Baby nursery ideas

 

Well it has happened, the nesting instinct has finally kicked in and this week we have been busily tackling and finishing off the baby's nursery. 

Normally when I want inspiration and ideas for anything I turn to the Internet, but for creating a babies nursery there is such a thing as too much choice and too many ideas. 

In this post you will find everything that we've purchased to create our perfect baby's nursery. There will be additional posts to follow covering baby preparation tips including, what to put into your maternity bag, as well as birth plan suggestions and other baby related items. 

Creating your baby's first nursery is a really special time and we have really loved creating ours. After much procrastination we decided on a monkey and giraffe jungle themed bedroom. 

The stickers from StickersWall (£24.99) are a lovely way to brighten up, decorate and transform a babies room. The only thing you will require is two people and patience to put them up and best of all when you are tired of them you can easily peal them off.   

Within the design we tried to create a room that would grow and develop with our baby into an active toddler (hopefully not a cheeky monkey). So we additionally added some educational numbers (£12.95). 

Alphabet stickers from Decowall London (£10.95). 

Instead of a Moses basket we've opted for the Stokke Sleepi Mini (£445) not only is the Scandinavian design absolutely beautiful but it is also amazingly efficient in size, meaning that we can have it in our room for the first six months. 

The cot has adjustable height positions too so we have the ability to adapt it as the baby grows, along with extra extention packs that can be purchased to fit a child up to 10 years old.

To protect the mattress we have purchased from The Little Green Sheep an organic mattress protector for the Stokke (£17.95) and organic jersey fitted sheet (£13.95). 

The wonderful animal mobile is from TinyLove "Magical Night" (£44.99). Now I am not going to lie, turning this on bought a huge smile to my face. 

The mobile has three musical settings: Lullaby, Classic and Nature. Whilst the music is playing it projects animal scenes and rotates. You can see it in action here: 

We have also purchased some additional things so that the little one feels a sense of security and is snug in the cot for the early days.  

To begin with we will use the Sleepyhead portable baby pod (£99) 0-8 months in the Stokke. 

This might seem like a very expensive pillow but looks can be deceiving, any new parent will tell you how the first few months of sleep deprivation are hell. This is our attempt at trying to reduce this. 

The Sleepyhead is a complete bed in itself so perfect for travelling, can be used for tummy time and as a changing station. You only need to read the wonderful reviews for this product to see that it is money well spent. The only downside is that for many the Sleepyhead is outgrown well before eight months. 

I'm not sure that we will use this Mamas and Papas sleep bag (£24) from birth, I guess it will depend how big the 'little' one is.  

Keeping with the animal theme we have also purchased the following: 

Monkey rug (£14)

Mama and Papa two by two changing mat (£14.95)

GroEgg - digital room thermometer (£13.49)

Taking the stress out of knowing if the baby's room is too hot or cold. We personalised ours as a penguin with this additional topper. 

Finding the right baby monitor I found incredibly stressful. I knew that it was an important purchase and one that I needed to do plenty of research on. 

There is just too much choice. Do you go for audio only, one with video, what about sound and movement sensors. One word STRESS!

The only help I can give is to have an initial look at the options available, have a think about your living situation, what will work for you and then what is most important to make you feel confident in the product you have purchased. 

After lots of research we opted for the Angelcare Movement and Sound Monitor AC401 (£69.99). 

We went for the one with two parent units which is more expensive, but this is because we wanted an additional unit for different locations in the house. If you don't then John Lewis at the time of writing this post cannot be beaten on the price. 

Whilst we don't have a small baby to test the monitor on yet; one pearl of wisdom I will share is to set this up prior to the baby arriving. Whilst easy to set up you want to make sure that you have done it right, especially if you have chosen a movement pressure pad. Setting this up after birth having had little sleep and under pressure is not advisable. 

I promise when the baby arrives I will do an updated review on how I think the monitor performs in real life.

Another purchase we made was the Tommee Tippee nappy disposal bin. Now nappies and which to choose is very personal so I am not going to get into this on here. But one thing that is shared regardless of the nappies you choose is the average newborn will need their nappy changed twelve times in a day.

That's a phenomenal amount of nappies and to be quite frank the potential of a very smelly flat or house. The Tommee Tippee is a great way to lock in odour, we purchased ours on Amazon (£12.49) which comes with one cartridge.

Additional cartridges can be purchased separately and retail at about £10 for three cartridges. 

Our final baby purchase was a night light so that I could see my way in the corridor between the nursery and our bedroom.

Whilst not essential, I thought that this might help prevent me breaking my neck when I am in search of nappies, baby wipes etc. 

I hope that this post was interesting to read and helpful. If you have any questions do ask in the comments below. 

If you were to design your dream nursery how would you decorate it?