Baby Equipment Checklist: The Ultimate List for 2026

In February 2024, our son Jonáš was born two months premature. At that point we’d already bought quite a few things, but plenty of essential baby equipment — like a pram, for instance — was still missing. Thanks to the baby equipment checklist I’d been building for six months, I was able to order everything in a single evening and focus on my wife and our son, who was fighting for his life in the NICU.

There are hundreds of online shops dedicated to babies and thousands of variations of similar products out there. It’s not easy to find your way through it all, and under pressure you’ll make mistakes. Having a clear plan and knowing in advance what you’ll need for your baby, how much it’ll cost, and where to buy everything well ahead of time is simply essential.

That’s why I decided to publish our baby equipment checklist for all the future mums and dads out there. If you’re at the beginning of the process — or feeling as lost as I was — this list is for you. I’ll show you everything you’ll need and the specific brands and products we chose.

Essentials for Mum During Pregnancy

Let’s start with the mum-to-be, who several months before the due date starts getting backache and tummy pain, struggles to sleep, and needs some relief.

Pregnancy Pillow

A pregnancy pillow is basically a large horseshoe-shaped cushion that mum wraps around her body to support her bump and get a better night’s sleep. Lucka couldn’t stop raving about hers throughout the pregnancy.

We got this pregnancy pillow.

Pregnancy Seatbelt

If you’re driving during pregnancy, every car journey poses a real risk to your baby. Standard seatbelts press in all the wrong places and can cause discomfort — or worse.

That’s why it’s worth getting a pregnancy seatbelt adapter that repositions the belt away from your bump. Lucka wrote a detailed review of our BeSafe Pregnant seatbelt.

Exercise Ball

Exercise during pregnancy is important, and for that you’ll need an exercise ball. 😊 Pick whatever size feels right for you — everyone’s different.

Hypnobirthing Course

Although things turned out completely differently for us, we’d been preparing for a calm, natural birth. We went on a weekend hypnobirthing course where we learned absolutely everything about how labour works.

All the fears that both Lucka and I had simply melted away. Suddenly we knew exactly what we were getting into and how we wanted the birth to look.

If the idea that birth can be beautiful appeals to you, I’d recommend first reading the book HypnoBirthing by Marie Mongan, which walks you through the whole concept of self-hypnosis for labour.

Baby Equipment and Mum’s Hospital Bag

Don’t stress too much about your hospital bag. Check with your maternity unit about what they provide and what you need to bring yourself. Policies vary widely — some hospitals supply almost everything, while others expect you to bring your own.

If everything goes smoothly, you won’t be in hospital for more than 5 days, so there’s no need to over-pack. The hospital will take care of the baby — you don’t need to bring anything for them. So you’re mainly packing for yourself.

Because you never know when or where you’ll give birth (we certainly didn’t plan on things going the way they did), it’s best to have a bag packed with the basics from around month 5 of pregnancy — and keep it with you.

• maternity notes + genetic screening results
• photo ID and NHS/insurance card
• comfortable open-toed slippers (maternity wards tend to be very warm)
• button-up nightshirt and dressing gown
• bigger stretchy knickers (to fit those massive maternity pads 🙂)
• 2 towels
• 2 nursing bras (we recommend the Medela nursing bra)
• 1 pack of breast pads
• 2 packs of maternity pads
• toiletries
• baby soap and shower gel
• comfortable maternity clothes (you’ll still have a bump for a while after the birth)

For a more premium experience, you can also get ready-made hospital bag kits — for example, the Frida Mom Hospital Kit saves you half the packing.

That’s the bare minimum. If you want to feel more comfortable and avoid using shared hospital equipment — like the communal breast pump — you can bring more. Nobody’s going to turn you away. We also packed:

• baby clothes
• Medela Freestyle breast pump
• Medela silicone breast milk collector
• Philips Avent steriliser
• vitamins and minerals for Lucka
• a large water bottle

Baby Equipment for Home

We’re gadget lovers and enjoy buying the latest tech. Jonáš may also be our only child, so we’re not holding back. I’m writing this article several weeks after bringing Jonáš home, so I can tell you which items we actually use and how they help.

Snoo Smart Bassinet

The Snoo Smart Bassinet by Happiest Baby is a beautifully designed crib with a built-in motor, speaker, sensors, and a mobile app. It detects when your baby is waking up or getting restless and soothes them back to sleep.

The bassinet gently rocks the baby from side to side across several intensity levels, automatically adjusting based on how unsettled the baby is. It also plays different types of white noise to help calm them down.

By default, the bassinet rocks all night long — fortunately, you can turn that off. We don’t want to raise a little sailor! 😂 Jonáš has been sleeping well so far, so we haven’t needed the smart features much yet, but that’ll probably change soon.

Moonboon Hammock

What initially seemed like an unnecessary luxury turned out to be the thing I appreciate the most. This suspended cocoon with a motor that rocks the baby to sleep has been an absolute game-changer for us.

Jonáš falls asleep in the Moonboon within five minutes, skipping the dreaded drowsiness phase — that stage where the baby is exhausted but can’t quite drop off and starts whimpering.

