It’s easy to talk about all the products that I love and would recommend, but I don’t share a lot of “fails”. Most often, I would deem something a “fail” for personal reasons, not because the product isn’t inherently good or helpful. It is very subjective! Since I’ve shared a lot about the products that we’ve bought and loved using with Liam over the last 2 years, I thought I would share a couple things we bought but found to not be useful, for us.
When it came to making a baby registry and preparing for Liam’s arrival, I was pretty conservative with what products we acquired. I was able to resist the urge to add any and everything to our list because I didn’t want a bunch of extra stuff laying around. I got the basics and then knew that we could always purchase the extras should we find that we need them. A few examples of these extras would be a baby wipe warmer (never even considered one!), a baby bathtub (we just laid him on a rolled up towel in a very shallow tub), or an expensive automatic bouncer/rocker.
A few things that we bought that we ended up rarely using (either because we liked something else better or because Liam didn’t like it) are:
Inexpensive Automatic Bouncer Seat
I bought this thinking Liam would lay peacefully in it while I cooked dinner, got ready for the day, or folded laundry. Turns out, he just wasn’t a bouncer seat kind of guy! He would last about 3 minutes and then start to complain, so it ended up just taking up space in our house. We later bought the BabyBjorn Bouncer Bliss and used it all the time. It’s 5x the price, but we used it daily for months. He loved it!
A Ride-On Trike
I bought this for him for his first birthday and it never really took off as a popular toy for him. He will occasionally ask us to push him around in it now, but it ends up just taking up precious storage space in our garage. On the other hand, our Radio Flyer Folding Wagon has been a huge hit! He loves to ride in it, push it around, and tow his toys in it. This is something we will use for years to come, so I’m happy with this purchase!
Merlin Magic Sleepsuit
I know some people swear by this, but it never worked for Liam. It was another reminder that all babies are different! He hated it from the second we put it on him and he couldn’t get past it. We have used Kyte Baby sleep sacks since he was rolling and they have worked out great for us!
Were there products you bought for your babies that didn’t end up working out?Β
My child *hates* carriers if any kind. I was so sad. My vision of getting chores done while my baby peacefully napped or hung out for the ride along never came to fruition. He screamed every time.
Swaddles of every version had the same effect. We went the sleep sack route as well. Worked for us.
Diaper Genie was a complete fail. It let’s out a “poop burp” every time you open it, then the whole room stinks…. making it useless!!
Even though I thought that beautiful muslin swaddles would get the most everyday use in our house, I almost NEVER used them – for anything! He slept in a swaddle, and we live in Florida so it was honestly never really cold enough for him to need to be cuddled in a blanket. Our car seat had a built-in canopy so we didn’t need it for that, and I had a nursing cover, so didn’t need it for that either. Fortunately I didn’t splurge on any, but if I could take back all the time I spent picking out pretty patterns online…