These are not a paid reviews by any means, I just like these things. However if you’d like for me to review something… I am VERY good at honest opinions.

Also please note this is a brief overview prior to this baby’s birth and so these are things I think/know are great but have yet to officially road test.

The wheels: Peg Perego Skate (2011) (aka. it pays to talk to people at baby expos)

This delightful (elegant) beast was on my, “I’d LOVE it but can’t afford it” radar. Infact the cost of a lot of prams is OUTRAGEOUS… and yet of course I still looked, It ticked the right boxes in terms of flexibility, quality, ease of use, ease of care, front and back facing etc (believe me I did A LOT OF RESEARCH – I’m talking weeks here of reading online reviews, yes I’m crazy). Due to a marvelous chain of events it is now in my possession. This is entirely thanks to very generous inlaws and also a conversation at the Melbourne Baby expo where they were selling them half price (and couldn’t advertise the fact). Geoff and I also invested in the jumper seat (yet to be removed from the box) if we happen to get baby no.2 at some point. The jumper turns the pram into a two seater without a lot of extra size. Naturally this would not work if you have two babies at the same time as the jumper is really only suited to a toddler (fingers crossed no.2 does not come until baby 1 is a toddler). As for the colour – the green is fun, I’ve always been partial to green but really wouldn’t have minded it in the red or pretty much any other (except the black with the weirdo pattern).

Anyhoo, it’s VERY easy to push, and comes with everything. No buying add ons (which is where a lot of the other prams start to add up). There’s the rain cover, bassinet and normal seat, basket and ahem cup holder (hello coffee I really miss you!). It did take a bit of working out how to fold it all up the first time but once you know how, it’s easy. This pram also works as a travel system with the Primo Viaggio car seat (which my Dad pulled a very Dutch bargain hunting move and they got that for us for $100 less than retail). I’m not sure I would have necessarily bothered with this car seat if we couldn’t get it as cheaply as we did as it is on the expensive side.

Cool Bananas.

Other pram brands I looked at and liked:

• Baby Jogger (Select/Mini)
• iCandy (Peach)
• Bugaboo (…which I kind of wrote off before I started looking because they are so expensive).

The indulgence: Fertile Mind – Milkbar (Nursing Pillow)

Uh yeah. weird indulgence. I actually got given a nursing pillow to use -which is perfectly alright, but after being given SO many things, I really kind of wanted to purchase something new. This seemed like a reasonable thing to buy (again not at full price, I waited for an online baby store to have a whopper sale and did scout for them second hand too… which would’ve defeated the purpose of ‘new’ I realise now).

I can’t really review this in terms of usefulness as it’s intended purpose (with baby still being about a month away), but I can testify to the fact that it works great for pregnancy sleeping and is less ginormous to haul around when you roll over in bed – which I do a lot.

Besides, it’s pretty, it’s new. I felt kinda funny buying it as I’m a cheapskate and don’t care about most second hand things at all but I’m really glad I did.

The read(s) – Bringing up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman

Hands down the best baby book I’ve read. I read a lot. Funny, easy to read yet still intelligent with some excellent observations and ideas, the cultural observations were interesting coming from a cross cultural background. Geoff loved it too. I have handed it to my midwife sister and she was quite impressed. Naturally you wouldn’t adopt the whole of the ‘French parenting’ style observed, but that is not the point of this book. It is not a manual it is a series of thoughts and and some fantastic ideas which we hope to use!

“This is not a shrill or preachy book. It’s a carefully observed memoir tied into a larger conversation about how a less intense – but still structured – parenting style may deliver happier parents and children.”—Houston Chronicle

I will probably be buying this for people for baby shower presents.

Another good read: Great with Child by Beth Ann Fennelly

Again, easy to read, enjoyable. Writen by a writer (if that makes sense, which appeases my snobbish read-a-lot’ness) good, down to earth thoughts about becoming a mother.

“A toddler’s mother, both an intimate guide and an affectionate coach, writes to a pregnant friend about the transforming experience of motherhood. “These are letters I would have welcomed when I was pregnant,” says Beth Ann Fennelly, as she seeks to go beyond the nuts and bolts or sentimentality of other parenting literature. The letters range in tone from serious to sisterly, from light-hearted to downright funny. Some answer specific questions such as decisions about pain medication; others muse about the identity shift a woman encounters when she enters Mommyland or address our responsibility to the natural world. Still others explore the magic and mysteries of childbirth, the wonders of language, and the exhilaration (also the ambivalence) about a baby’s first steps to independence.”