Silverette cups! Nose aspirators! A voice from inside the trenches offers honest descriptions of ‘must-have’ baby products for new mums, including the product and process that makes her feel like Sisyphus
Nose Frida/Snot Sucker
Did you enjoy the dexterity of playing Operation as a child? Well, buckle up because using this ‘nasal aspirator’ on your snotty baby is reminiscent of the high stakes tension of that game, only MUCH LOUDER as your infant screams and writhes in terror as you approach them. Using this will require at least four hands, but you only have two. Oh well! Best used at 1-3am when you realise your child is sick and no one in the house will be sleeping for the next four days!
Hydrogel Breast Discs
Breast feeding is so easy and natural and oh wait, your nipples feel like they’re falling off? You’d like an epidural for cluster feeding? Welcome to the world’s least sexy nipple pasty. Pop these in the fridge and then apply one every time you feel your nipples/overall sanity disintegrating, and you’ll finally be able to wear a top again against your shredded nips.
Silverette Breast-feeding Cups
Tiny tin hats for your nipples, which will only accentuate how wonky your boobs are pre and post feed. Handmade in Italy by licensed silversmiths because something in your chaotic new world would need to feel a little bit fancy. Oh and they’re $90.
Nail grinder/baby nail clippers
Sisyphus was a Greek god doomed to push a boulder up a mountain for eternity as punishment for angering the Gods with his mischief and trickery. You are a mother doomed to cut teeny tiny fingernails fives times a day for eternity as punishment for your baby’s need to try and gouge their own eyes out while they sleep.
Breast Pump
Simultaneously the worst and most useful tool of your life, available for the same price as a flight to Fiji but spiritually the absolute opposite experience. Within a week, you’ll go from being bamboozled from the assembly process to being able to put it together with your eyes closed, which is good… because they will be. *snores*
Formula
FORBIDDEN FRUIT! Absolutely terrible for babies apart from the millions – billions!! – it has sustained, comforted and kept alive since it was invented. If it was for anything other than helping mothers, we would have given it the Nobel Peace Prize for services rendered but instead you can’t mention it within the walls of a Plunket. Like a class A drug only actually it’s just… milk powder & vitamins.
Muslin wraps
The Emperor’s new clothes of baby items, somehow you will receive/inherit at least 35 and never use them. Before I had a baby, these were my go-to baby shower gift and I can only apologise for that!
Onesies
Here a dome, there a dome, everywhere a dome. It’s 4am? Five more crotch domes.
Fabric baby carriers
With five simple Cirque du Soleil scarf moves, you can wedge your sweaty baby against your now sweaty body for the length of time it takes for your baby to get bored and lose their minds. Every instructional video is either too slow (‘history of wraps’, ’10 key points of secure attachment’) or much, much too fast for you to follow, plus will have inexplicably jaunty background music that only makes you mad (der).
Car seats
Strap your baby into this tiny motion master seat with no comfort whatsoever. Tighter! TIGHTER!!!!!!!!!! Wait until your child’s rotund little stomach and dimpled thighs are wedged against the buckle and straps, and they’re bellowing in discomfort, and only then is it safe.
…Oh they’re finally in? Okay you’ve got 45 minutes until it becomes unsafe to have them in there anymore. BON VOYAGE.