skip to main content
What Does a Baby Gear Expert Add to Her Own Baby Registry?
Updated on
September 11, 2023

What Does a Baby Gear Expert Add to Her Own Baby Registry?

🙋🏽‍♀️ Show me all the things!

Babylist editors love baby gear and independently curate their favorite products to share with you. If you buy something through links on our site, Babylist may earn a commission.
Pinterest logo.
What Does a Baby Gear Expert Add to Her Own Baby Registry?.

It may not come as much of a surprise, but everyone here at Babylist loves talking about baby gear: the newest and coolest, the tried-and-true favorites, and the items that parents-to-be just can’t get enough of when they’re creating their baby registries.

So when one of our own gear experts, Registry Consultant Rebekah Kimminau, let us in on the news that she and her wife were expecting their first baby, we knew we wanted to pick her brain about her Babylist baby registry—and share it with you, of course!

Rebekah talked us through how she built her baby registry, some of her registry must-haves and the gear she’s most excited to use as she grows her own family. She also offers plenty of advice on how to kick off your own registry-building process, what products to add and what to skip and how to avoid the common registry mistakes she often sees parents make as they try to figure out what they’ll need for their new addition.

About Babylist

Looking for the best items for your growing family? Add all your favorite baby products to ONE registry with Babylist.

Hi, Rebekah! Thanks so much for agreeing to chat with us! So our Babylist team is lucky enough to know you, but for everyone else, can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about yourself?

Sure! My name is Rebekah Kimminau and I live with my wife Anna in the Dallas, Texas area. Anna is carrying our baby and she is due in April.

And what’s your role here at Babylist?

I’m a Registry Consultant, which means I spend most of my time helping parents choose the baby gear for their registry that best fits their family’s needs and lifestyle. Before I started with Babylist I worked as a Postpartum Doula as well as a nanny. I’ve worked with 50+ families, so I not only know a lot about baby gear in general, but I’ve also used it in everyday situations. This gives me a huge advantage when someone asks me practical questions, like “which bottle sterilizer works best?” because I have used almost every bottle sterilizer on the market, and I can speak from firsthand experience about the pros and cons of each one! As my passion about baby gear grew over the years, I got certified in various topics relating to baby gear and the postpartum family. I’m a CPST, Babyweraing Educator, Lactation Educator Counselor, and Newborn Care Specialist.

As an expert on all things baby gear, were you excited to finally get a chance to build your own baby registry?

I was SO excited to build a baby registry of my own! Even before my wife and I had decided to start trying for a baby, I had a secret registry going that I would add items to when I saw something I thought I might want. The minute we got the positive pregnancy test I started working on curating our registry to share with family and friends.

One of the things we hear most often from parents-to-be is that they’re overwhelmed by decision fatigue when they’re creating their baby registry. Where do you suggest they even start to make the process a little more manageable?

Decision fatigue is real, especially when it comes to building a baby registry! I think the best tip I can give is to start with one category at a time. Tackle that entire category before moving on to the next category. One week focus on just car seats and strollers. The next week focus on bath items. Use a checklist of some kind (Babylist’s baby registry checklist is a great place to start) to help you figure out the basics you need in each category. And of course, if you have any questions at all, email into the Babylist Registry Consultants. We are always happy to help—no question is too big or too small. Even if I haven’t used the piece of baby gear you are inquiring about, it is likely that someone else on our team has and can help to answer your question! The Babylist baby registry checklist can also help you figure out what you need.

Which leads me to…research. A lot of BL users tell us that doing some research prior to starting your registry can really help make the process a lot easier. What categories do you think researching can help? And what are your go-to sites and resources when you want to take a dive down the Google rabbit hole of baby gear research?

Although I am a bit biased, I referred many people to the Babylist guides long before I started working at Babylist. Reviews on Amazon tend to be a great place to go if you are curious about one specific item, but they can be really overwhelming if you are looking at reviews for 20 different high chairs, so I don’t usually consult them until I’ve narrowed down my choices.

I highly recommend doing research on car seats, as I see most parents just adding the car seat to their registry that matches or comes with their stroller. Many people don’t know that not all car seats fit in all vehicles, and you will want to make sure your car seat fits your specific car and needs before adding it to your registry. My favorite websites for car seat research are The Car Seat Lady and Car Seats for the Littles.

Great. Let’s pivot to chatting about YOUR baby registry! Give me some quick thoughts as to how you went into the process. Did you work on it alone or with your wife? Where did you start? Was there an overall theme you were going for?

As I mentioned before, I had a secret registry that I had been adding items to for a while. Once we got the positive pregnancy test, I started looking through the secret registry and evaluating the items on there one by one. I had 500+ items on it, so although there were a lot of fun things that I loved, when I started thinking about it practically I realized there were a lot I didn’t need. When I felt like I had mostly finished a specific category on our new registry, I’d show it to my wife and we’d go over it together. She’s the more practical one of us two, so she was good at saying “do we really need this?”

Was there anything that surprised even you during the registry-building process?

Although there were a few items I had known for a while and were easy to add to the registry, there were multiple items where I had a hard time narrowing down my choices, which did surprise me. I think for me the issue is that I know the baby gear market so well, so for any one specific item (e.g. a high chair) I knew of three or four products that would match our family’s needs. Narrowing down my choices was really difficult at times, and I totally relate to parents as they navigate making a hundred different choices, especially when they have lots of friends and family trying to weigh in about which item was most helpful for them.

