Today we talk about a book with a lot of humor, "The baby list", the shopping guide for the newborn that every mother should have, based on the experience of a group of first-time friends and moms and that, like every listing, is quite subjective.
But it is that more than as a shopping guide you have to take it as a book narrated with humor about those "essential" assumptions, which each one will prepare according to their needs (and possibilities). How are the nightgowns for the hospital? What to expect from visits to the newborn? What is the "instruction manual" to use the coo? These questions are answered along the "baby list".
The author is Esther Escape Castro, and the idea came from a list in Excel that he developed when he was waiting for his first child and that was happening between friends and acquaintances to expand with many comments on each article for the baby's list and its utilities.
This list together with the conversations between friends and the author's own reflections shaped the book, which is divided into three sections developed in a colloquial style and with humor, telling situations in which we will see reflected those that we have already gone through maternity.
The first part focuses on the "Things you should take to the hospital and buy in advance, "like the lullaby, nightgowns, postpartum panties, the cart, the hat and the baby's mittens ... The hospital basket is one of the issues we usually plan well, with time (then we have less time to think and above all to go shopping), and it can be more or less extensive, but with some essentials.
The second part is the "Things you should have at home when the baby arrives and purchases to do during the last weeks of pregnancy" and here are included serum, thermometer, changer ... Although I could not read this part and the specifications that are made, here we have enough objects that seem unnecessary to me unless you are clear that you are not going to breastfeed the baby like bottles, sterilizers, bottle cleaners, milk powder dispenser ...
The third part is the "Things you can buy once the baby is born (or before ... yourself!)": High chair, breast pump, crib, travel cot, mobile crib, thermos, infant formula (?), medicines, hammock, travel bath ... Honestly, thankfully I don't have half of the things that are mentioned here because I think I would need a good storage room!
Anyway, if we paid attention to the list we would not be far from those endless lists that "sell you" in childcare stores. Here we leave you another particular vision of ten articles that we could do without and the ten basic ones (although of those I have dispensed with some ...).
It is clear that everyone's list is very personal and it will vary greatly according to what we understand as necessary and also, of course, of the budget that is available or that we are willing to invest and that can make the "essential" perfectly dispensable.
But I think that the remarkable thing about each one of the articles that are detailed in the book is not the article itself as a fundamental point of the purchases (or of the gifts that we will receive) but that they are the comments made about it, in a colloquial and casual style, about its usefulness and the environment that is always there to "lend a hand" to the first-time mother.
That humorous touch is what I liked most about this book that I have begun to read, in which the mother is seen in those pre and postpartum moments as an insecure woman, with fears but at the same time with a strong personality accentuated by the hormonal changes and the fluctuations in mood that occur with the arrival of the baby.
"The Baby List", the shopping guide for new moms, is edited by Dome Books and it costs 17 euros (11'99 in electronic format). A fun book and not to take it to the letter with the "essentials" but a starting point to choose ours and, reading between the lines, see that many will not be necessary.
Official Site | Planet of Books In Babies and more | "The unexpected when you are waiting", funny book for future moms, Comic: "Guide for desperately inexperienced parents", Ten tips not to ruin us with the arrival of the baby
