Next steps

OK, let's assume you've made it this far.  Your baby is about 4 months old and - whilst still liking to mix things up occasionally - probably doesn't scream randomly for about 40% of the day anymore. It can hold its fat little head up without it flopping all over its neck.  Life is good.

Now what?

Here are the items that got us through the next few months.

Just noticed this has been reduced by about £50 since we bought. Twats.

A Jumperoo  These are stupidly expensive at about £100.  Even second-hand, they seem to go for about £50.  So it's an investment.  But believe me, an investment that will pay off.  They are basically a giant contained baby bouncer (but not a walker) with music and lights and dangly things to pull.  We bought ours on the recommendation of a friend, and it's been worth every penny.  When we went away to South Africa for a couple of weeks, the baby actually mourned her Jumperoo and tried to substitute by jumping up and down on the laps of everyone who'd hold her.  When we came home, we popped her in it, and despite her jetlag, she literally jumped up and down for joy for a solid 30 minutes.  Even better, once they start crawling / walking / generally making life difficult for you, the Jumperoo acts as a sort of baby prison you can pop them in whilst they go vacant in front of CBeebies.  Because every time your baby moves, it will play an irritating selection of songs, you can hear that your baby is still alive whilst you're in the garden drinking vodka.  I mean, putting laundry away.

The downside is that unless you live in a mansion, they will probably take up at least 40% of your living room.  Our living room is quite small, and actually (after the sofa) it's the largest piece of furniture we own.  It's still worth it.


An iPad  OK, OK, I suppose strictly speaking this has to go in the "nice to have" rather than "need to have" category.  To further justify this really quite expensive purchase, I used it from her birth, and before:

- Maternity leave: listening to digital radio whilst drifting off into a snoozy stupor for most of the day.

- Labour: used it to track contractions, and then TheBloke (TM) comandeered it to play an Angry Birds marathon for the next 24 hours.  Twat.

- Midnight breastfeeding: downloading sitcoms and The Great British Bake Off to watch in the middle of the night.  To this date I can't look at a shortcrust pastry without lactating.

- Once the baby was about 3 months old: simple apps that she enjoys.  Our favourites have been the dodgily-named Baby Finger, the irritating but popular Giggle Gang (complete with one female character, who of course is pink) and Grindr.  Not really.  It's Goodnight Moon.

The iPad is also handy as it works as a quick "to hand" camera and video camera when she does something cute (or something embarrassing that might earn us £250 on You've Been Framed).

It's also great if you have friends and family with an iPad, as their Facetime app means that she can irritate Grandma and Grandad from a distance of about 150 miles.  In fact, sometimes I leave the iPad propped up, pop the baby in front of Grandma and Grandad on Facetime, go to the pub and let them babysit for a couple of hours*.

An outdoor picnic blanket  It's been a lovely summer this year, and for most of the time, crawling straight on the grass hasn't been a problem.  But being cooped up in the house all day is rubbish and if the grass is wet but the weather is warm, this can be the difference between creating a bald patch for yourself through repeated hair-pulling and actually having a decent afternoon.  Ours was about a fiver from Tesco.  We ordered it in grey, it arrived in pink.  What can you do?

* Social Services - I don't actually do this.  I go down the dogs.