What are your must-haves on your baby registry? As in, the items that you’re getting regardless of if someone buys them for you or not!

There are of course the obvious items like a Dekor Plus Diaper Pail (with cloth liners because we plan to do cloth diapering), the SnuzPod Bedside Crib, and the Boon Lawn drying rack. Then there are the less obvious items such as newborn gowns (which I love and usually find many newborns live in for the first month or two), a Tula baby carrier and a Dutailier reclining rocking chair.

What items are you most excited about, and why?

I think I’m most excited about our stroller, the Bugaboo Donkey, and our high chair, the Nomi. The Donkey was a stroller I used many times over my years working with families, and I fell in love with it. Although I knew it would be the most expensive item on my registry (by far), I also knew it would be worth it.

Over my years working hands-on with families, I had fallen in love with the Stokke Tripp Trapp high chair and I was set on that being our chair. More recently I discovered the Nomi and realized it fit our family’s needs even better than the Tripp Trapp. One feature I love about it is that you can add on the Baby Bouncer Attachment which allows baby to hang out at the table with you from birth, and also gives baby a high place to sit out of the way of curious pets, little hands, and at your level (like when you are doing dishes!).

If you had to pick five must-haves to tell every parent-to-be to add to their baby registry, what would they be?

  1. A baby carrier. My favorites are the Solly and Tula Free-to-Grow.

  2. A reclining rocking chair or glider. I can’t overstate the value of a rocking chair that reclines for those middle-of-the-night cuddle sessions when it feels so rough to sit bolt-upright.

  3. A safe place to set baby down that can easily be moved from room to room. I love the Babybjörn Bouncer Balance Soft for this purpose, but there are so many great options on the market (Snuggle Me Organic Lounger, a moses basket etc).

  4. A good quality sound machine. I love the LectroFan or the Hatch Rest.

  5. A few different structured swaddles (my favorites are the Love to Dream Swaddle UP, the Miracle Blanket, the [Ollie World Swaddle] and the Happiest Baby Sleepea.

And a bonus! A rechargeable amber reading light. You can clip it anywhere and it’s the perfect amount of light for middle-of-the night feedings without stimulating baby with blue light from other lamps.

What about items you think most parents can skip?

  1. A wipes warmer. This is one that many parents debate. Some swear by it and others say it’s useless. I personally find that they tend to have lights on them that are too bright when you want to make the room dark and that they dry out the wipes. They aren’t necessary and usually cause more frustration than help!

  2. A sit-me-up seat. There’s a lot of emerging research suggesting that these types of seats aren’t great for baby’s hip development. They can also only be used for such a short period of time and then just another extra item you’ll need to store.

  3. A walker. The American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend using walkers. They are, again, something that can only be used for such a short period of time and they take up a lot of space!

  4. Car seat accessories. Most parents don’t know that you shouldn’t be adding anything to your car seat that did not come in the box with your seat. Anything you add (including toys that clip onto the car seat, extra head positioners and car seat covers) add risk in the event of a crash due to the fact that none of the items have been crash tested with your specific car seat. Even most seat protectors are not recommended because not only have they not been crash tested, but they also tend to make the car seat slide around and can make it extremely difficult to get a correct and tight installation.

And what about things that you think most first-time parents might leave off their registries—but shouldn’t!

Baby clothes hangers! You usually discover that you need these the day after the shower when you are trying to hang up all of your new baby clothes but can’t fit them on regular hangers.

Sick day items: a humidifier, baby Tylenol/Motrin, [Nosefrida], thermometer, gas drops, and saline spray. All of these items are ones you want to have around for the day your baby gets their first cold. It is no fun to have to run to Target at 10 p.m. to get a nose aspirator because your baby is sick and won’t sleep with a clogged-up nose.

So helpful! Do you have any “under the radar” favorites—products that most parents-to-be may not know about but should?

Yes! I love the Feeding Friend Nursing Pillow. This little tool will come in SO handy if you find yourself on the go and feeding your baby. I have seen it come in especially handy when feeding in restaurants, grandparents’ homes, in the airport, anywhere! It folds up so easily and self inflates in less than a minute when you need it. No more sore arms from trying to keep your baby in an ideal position while feeding in an unsupportive chair.

And while we’re on the topic of under the radar faves, are there any items on your registry that aren’t typical of most registries? If so, why did you add them?

We decided to have a Montessori-inspired nursery. This means we chose a twin-size Montessori floor bed instead of a traditional crib. Our baby will transition to the floor bed once she has graduated from the bassinet in our room. We also have a Pikler Triangle and wooden rocking arch on the registry, which are Montessori items for once baby starts crawling and climbing on things.

What’s one splurge item you added to your registry and why?

Definitely the Bugaboo Donkey stroller. I used the stroller so many times over my years working with families and I love everything about it. I love that it can convert to a side-by-side double stroller down the road for our future children. I love that while it is in mono mode it has a side basket that allows for easy access to the items you need to bring along, or is the perfect companion for a morning at the farmer’s market. It also pushes like a dream!


A BIG thanks to Rebekah for sharing her registry-building process with us as well as her must-haves and favorite items. We hope getting a sneak peek into what she’s added to her Babylist registry will help inspire you as you build your own!

Stay Up-to-Date with Babylist