This is the kind of list that I pestered friends with older babies for when I was pregnant a year ago. Buying for a new baby can feel really overwhelming, I remember sending a text to a group of lovely mama’s asking what the difference was between a bodysuit, a vest, a romper and a babygrow?! And would I need bottoms to go with the vests, how many of each should I buy? There’s suddenly so much to learn and new parents are a marketer’s dream with the promise of buying this for better sleep or to give your baby ‘the best start’. But in reality newborns need very little to start off with and in the end, of course, we got there and learnt along the way, possibly overbuying a few bits and not having quite enough of the other but we none of that really mattered in the end. I wanted to be super organised before Freya arrived, possibly forgetting that the world doesn’t stop turning when your baby arrives and there are always people going to the shops should you need something. That being said, it’s exciting when you’re pregnant to go out and shop for your growing babe. This post has been duly promised to a few lovely pregnant mama’s on Instagram, so here is my list of honest feedback for the things we had and found really useful in the first 6 months now we have some experience and perspective. I started off by calling this an essentials list, but in the end just included a mix of everything we used a lot plus I wanted to list a few things that we didn't need/like. Although of course we just have one baby and every baby is so different, so ask around and also it’s worth seeing what you can find on local Facebook/gumtree selling pages/NCT nearly new sales.

// contains some ad/affiliate links and gifted items but none were in exchange for this post and all opinions are 100% my own.