Congratulations on your new bundle of joy to be!!! While you may feel like there are 40 long weeks of waiting, this time flies by and putting a registry together is not something you’re going to want to rush. There are so many different baby products out there it’s overwhelming, where do you even start? First off is finding the right registry site for you. Major registries are babylist, amazon, target, and walmart. Here I will give you some pros and cons to each.
First pro for all of the registries listed, they all have free welcome boxes that you get for just signing up. The welcome boxes are great ways to sample a few different products like pacifiers, bottles, diapers etc. Just because you research the best bottle for your formula or breast milk fed baby, doesn’t mean your baby will like it the best. For me, I had tried 5 different bottles before my son picked the mam bottle/nipple combo. It may sound silly but babies really do find what they like best, my son spit out every pacifier we gave him other than his favorite brand, and would fuss and not take a bottle well if it wasn’t the mam bottle. So the bottles that I had put on my registry were useless. This is why having a few different samples of things to try out is really nice. Especially when they are free from these welcome kits, and more than likely you will get a few gift cards at your baby shower that you can purchase these items quickly to have delivered to your door.
Babylist
Babylist is one of the more popular baby registry sites out there because you can add items from different websites to one registry. If the same item is sold from multiple stores, it will give price comparisons and options on each product. Obviously having the ease of one registry is nice, but for buyers it isn’t the easiest because you may end up making purchases from multiple stores. I know I have shopped babylist before, and finding products on the registry that are all from one store can be annoying. Babylist also keeps track of who purchased what items, making your thank you cards a lot easier.
Also with baby registry, it’s harder to return items that are purchased from anywhere but babylist itself. Whereas if you are registered through target or amazon, they can simply scan your registry barcode and easily return or exchange an item, if you are registered at babylist and no gift receipt is provided you don’t have a way to return the item. This is especially annoying with amazon because there is no return without a receipt option.
Babylist does offer a 15% off completion discount, but only items that come from babylist qualify, not all your items registered for. The products from babylist itself tend to be a little higher priced as well.
Amazon baby registry
Using amazon for your baby registry is similar to the other registries where you get a free welcome box with samples of different baby items, and you also get a completion discount, but this discount is only 10%. Amazon is nice because almost everyone is familiar with the website and orders from there routinely, and most items are free shipping. The website also keeps track of who purchases what which is convenient for thank you cards. I do like that you can return items from amazon if you don’t have the receipt but they were purchased off of your registry. I have never tried it, but I have returned items to amazon before and its always pretty simple to do. This way when you end up with three of the same item, you can return the ones you won’t use and use the funds towards something else you need for the baby.
The only thing I don’t always love about amazon is that all items do not come as shown. If it’s a name brand, then yes it’s usually spot on, but if you try and buy an off brand of something, its not always the nicest quality. I found this with some of the baby clothing, they have weird sizes, and newborn is really like the size of 12-18 months. With amazon, you are also limited to what they sell, if there are items you really want but are not sold on amazon, you would have to have two different registries, or purchase those items yourself.
Target Baby registry
Last but certainly not least, target. Target offers a lot of different baby supplies and carries a lot of big names especially online. Target also works well for the people who like to physically see and touch something before they buy it, which may seem old school, but I can think of quite a few people who are like that. Gift tracking is also pretty easy with Target, but if people purchase the item in store and don’t go on the website and mark it purchased, then some gifts may be duplicated.
If you register with Target and get target gift cards, they are really nice for diapers, or formula, or baby medicines later on as well. Target is super easy to return items from if they were purchased off your registry, that is if you have a target near you. Same as with amazon, if target does not carry everything you want on your registry, you may have to find substitutes, have more than one registry, or buy the items yourself.
In Conclusion
There are tons of other registry options out there, I feel like Walmart and target are very similar, although I can say I have ordered items from Walmart before that say they are the name brand. Then they come in the mail and the item is not name brand or what I ordered. So be aware of that when registering through Walmart.
All in all, I think it’s most important to pick a store that’s going to work best for you and your family.
Happy Shopping!!
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