Our Baby Registry

This has been an interesting experience.

It may be practical, but the whole process of creating a list of items you want people to buy for you seems a bit self-centered and egotistical. Am I right? I've always felt a little uncomfortable with it. But it's a neccessity... unless you really want your great-aunt Gladys crocheting a crazy-colored baby's blanket for you.

The key for new parents is knowing what you really need, as opposed to just throwing a bunch of random items on the list. Because it's very easy to get caught up in the moment. Especially when all you have to do is go around the store zapping bar codes with your cool, little gadget zapper. Think about it. Do you really need 10 different bibs declaring how wonderful grandma is? I didn't think so.

And so, the challenge was set before me... how to create a quality gift registry reflecting our baby's needs, our space limitations and the budgets of friends and family trying to survive in a depressed economy.

On your mark, get set, go....

I started with the basics. I contacted friends who had already been through this before. Anyone who's caring for a newborn is going to be your best resource for learning about those "must have" items. Any items my friends told me they couldn't live without, I put on the list.

Next, I scheduled an appointment with a baby registry representative at Babies "R" Us. And I made sure this representative had a newborn at home, so I could pick her brain about the items she included on her registry. I think seeing and physically touching the items on your registry is an important step in this whole process. Sometimes these items look great online, but seeing them in person is a whole different story.

As a new parent, what surprised me the most was all the different options I had to choose from. If you know the gender of your baby and you have a theme for your baby's room, you'll probably save a lot of time. Otherwise, you may want to invest in rogaine, because you're bound to pull your hair out.

It took me 10 minutes to decide if I wanted baby towels with blue trucks or blue dinosaurs. And another 15 minutes to figure out which type of pacifier my child may or may not want to use. Oh, and the fact that every baby is different also complicates matters. So, if you're like me, and you plan to have all your babies at once, you can't assume the second baby will like the bottle you bought for the first baby. Everything is trial and error, every time.

Man, I'm seriously exhausted just thinking about it. Kudos to you new moms out there.

The experts say you should have five registry items for every person on your baby shower guest list. When you combine the number of people attending both of my showers, there's about 100 guests. According to their formula, I should have more than 500 items on my list. Instead, I have 56.

Fortunately, their formula is somewhat flawed. If a person purchases five items from your list, odds are they're going to be inexpensive items. Expensive items require two or more people to purchase a gift together, so that helps reduce the total amount of items on your list. However, I would try to break up the items as much as possible. I think it's easier for your guests.

Another factor to consider is how many registries your guests have to chose from. I have two: Babies "R" Us and Viacord, a registry for donating money toward our child's cord blood banking. I purposely limited the amount of items on my Babies "R" Us registry, hopefully encouraging more people to donate to the other account.

So, those are a few tips I picked during the course of my registry experience, which is far from over. If any new moms out there have additional tips to offer, I'm all ears.

Pass the advice or pass the rogaine, either one will do.