I often forget to recommend this book, since it isn’t exactly about pregnancy or how to care for a baby. But it is probably one of the most useful books I can think of for an expectant couple.
_Baby Bargains_ explains baby equipment to its readers: what is needed, what is superfluous, when to spend the extra money, and when to go the cheaper route. They are a bit like “Consumer Reports”:http://consumerreports.org for baby items. In fact, they love Consumer Reports, but they feel that CR isn’t able to quite keep up with the rapid changes of the baby goods market — so they wrote this book.
A revised version comes out every other year (and it is well-worth buying the latest edition, even if you get a hand-me-down from a friend). I loved having this tool as we were planning out our baby registry. I was so glad to have a book to explain the performance differences of diaper bins, the pros and cons of various strollers, and to clue me in on how many onesies are *really* necessary. Baby stores will often have lists to help their customers register, but they list way too much stuff. I was glad to have an objective resource to help in our decision-making about baby equipment — even though we did end up buying our car seat partially because it was “the coolest-looking one”:http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000BNJIVS.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg.
One of the best things about this book is that they give you options and recommendations, but often don’t tell you what the “best” choice is. This is nice for those of us who want to think about our needs, but hard when you are tired of making decisions!
The only thing I was disappointed about was their coverage of cloth diapering options. They admit that they don’t cover cloth diapering well, but I found it frustrating to have to find all my information online — although they do recommend a very good site, “diaperpin.com”:http://diaperpin.com/home.asp, which was very helpful for me in beginning to sort through our options. And, to their credit, they give a good breakdown of the costs of cloth, disposable, and diaper-service options. (For those who are curious, we are planning to use disposables for the first month, and then we’ll try out “Fuzzi Bunz”:http://fuzzibunz.com/ to see if we like them. We are blessed to have a friend who was willing to loan us their size-small Fuzzi Bunz to test them out before we invested in them. I hope they work for us because they are so *cute*!)
_Baby Bargains_ definitely makes it into my Top 5 Baby Books. A most useful resource, especially for those of us who don’t know what we are doing!
Considered in this review: “_Baby Bargains_”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1889392197/octothorppres-20, by Denise & Alan Fields.
Wow, those ARE SO CUTE!!!! I hope they work for you!