If you have lived in North America for a while, you have probably heard of online registries of some kind. Wedding registries are quite popular, but the popularity of birthday and baby registries is increasing, especially the latter.
EXPECTING: GUIDE TO BABY REGISTRIES
If you have lived in North America for a while, you have probably heard of online registries of some kind. Wedding registries are quite popular, but the popularity of birthday and baby registries is increasing, especially the latter.
For those who haven’t heard of them yet – like I hadn’t until I came to Canada just a few years ago -, online registries for events are basically wish lists from the person(s) who put it up. You add items to the list what you wish to have so that your guests, family and friends, know exactly what to get you - instead of ending up with 3 toasters or 10 baby rattles that later you have to politely decline or take the time to return or resell. Once the person buys the item from the lists and marks it as purchased, others will see that and not get you the same thing.
Photo by Zetong Li on Unsplash
If you have lived in North America for a while, you have probably heard of online registries of some kind. Wedding registries are quite popular, but the popularity of birthday and baby registries is increasing, especially the latter.
For those who haven’t heard of them yet – like I hadn’t until I came to Canada just a few years ago -, online registries for events are basically wish lists from the person(s) who put it up. You add items to the list what you wish to have so that your guests, family and friends, know exactly what to get you - instead of ending up with 3 toasters or 10 baby rattles that later you have to politely decline or take the time to return or resell. Once the person buys the item from the lists and marks it as purchased, others will see that and not get you the same thing.
Regardless of whether you are having a baby shower or not (I know it’s not ideal for many to have large gatherings during pregnancy due to potential virus infections), you may be considering having some sort of gift list so that close friends and family can contribute to the very expensive endeavor of welcoming a new family member.
While there are registries where people just pool cash, many parents may feel it’s odd to ask for money or that it sounds for crowdfunding. You also may over or underestimate how much you need for all the items your little one will require. Besides cash, there are also store registries and universal registries.
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
Online stores such as Amazon, Walmart, Target and even Pottery Barn Kids have their own registries, which makes it convenient for those who already know they want many items from those stores. However, using their registries has downsides:
Selection: you can only list what they sell/carry
Affordability: If everything you need is listed from these sites, you are asking for all new items, which may mean imposing an expense one your friends and family that some may not agree with but will feel compelled to because of their ties to you
Sustainability: none of those stores are particularly well-known for using sustainable, products, practices or even giving fair wages. On the same note, all new items would mean a missed opportunity for your friends and family to offer their pre-loved, second-hand baby items that encourage sharing, save resources and money
Lack of “extra” services: universal registries tend to have a section for “help coupons”, which are just symbolic digital coupons where instead of items, you can request help with “babysitting evenings”, “postpartum meals”, etc. You can even open a coupon fund to pay for doula services! These are wonderful gifts that strengthen a community.
Universal registries are my preferred type, and they are very popular for the same reasons I will describe. While I have not tried all registries, I have used the acclaimed Babylist and I will use it to exemplify what you can do with a universal registry.
In the USA, Babylist can act as an intermediary and allow you to list items from big stores - including the ones that have their own baby registry - and then ship it all to you from one location. That part is quite convenient for American residents. In Canada, that feature doesn’t exist, and I still love using the registry because of all the other advantages it provides.
Babylist can act as a hub where you browse through a ton of available items for baby. Not only it is useful for parents who have no idea what they will need (until you see a stroller and you realise you had not planned for one!), but it will allow you to place a great range of items that do not necessary need to be purchased new. Let me explain.
You can add ANY item from ANY online store to Babylist, including Etsy! For this, once you have created the registry and you are in your registry home page, you will see this menu on the right side that says Get the Babylist Button. You make sure that your browser’s Bookmark bar is visible on the window, and then you click and drag that red rectangular button to the bar. In my Moxilla Firefox browser, now the button looks like this one below.
Now you can place any online favourites in your registry. As an example, I open Etsy and find a muslin cotton set for a crib. I click on that new button. A Babylist window appears after a few seconds, and the only thing missing is that Babylist cannot detect the price of the items. Check Etsy for the size and colour you would like and once you know the price, just write it there.
Alternative option – and this is my favourite. If you want something like this but second-hand, simply write 0 on the price, and use the Note for Friends and Family to ask people to either pass down some of their old items to you, or to inquire in their local Freecycling or Give Nothing groups (many on Facebook) if anyone would like to give away theirs. This allows them to contribute to your family growth without putting pressure on their finances and it is far more sustainable. After all, we are leaving this beautiful planet to the generations after us, starting with baby!
Feel free to specify size, material and colour if that’s something that is important to you. I personally prefer to keep all baby items plastic free, which means 100% cotton, linen, wool, hemp, bamboo, lyocell, leather, wood, or blends of those without elastane/spandex.
Since you can add items from any store, you can also support local shops in your area that have an online listing for their items. A lot of the shops in my town have opened online stores during the pandemic to keep their businesses running while shutdown, so you can go browse in person and support the local community.
What if you need a different kind of support?
Besides items, Babylist also allows you to ask for those non-material favours that store registries don’t have. On the home page, just above the links to the Babylist button you will see Add Help & Favours. There’s: Dog walking, babysitting, home-cooked meals, baby books, house cleaning…favours that can mean the world to any new parent that is trying to heal and rest after birth while dealing with the reality of a little one that needs constant care and allows for little rest.
On the left side, at the bottom of that long menu, you will see Cash Fund right underneath help & favours. While I find it interesting and not really pertinent to start a college fund (how do we know the baby will want to go to college? That’s parental expectations…), there are some good options for contributing to: diaper fund, parental leave fund, meal fund, doula fund, childcare fund, adoption fund. I have a friend abroad who I cannot physically support with help & favours and she has obtained a lot of hand-me-downs from a close friend, so my wish was for her to have doula support during her birth at the local hospital, since I knew she was quite scared of childbirth.
The last one is an adoption fund, a beautiful option for those parents doing a registry for their incoming child, regardless of whether they are having a baby or older. Private adoptions are incredibly expensive, both domestic and international, and the last thing the parents need after an emotional rollercoaster of waiting times, bureaucracy and sometimes heartbreak, is to feel overwhelmed for all the money put into the adoption process and that won’t be available for the child’s future needs.
As you’ve probably already spotted while browsing through the options I listed here, there is always the choice of a blank coupon and also create your own cash fund, in case you have any ideas not shown on Babylist. For example, if you just moved far away and none of your friends & relatives can come to do house cleaning for you, you may want to create a cash fund to hire help. If you have friends who are skilled at carpentry, maybe you can make a coupon for crib-building help. If you don’t think you have learnt a lot from the hospital prenatal lessons, maybe you want friends to contribute to a fund for an online course or hiring a consultant. Options abound!
The one thing I did not like from Babylist is that as you create your registry for the first time, it asks you a lot of questions for their AI to guess some of the items you will need, so when you first see your registry, they have already added 50 items that you did not ask for and now you have to manually delete. However, they might give you ideas about items you had forgotten to include!
I hope this guide has been helpful. If you have a birth or postpartum doula, maybe ask they whether they’d consider doing this task for/with you, so that it's less daunting. Many of us are used to it!