that she was awake and wanted seeing to now!

As for the sleeping, I know it's no longer advised (was fine 2 years ago) but for the first 6 months our daughter shared our bed, and I really don't know how long she slept, as I was breastfeeding and didn't wake fully up for her. After that, she went into her cot and slept from about 9/10pm to 8am with just the occasional wakening, so we were very happy

You might get lucky