The Moonboon doesn’t have any smart features (apart from an app I never even opened). The motor has two simple buttons — one for rocking duration and one for rocking intensity.

The hammock is most useful if you have somewhere to hang it. If you don’t have a ceiling hook, you can buy a freestanding frame, but that feels like overkill to me.

Moses Basket by Sleepee

We both work from home and move around the flat throughout the day, so we needed more than one sleeping spot for the baby.

A Moses basket turned out to be a brilliant choice — a wicker basket on a wooden stand that gently rocks.

The basket doesn’t have any smart features, so I rock Jonáš with my foot — it sits right next to the kitchen table where I work on my laptop once or twice a day. Inside the basket we also have:

• a swaddle
• a positioning pillow
• a baby nest

Cybex e-Priam Pushchair

Choosing a pushchair didn’t take long — I already knew about Cybex, and I simply had to have a pram with a battery. Plenty of people will tell you it’s a pram for city parents who sit in coffee shops. The design certainly fits that description (it’s genuinely gorgeous!), but besides looking great, the Cybex is also seriously sturdy and well-sprung. We have the Cybex e-Priam Platinum.

We’ve had no trouble taking the Cybex over cobblestones, sand, grass, and gravel. The electric motor:

• assists pushing on flat ground
• helps push uphill
• helps brake going downhill
• stops automatically if you let go on a slope

These features matter to us because besides Jonáš, we also have two dogs — so going out is quite the circus. We’re constantly stopping and I don’t always remember to stamp on the brake. Having the safety net of sensors that detect whether I’m holding the handlebar is a godsend. If I’m not, the pram stops on its own within a few metres — even on a steep hill.

Cybex Cloud T i-Size Car Seat

The Cloud T i-Size car seat comes with a base that clips into your car in under a minute. The base lets you place the seat in the car and then rotate it into the rear-facing position — plus it has sensors that alert you if something isn’t quite right (for example, if the seat hasn’t clicked fully into place).

The seat also fits onto our pushchair chassis instead of the carrycot, so for shorter trips there’s no need to bring the carrycot — just snap the car seat onto the pushchair frame.

The seat reclines to a fully flat position, so Jonáš can lie in it much like in a crib — outside the car, it’s far more comfortable and safer for him.

It’s probably one of the heavier car seats out there — I didn’t research many others — but I’d rather carry an extra kilo and know my son is safe than go for flimsy lightweight plastic.

Medela Freestyle Breast Pump

I chose the breast pump too 😀. After the premature birth, it was clear we’d need one — and the hospital’s communal pumps weren’t great — so I immediately got Lucka the latest Medela Freestyle. Besides making the whole ward jealous, it really is a top-notch pump.

You can express from both breasts simultaneously. The collection shields tuck into your bra, with only thin air tubes running to a small motor that fits in your pocket.

Lucka walks around the flat and gets on with her day while pumping — it doesn’t restrict her at all, unlike the traditional bottle-style pumps.

The comfort level is in a completely different league. If you don’t mind spending a bit more, this is absolutely the one to get.

Izybaby Portable Bottle Warmer

Since Jonáš can’t yet fully breastfeed, Lucka is pumping regularly. And because we love to travel and can’t wait to get out and about again, we needed a feeding solution on the go.

Pumping is one thing (we have the pump), storing the milk is another (we have a portable car fridge and freezer), and warming it up is a third. The milk needs to be warm for feeding — either freshly expressed or reheated. And we don’t want to carry the pump on every outing, so we needed a way to warm stored milk.

Thanks to Instagram’s eerily good targeted ads, I discovered the Izybaby portable bottle warmer, which heats milk in just a few minutes and keeps it warm for ages. The battery lasts through several warming cycles, easily covering 1–2 full days of use.

Owlet Smart Sock

Jonáš spent six weeks hooked up to a blood oxygen saturation and heart rate monitor, so we were used to having a constant view of his vitals. Being disconnected from that monitor felt genuinely unsettling — suddenly you have no idea whether your baby is okay.

That’s one of many reasons we got the Owlet Smart Sock.

The sock contains the same type of sensor used in hospitals and continuously sends data to a base station in the middle of our flat. The moment something looks off — a drop in oxygen saturation, a dip in heart rate, or a loss of signal — the base station immediately sounds a loud alarm.

The base station also feeds data to a mobile app you can check from anywhere. So even when I’m out having a pint, I can see exactly how Jonáš is doing.

The sock also has its own analytics — it estimates whether Jonáš was awake or asleep and how good the sleep quality was. And it’s surprisingly accurate. 😊

Before buying, I was a bit on the fence because the internet is full of reviews complaining about how hard the sock is to put on, how inaccurate it is, and how it triggers false alarms constantly. That hasn’t been our experience at all.

We’ve been using the sock for weeks now, and I can confidently say those people simply aren’t putting it on correctly. If it’s not fitted properly, nothing works properly. The sock comes in three sizes, and it’s crucial to pick the one that fits your baby best.

