Blinging Up Baby

"I was one week from my due date," she says, "and all my friends were talking about their nurseries -- how great their nursery was, what kind of crib they got -- and we didn't even have a room for him yet." Though she knows, really, that Ezra didn't care, Mlyn says she couldn't help feeling her new baby would hold the dust and detritus against her somehow.

"I didn't want to bring [Ezra] into his new house through the basement," she says, though that was the way she and her husband typically entered. "I didn't want that to be the first thing he saw."

Mlyn and her husband fell into a trap all too common among new parents, says Vicki Iovine, author of the best-selling "Girlfriends' Guide" series of books, including "The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy," "The Girlfriends' Guide to Toddlers" and "The Girlfriends' Guide to Baby Gear."

"It's a very well known fact that once you find out you're pregnant, you do the least sensible thing you could possibly do, which is to move, remodel or add on to your house," says Iovine. "Then, if you have a couple of weeks where you're theoretically 'overdue,' you start painting. And of course you don't believe that any carpet a stranger has ever walked on can be a safe place for your child to crawl and play."

Iovine urges new parents -- and especially new mothers -- to take a deep breath and stay calm when faced with the vast sea of supposed "must-haves." But she knows it can be hard to stand up to aggressive product marketing -- not to mention parenting books and magazines filled with alarming anecdotes -- aimed directly at this emotionally vulnerable population.

"When I had my first baby, my mind had already gone to all the darkest places," Iovine says. "It almost didn't matter that they were feeding off my paranoia: 'Prevent this, prevent that. Prevent your child from getting his hair caught in the bottom of a Jacuzzi and drowning. Prevent your child from inadvertently boarding a plane and leaving the country.' All you do when you're waiting for your first child is read, and as you do, you keep creating more anxiety as you hear about all these things that could possibly happen."

Christina Vercelletto is the products editor at Babytalk magazine, an offshoot of Parenting magazine. She encourages parents to trust their instincts over the thousands of gadgets designed to do what moms and dads should already be doing themselves.

Without mentioning it by name, she alludes to the Lenox Juvenile TattleTale Smart Child Seat -- equipped with sensors and an audio track that chides your squirming child should he or she undo the latches or otherwise try to escape -- as an example of a gadget on which parents can grow too reliant.

"Batteries die, and electronics stop working, and someday that car seat is not going to talk when it should have, and the mom will have fallen out of the habit of checking the straps herself. That's the danger, and I think it applies to a lot of things you see on the shelves that would seem to safeguard your baby's health and safety.

"Nothing can substitute for the vigilance of the parent," she says. "You are the first line of defense. Anything else you might buy after that is backup. There's no product you can buy that's going to substitute for a watchful eye."

Vercelletto says there are really only a handful (or maybe a minivan-ful) of things brand-new parents should definitely have. At the top of the list is a properly installed infant car seat. ("That's essential; they won't let you out of the hospital without it.") Second is a stroller -- "one that goes with your lifestyle," she says, assuaging this reporter's guilt for going with the $49.99 Kolcraft Universal Car Seat Carrier over the $2,800 SilverCross Balmoral pram favored by Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Roberts. And third is a good sturdy crib, though "used cribs or hand-me-downs are out of the question," she says, citing safety considerations.

Vercelletto says she couldn't have raised her own children without a bouncy seat. "You're going to need someplace just to put the baby," she says. The most tricked-out among them, she gushes, "have lights and toys on them; they have vibrations, massage, all kinds of bells and whistles. I found that I really used mine all the time."

Clearly there's room in any new parents' "must-have" list for a bit of personal discretion. Necessity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

To which I can only add: Behold the Original Crumb Chum bib, with patented, unique chin-to-toe coverage! Behold the BebeSounds Angelcare Movement Sensor, which sounds an alarm should your baby remain still in his crib for more than 20 seconds! Behold the Dex Baby Wipe Warmer with Changing Light, which, according to its manufacturer, "takes the jolt out of cold wipes!"

And to my due-at-any-minute baby: Ready when you are -- almost. I just have a few more quick errands to run. . . .