A cotton gauze blanket in four layers, which is the reason it drapes the way it does. It swaddles a newborn now, and at two it's the one over her lap in the stroller. Then the TENCEL modal sleeping bag for every night in between, in Stars Fog, with a zip for the changes that happen in the dark. Our own burp cloths in a set of four, because the one over her shoulder at three in the morning is in the wash by noon.
The Hatch Go is rechargeable and palm-sized, so the sound beside the bassinet goes wherever the bassinet goes, room to room and house to house.
Notes to New Mothers is the one that isn't for the baby. Two editors started it in their own first months, asking sixty-five writers and artists what nobody had told them. The entries are short on purpose, a paragraph or two, because that's what fits between feeds. She can open it at three in the morning, read one page, and know that the person who wrote it was awake at three in the morning too.
And the elephant, hand crocheted in bamboo yarn, for the weeks after when she starts to reach.
Good to know
- The rattle lives beside the bassinet rather than in it
- Composed to order and wrapped in tissue, with your message written out by hand
