Building a registry is exciting, but getting it started can be overwhelming. There’s many products and brands to consider. Continue reading to learn a few tips to create your registry! By no means do you have to follow these suggestions. Feel free to take what you’d like and have fun!
Free items? Sign me up!
By creating registries with some stores, you can receive free baby items and discounts! These items include bottles, pacifiers, diapers, outfits, blankets, and more! These baby welcome kits are perfect to test which products work best for you and your child. Target, Walmart and Buy Buy Baby offer free baby welcome kits. To receive your welcome kit from Target, follow the steps in this article. As for Walmart, all you have to do is complete this form with your baby registry URL and the welcome box will be delivered to you! Visit one of the Buy Buy Baby store locations to receive your free baby welcome kit.
Amazon and Babylist offer baby welcome kits as well, as long as you complete certain requirements. For example, Amazon requires that you sign up for Amazon Prime, complete 60% of your registry checklist, and make a purchase of $10 from your registry. For further help, refer to this site! Babylist, on the other hand, requires that you enter an arrival date, enter a U.S. shipping address, add three items from any store to your registry, add three items from the Babylist Store, and make a purchase of at least $10 from the Babylist Store, including shipping expenses. If you need assistance, visit the Babylist Help Center!
Utilize Babylist
I suggest using Babylist to compile your registries altogether. Babylist is easy, convenient and free to use! First, Babylist provides a Registry Checklist Quiz. This quiz dives into what you’re looking to do or have once baby’s born. Babylist will create a checklist of items they recommend for you, which you can remove or swap any of the items! I found this extremely helpful, especially as a first time parent. Second, you can add registries from other stores onto your Babylist by clicking the “Add Another Registry” button on the Build Registry page. Babylist will combine all the registered items and list store options to purchase from. This is great for price comparisons and for tracking purchases. You’re able to categorize the items as well. Lastly, there’s a Gift Tracker feature which tracks items that have been purchased, when they were purchased, and by whom. I love this feature as it makes it effortless to know who to thank for gifts and easy to cross items on your list.
Babylist will send you weekly emails on price changes and an update on your baby’s growth based on how many weeks you are. This, along with Babylist’s main features, really sets itself apart from other baby registry services!
Do Your Research
Not sure what to add to your registry? That’s okay! There’s many resources to help you get started. I turned to Google, YouTube and TikTok for recommendations. I looked for articles on Google that would help me best identify what’s typically included in registries and what items I should consider. Listed below are articles that I found helpful in getting started.
Watching YouTube and TikTok reviews of parents’ most used and favorite items gave me further perspective on what we could add to our baby registry. It was important for me to know what products would be used the most, how they would be used, how they made parenthood easier, and how they would benefit our baby. Not to mention, I enjoyed it when there were several parents reviewing a specific item. It made it easier to decide whether or not the product would be beneficial for us. For example, the Hatch Rest Sound Machine, Night Light & Time-to-Rise was a favorite of many parents. After receiving one from a loved one, we’ve been using it everyday since! We even packed it in our hospital bag and used it directly after our baby’s birth.
If you’re particular about what you’d like to use for your baby or about which companies you’d like to support, look into the brands that you’re considering. For example, some brands offer organic products while others don’t. In addition, all brands have different standards or missions. It’ll also make it easier for loved ones to know what specific brand to purchase from.
Get a feel for the baby products you’re considering! Head over to the baby section at the store to see whether or not the item is right for you. For instance, there are plenty of strollers on the market and selecting the right one can be tough. Going to the store to look at strollers and testing them out will help you select the best one!
Before adding items to your registry, it’s important to evaluate your lifestyle or what lifestyle your family will have once your baby arrives. Start by asking yourself questions like whether or not there will be day care or how your baby will feed. Next, think about your day to day tasks and whether certain items can help. For example, I planned to breastfeed our baby so I added several breastfeeding related items to our registry like an insulated baby bottle bag, nursing pads, breastmilk storage bags, and nipple butter.
Don’t Limit Yourself
Don’t feel like you have to limit yourself when adding items to your list. Add what you are most comfortable with. Keep in mind to add items with a range of prices. This will help your loved ones pick and choose what they’d like to give!
Time to Create and Share!
When to create your registry and when to share it is entirely up to you! We began creating our registry during the first trimester and gradually added or removed items throughout our pregnancy. I enjoyed that we started our registry early so we could keep a look out for discounted items, remove or add items, budget, and cross items off our list. It wasn’t until the second trimester that we shared our registry with loved ones by including our Babylist with our pregnancy announcement. We shared it again during the third trimester when our baby shower invitations were sent.
Hopefully after reading this, you feel relieved. Again, you don’t have to follow any of these suggestions. Now it’s time to get to work! Don’t worry too much about your registry either. Have fun with it! If you’re interested in knowing what we added to our baby registry, read about it here!
