Triplets.. Lessons Learned
New vs Used??
So we survived the first year of parenthood... x's 3!!! Walking into the world of parenting is one thing, but walking into the world of parenting x's 3 is an entirely different ballgame. I remember when I was making a checklist of things that I needed to put on our baby registry, the first question that came to mind for all items was... hmmm, do we need 3 of them?!! :) Surprisingly, there are some things that are a must and others that you can get by with just 1 or 2.
Initially I started trying to be too prepared, but as time passed I decided to get the bare essentials and just figure out things on the way. The one piece of advice I was told that I stuck by was that babies change so quickly and grow so fast. The shelf life of alot of the items isn't that long, so you can buy as you need. The other thing I was told was that there was not a need to buy EVERYTHING new. Of course as a new parent, we wanted only the BEST for our babies and of course we thought the BEST meant NEW.
However, the first time I walked into Babies 'r' Us, I was in actual shock as to how much stuff was available and how much everything cost. The baby market is endless in the variety of products being sold and all the different brands to choose from. I was so overwhelmed, I wanted to just leave the store and try again later when I felt like I had done more research and was more prepared, but given that I had already done a ton of research online for my necessities and had my checklist ready to go.. (also with my condition), I knew it was now or never so I just took a deep breathe and my husband and I started walking down aisle by aisle figuring out what we wanted. By aisle 2, we were like eh.. lets just check everything and we can filter it once we get home by process of elimination and that's exactly what we ended up doing.
Once we got home, I spent a couple of weeks cleaning up the registry and reading some other multiple blogs and really figured out what I needed and didn't need. We figured our babies would probably be in the NICU for a few weeks, so we could just get whatever we needed that we didn't already have at that point... that worked out to our benefit. Our family and friends were super generous and we ended up getting a lot of stuff that we needed and other random folks that we didn't know came out of the blue and offered things that they were getting rid of as their kids had outgrown them... things that like I said earlier have a short shelf life and are super expensive - swings, bouncies, pack-n-plays, etc..
The other thing that I came to love was being part of MCPOM which is Montgomery County Parents of Multiples Club and they host 2 major consignment sales a year which are AWESOME!!! Consignment sales are AWESOME and the best place to buy lots of items that you may need. I learned quickly that even though I was carrying precious cargo, I didn't need to spend loads of money on items that would be used for such a short period of time as lots of these items end up being just like NEW!!
We knew these kids were going to break the bank eventually, might as well save as much as we can for as long as we can!!!
