I have friends who have an only child who is an 18-month-old who is about 17 lbs. They frequently carry her around in a back carrier when both parents are together. Different situations call for different equipment.

You need to quit believing everything the car-seat industry tells you, and finish listening to that lecture. The DATA shows that a child who is more than 24 months old is EQUALLY safe in a regular car seat as he is in a standard forward-facing add-on car seat.

Note that I said “data”, not “gut feeling” or “advertisement-driven quasi-religious beliefs”, and that the two are “equally” safe: A regular seat belt is not a safer (or less safe) choice, and no claim is made that it is more comfortable (because it’s not).

At the end, the Freakonomics speaker advocates for a system that would be MORE safe than what is currently required. Surely all parents and other people of good will could support a system that actually reduces children’s injuries. The scandal here is that so many people are shelling out $100 per toddler (NOT infants!) for a system that actually provides no additional value compared to a regular seat belt.

But I’m okay with it. I got a free infant seat, so I’ll buy a convertible later. From reading online, the problem with convertibles is they can be too big for some newborn infants because the shoulder straps don’t fit.

Got a free co sleeper, I’ll get a crib later. I have a free swing, pack and play, bassinet, etc. I’m going to test out what is necessary and go from there.

I’ve gotten a ton of free and used clothes too.

Now I need to buy a stroller and monitor and possibly a couple of other things. Ugh the clutter!

We love to hold our baby and use slings whenever possible, but unlike Smug Polly, we found the “baby bucket” snap-in-snap-out scenario to be perfect. Why? Well, we had to have a carseat either way. And because we both had to work, one of us dropped baby off at daycare in her bucket, and the other one picked her up. Baby could nap in her bucket if she was fussy, or sit in it sometimes while the older kids played outside. One carseat + 2 bases + stroller frame + swing frame is less cluttersome than two carseats, a stroller, and a swing. An added benefit for my November baby was not having to stuff her into winter outerwear or ever expose her to the elements when she was tiny tiny.

And – get this – when we got somewhere, if the baby was sleeping, we snapped her into the stroller. If she was awake, we popped her into the sling. Choices! Incredible.

And now, we have converted to the older-baby-plan we made. Convertible seats, slings, and a lightweight Combi umbrella stroller when necessary.

The other day I took off with my 6 month old tucked in a wrap sling and a diaper wallet on my wrist. We used the bus to get to the metro station, the metro to go to the zoo and walk around for 4 hours, and then metro home. It was awesome! She was happy as a clam and boy, did I earn my hotdog.

Cosleeping is a great idea, but it doesn’t work for every family, even ones that would prefer it. I can cosleep with baby, but only if my super-light-sleeping partner goes off to the guest room.

no crib (co-sleep and real bed when they are ready), no strollers (wraps and slings… and I have 3 kids), breastmilk right from the source needs no accessories, EC is great way to use less diapers….

But to each their own.

I guess being a hippie is good for uncluttering! Though, to be fair, I don’t have kids yet myself.

“Home safety items”

These are important but another area that can wait, I think. For the first few months, an infant can’t get into anything in the house (e.g., electrical sockets, stairs) that could be harmful. And there are such differences between babies — our first son couldn’t care less about outlets, but baby #2 had to touch all of them.

If it turns out that you’ve got a spirited kid who gets into everything, then batten down the hatches. If you don’t, you may feel like it was a waste to buy and install tons of protective devices everywhere.

My basic list is
Some way for baby to be in a car safe
some way for baby to be transported out of car
clothes (which includes nappies)
blankets
somewhere for baby to sleep
somehow for baby to eat

The baby health stuff is a buy as you need, the safety stuff again is buy as you need.

Unfortunately, no convertible car seat will fit rear-facing in our car. In fact, only one model of infant seat will fit, so I hope baby doesn’t outgrow it until she is old enough to face forward in another seat. Clutter, maybe, but cheaper than a new car!

Also, car seats have expiration dates (the plastic breaks down)! Who knew? So be careful if you get a used one.

Most importantly, we are experienced enough to know that many, many of our readers do not read the full text of posts. Every Wednesday at least one, usually more, people leave a comment about Unitasker Wednesday posts asking us why we’re promoting Unitaskers. It’s a weekly feature and people don’t even take the time to ingest the text. If we say “it’s okay to buy used from X company” many people will just see “it’s okay to buy used.” We have to think about the implications of all of our advice.

We did get a crib, and thank goodness for that, because our baby turned out to be one of those who preferred to sleep solo and never hid his distaste for being in bed with us. Babies like this make up a sizable minority of the population, as some friends who were absolutely certain they would co-sleep discovered shortly before heading out on emergency crib-purchasing runs. Trying to assemble a new crib after a week without sleep to the background symphony of screaming newborn is my definition of hell, so getting a crib in advance felt like cheap insurance to me. But I have never regretted buying a cheap crib given that our son used it for teething, even though he is still sleeping in it at age three.

My revised new baby list would be a crib, car seat, sleepers, two baby bottles, baby nail clippers, and diapers, with everything else purchased on an as-needed basis (the hospital would have given us formula but not bottles if I’d been unable to nurse; instead we rented a breast pump from them), but everyone’s life is different. And not everyone lives a few blocks from their pediatrician, a hospital, and three baby stores as we do. Nonetheless checking out things like strollers later, with a fussy baby in one arm and a diaper bag on the other, turned out to be an excellent strategy for getting stuff that works well for actual parents rather stuff that impresses starry-eyed expecting couples. Almost everything we bought before the baby was born that wasn’t on the short list above turned out to have been a mistake.

And if any of you are still debating the safer or not issue, here’s Freakonomics author Steven Levitt sharing data showing that car seats are no more safe for kids than a regular old seat belt. It’s very interesting stuff: http://www.ted.com/index.php/t.....seats.html