When we first brought Evelyn home, we realized very quickly, despite the overflowing baby gifts from the nursery from our generous friends and family, there were things we needed that we didn’t have. My husband made trips to the store at least once a day for the first week or two (granted it was mostly for breast feeding products – because that part totally caught me off guard – but I’ll write about that in a later post).
The first time we gave Evelyn a sponge bath I went to find some baby wash in the cupboard where we put all the baby products. I pulled out bottle after bottle of bubble bath and lotion and baby powder and diaper cream but no baby wash! I finally remembered there was a trial size bottle in a gift package we had! Of course this was all happening while the baby was already naked and screaming!
Evelyn’s first bath! She didn’t like it too much! This is not the sponge bath mentioned above. That was too chaotic to get a picture!
Silly hair-do during bath time!
There are some things you need right away but for some things we were so grateful for online shopping. We use Amazon A LOT and it is so convenient when you have a new baby and the things you need show up right at your door! One of the best investments we made was Amazon Prime. With Amazon Prime you get free two-day shipping on tons and tons of “prime eligible” items. Not everything on Amazon is included in the free shipping so you have to look for the Prime eligible products. We have had Prime for almost 2 years now and have bought tons of things and I’ve never not been able to find a Prime eligible version. It is so worth it if you buy things online often. I could only imagine how many more trips we would have made to the store in the first month without Amazon!
One of my favorite perks of Amazon Prime, besides the free shipping, is Amazon Mom. If you are a Prime member you can become an Amazon Mom member and you get 20% off diaper subscriptions! So each month diapers and wipes show up at our door in huge bulk sizes for cheaper than if we even went to a big box store like Sam’s Club! Sometimes if there is a good sale and I have coupons I will buy some in the store to stock up. So if you don’t need that months order you can just skip it for the month and it will resume next month. If you have 5 or more subscriptions through Amazon, you will get a 15% discount on all your subscriptions (excluding diapers).
Also through Amazon Mom, when you set up a baby registry, you will get a 15% completion coupon to buy the things on your registry that you didn’t get. We had an Amazon registry and it was really convenient for my family that lives far away to easily send a gift if they wanted to!
There are some other Prime perks like Amazon Video, Amazon Music, Amazon Photo (unlimited photo storage), and the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library (where you can borrow one Kindle book per month with no due dates). We use Amazon Video the most. There are so many great baby shows available from Baby First network when you need to preoccupy the baby for a few minutes so you can at least clean the kitchen up in peace! There are also some good movies and TV shows on there that aren’t on Netflix!
Amazon Prime costs $99 per year which is only $8.25 per month! If you spend that much each month on shipping it is worth it! They also have a free 30 day trial so you can try it out first! We have a high chair coming this week. Can’t wait until it gets here on Wednesday!