10 Things You Don't Need For Baby

So you’ve just walked into Babies R Us for the first time ever and one of the employees (who either had a lobotomy or needs one) hands you this little booklet that has a list of allllllllllll the shit you’re going to need for the upcoming arrival of your little poop-machine.

And that’s where the fun begins! And by fun I mean the crazy torture of going up and down each and every aisle trying to figure out whether you need f’ing nipple shields or Butt paste. The correct answer is yes and yes.

With that said, man did we buy a lot of crap for Baby #1. Baby #2, on the other hand, got all hand-me-downs. Yup, every single little thing. Yes, even the diapers. And no they weren’t cloth. I don’t care how good cloth diapers are for the environment, there ain’t no way I’m putting turds into my washing machine. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Except for the fact that you’re putting turds into your washing machine (awwww shit, here come the comments). But I digress.

So here goes. A bunch of crap I bought when I was having a baby that I now know was a total waste…

1. A fancy bedding set. Like two seconds after you tear open your fancy bedding package a Babycenter email appears in your inbox. Ding! Bumpers killed 9 million babies last year! (FYI, I like to exaggerate, it was only like 7 million) Okay then, no problemo, you just won’t use the bumpers. And then you’re reading your What to Expect book and it tells you what to expect in the first year: expect your baby to die if you put a blanket in his crib. Okay then, you’ll just throw the quilt on the back of the nursing chair for decoration, which totally doesn’t work because then your head is all shoved forward when you sit in the chair. So basically you’ve just spent a bazillion dollars on a single fitted crib sheet. A single sheet that is about to be destroyed when your newborn poops his brains out the first night home from the hospital. And I don’t care how much Shout you use, that shit stain ain’t coming out. So you have two choices: A. Don’t buy the totally adorable bedding set to begin with or B. Buy a set with a lovely brown amoeba pattern all over it so the shit stains blend in.

2. Clothes that go over a newborn’s head. Have you ever tried to put clothes on a newborn? Impossible. You’re all like, my new baby has a really strong neck until you’re pulling that really cute onesie over her head to take her home from the hospital and suddenly her neck is like jello and her head falls off and you’re screaming NURSE! NURSE! and she’s walking in all cool and collected like they see this shit all the time. Well, at least that cute leopard-print onesie with the Burberry trim is soooo adorable maybe no one will notice that your child is headless.

3. A wipes warmer. Yeahhh, that’s what you want to do, let baby get used to having his royal ass cleaned with a wipe that’s been heated to the perfect temperature. ‘Cause then do you know what happens? You’re out in public trying to change his diaper and he throws a conniption because your wipes in the diaper bag are freezing and his ass has turned into a total pussy (wait, that’s not right). Besides, do you think someone like the Fonz had warm wipes when he was a tike (tyke?)? No way, no how. Because people who have warm wipes as infants turn into douchebags. No, I don’t have any examples, but it seems pretty damn obvious. So unless your Mum is Kate F’ing Middleton, no one’s heating your stupid wipes.

4. Shoes for your newborn. Newsflash, babies can’t walk. Plus, if you stare really hard at your baby’s feet you can literally see them growing, kind of like how if you stare really hard at a clock without blinking you can see the minute hand moving. So basically putting a newborn’s growing feet in shoes is akin to Chinese foot binding. Yes, I know those two-inch Air Jordans are like the cutest things in the whole wide world but maybe I forgot to mention, BABIES CAN’T WALK much less dunk a basketball, except maybe those roller-skating Evian babies.

5. Expensive baby clothes. This one’s pretty much the same as the last part of #1. Just buy a lot of cheap stuff from Tarjay or once again, buy everything with a brown amoeba pattern on it.

6. A fancy stroller. If you’re the kind of person who bought your house outright without a mortgage, I hate you. Wait, no, that’s not what I meant to say. If you’re that kind of person, by all means, buy a fancy delancy stroller. I remember standing in the middle of a high-end toy store while a woman half my size demonstrated the bugabooger to me. “Push this button, then this one and voila it’s so compact it fits in the palm of your hand.” And then I remember this. Standing in the middle of the parking lot at Scabies R Us and I couldn’t get my damn fancy stroller to collapse because it had like 9,000 doodads and buttons and levers and thingamajigs. These days I’m like just give me a simple umbrella stroller, and if I want something fancier I’ll buy it for half the price on Craigslist. You know, in case I decide to chuck it across the parking lot and then drive over it with my minivan.

7. A baby bathtub. Guess what, your house already came with one. WHAT?! The realtor didn’t tell you?!! Hello brainiac, it’s called a sink. But wait, my sink doesn’t look like a cute whale or a duck! No, it doesn’t. But it also doesn’t cost an extra $30. Or come in a weird ass shape that doesn’t fit in any logical place in your bathroom. And guess what, your kiddo’s not thinking, “It’s not fair, Javier down the street has a bathtub that looks like a turtle and I don’t.” All he’s thinking is, “Aggghhh, who the hell is pouring goddamn water on my head?! I’m gonna scream as loud as humanly possible until they stop!”

8. Car seats. I mean, WTF is it with everyone getting these things?! Nahhhh, just kidding. Seriously, I’m kidding. Really.

9. The Bumbo Seat. There are all these companies out there that make stupid products to help your kid hit some milestone they’re gonna hit anyway, like the Bumbo. In case you don’t know, this is a little seat that props your kid up before he can actually sit up. You’re gonna hear all these jackasses, I mean really nice moms, say that their kiddo wasn’t sitting up and then she got him the Bumbo and whatta you know, two weeks later the kid was sitting up. All because of this magic fucking chair. Ehhhhh, wrong. Your kid is sitting up because he’s 6+ months old. Not because you forced him to use his Bumbo and work his muscles into a damn six-pack like Mike the Situation from Jersey Shore.

10. Pee-pee teepees. FYI, pee-pee teepees are just a cute present people buy because their gift only came to $15 and they needed a $5 item to make it expensive enough. Oh, and they’re always people who never had a boy so they have no idea that pee-pee teepees don’t stay on, but of course, you never realize it’s fallen off until your kid starts spraying you with urine and some of it gets in your mouth.