Minu Baby Wrap

We’re with Jonáš 24/7 and don’t want him lying in a cot all day, so we do a lot of babywearing. Earlier on we did “kangaroo care” — that’s specifically for premature babies. For full-term babies, a standard wrap is the way to go.

There are loads of wraps on the market, but we have the Minu wrap and it’s fantastic. Apart from coming in a great colour that matches my skin tone 😂, it’s cut so that it can be tied in many different ways — you can carry your baby in it from birth right through to the toddler stage.

Lovevery Play Kit

Another Instagram ad win. Lovevery is a company that creates stage-based play kits tailored to each phase of a young child’s development. Every toy targets a specific area the baby is working on at that moment — so these aren’t your ordinary rattles. 😊

So far we have the first newborn set — the Play Gym — and Jonáš spends his time gazing at the black-and-white contrast cards.

TIP: Get $20 off Lovevery products using this link.

Philips Avent Baby Monitor

I don’t even want to think about how many hours I spent choosing a baby monitor. But in the end, I made a great pick: the Philips Avent Baby SCD923.

The monitor connects to Wi-Fi and streams video to an app, but it also has a radio-based feed independent of Wi-Fi, along with a portable wireless display with a two-way microphone.

Both modes work simultaneously — something 99% of other monitors can’t do.

The image quality is more than adequate, and the portable display lasts several hours with the screen continuously on — ideal for around the house. In our 135 m² flat, the signal is at 100% everywhere.

Twistshake Baby Bath

Picking a baby bath might not be as straightforward as you’d think. In some, the baby won’t sit well; in others, they won’t lie comfortably. Some can’t be drained easily or don’t come with a stand.

We ended up going with the Twistshake Luxury Bath Kit. It sits on a stand (the tub simply rests in it) and both the stand and the tub fold flat, tucking neatly into the corner of the bathroom.

Bath time is simple and we all enjoy it. No bending over awkwardly — and I drain the tub using the included hose straight into the bathtub.

Nappy Bin

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my home smelling like a nappy. So I went looking for a bin that would actually contain the smell — and discovered there’s an entire category of nappy disposal bins.

We chose the Magic Bin. It works. 🙂

Withings Thermo Digital Thermometer

We never had a decent thermometer at home, so when Jonáš arrived I decided to sort that out once and for all. I got the Withings Thermo digital thermometer, which syncs with the Withings app (Lucka and I both have Withings smartwatches). Every reading is stored in our stats — including Jonáš’s.

Nunito Positioning Pillow

We need to reposition Jonáš regularly to prevent flat head syndrome and to help with trapped wind. Again, there are loads of options on the market, but we know Michaela Kačírková through her book Motor Development in Children and so we went for the Nunito positioning pillows.

Investment Account for Baby

It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t start thinking about money from day one. I set up an investment portfolio for Jonáš on a Czech platform called Portu, where we’ll be contributing every month until he turns 18.

Portu buys ETFs on our behalf according to the strategy I chose. I don’t believe in stashing cash in savings accounts on principle, so Portu was the obvious choice. You can read more about how it works in my Portu review.

Other Baby Essentials You’ll Need

• Muslin cloths / cloth nappies
• Dummies
• Changing table
• Changing mat — I’d recommend one without raised edges in case you need to do physiotherapy exercises (the edges get in the way and you’ll end up having to move elsewhere)
• Baby hairbrush
• Baby laundry detergent — we use Cleanee (it could probably clean an iron, so we’re happy)
• I’ll keep updating this list! 😄

What to Set Up and Sort Out Before and After Baby Arrives

Let’s look at the admin you’ll need to take care of shortly after your baby is born. While the specifics below reflect our experience in the Czech Republic, similar tasks apply wherever you are — registering the birth, sorting out healthcare, and finding a doctor.

Birth Certificate

In the UK, you need to register the birth within 42 days (21 days in Scotland). The hospital will usually provide you with the paperwork. You’ll need to visit the local register office with your ID. If you’re married, bring your marriage certificate; if you’re not married and want both parents listed, you’ll both need to attend.

Healthcare Registration

Register your baby with your GP surgery as soon as possible after the birth. In the UK, your baby is automatically entitled to NHS care, but you’ll need to formally register them to get an NHS number and ensure continuity of care.

Choosing a GP / Paediatrician

Ideally, arrange this before the birth. In some areas it can be tricky to get registered at a popular surgery, so start looking a few months ahead. After birth, a midwife will visit you at home, and you’ll have a first health visitor check within 10–14 days.

Setting Up a Savings or Investment Account for Your Child

The best gift you can give your child is thinking about their future. Some families set up traditional savings accounts, but with inflation these rarely keep pace. A better option is a Junior ISA or investment account where the whole family can contribute.

You don’t need to be a financial expert — there are platforms that let you set up an automated investment account with average annual returns of around 8%. If you contribute roughly €9,000 over the years, it could grow to approximately €20,800 by the time your child turns 18. That’s well worth it.

Plus, you can tell grandparents and other relatives to skip the toys and contribute to the account instead.

You’ll find a very good guide here. You’ll need the child’s details first, and after they turn 18 the account automatically transfers to them.