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Comment by songzme | Hacker News Reader

My baby is due in 4 weeks. My wife and I shopped for weeks trying to buy a 2nd hand crib that was affordable (We ended up getting one for free from a neighbor on nextdoor).

Never did it cross my mind that I could just use a cardboard box! I will definitely make a cardboard box for my upcoming baby, use it as much as I can, and see if I could get by without a crib! Perfect DIY project for a stay home dad, cribs always felt excessive to me.

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I have several kids. Let me share some experiences with you:

A card board box is probably fine starting out, but your baby will out grow it.

The sleeping container should have walls high enough to prevent him/her from climbing out - this might take 9 months, but younwill want it

You NEED to remove all fluf and excess padding in your DIY "crib". Babies can suffocate on cute "fluffy" blankets

If you build a wooden crib, pay special care to the distance between vertical bars. Specifically, you want narrow slats so your baby cannot stick his/her head through it

My current child is in a portable "pack and play". They are cheap, portable, and fit in our closet. She turns 2 next month and it was a really good idea.

The recommendation for crib slats is narrow enough so that the body can't get through, not just the head (so they can't wiggle out feet first and then get their heads stuck).

https://www.cpsc.gov/safety-education/safety-guides/cribs/cr...

Not worth DIYing anything that can potentially kill your baby. All of the stuff sold is engineered to prevent this from happening. Zero percent chance I'm hammering some 2 x 4's together to save $80.

Pack 'n Plays are a Godsend. Whomever invented them is a saint, and every first-time parent should be issued one.

Just for balance - I bought a crib and we never used it. My daughter only stayed asleep when next to us.

I went with this solid wood crib from IKEA and stained it myself. Looks great pretty darn cheap and easy to break down and store. Can also convert to a trundle style and double as the child’s first real bed so it gets several years of use.

My wife got one of those boxes from a places that gives them out for free but the kid out grows it fast and it is hell on your back since it is really unsafe to leave it on a table or dresser where it could be easily knocked off. Now it collects dust and junk and I can’t get her to dispose of it.

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/sniglar-crib-beech-50248541/

That ikea crib is perfectly executed- I couldn’t come up with a good reason to pay more for something

Ikea, indeed. We had what was called Gulliver at the time. Relatively cheap, adjustable (higher for first 6 or so months, then lower, and finally one side removable to make it a toddler bed).

One thing we learned is that babies are constantly on the move, even when swaddled, always find ways to tip things over, roll off sofas and chairs, ... and puke over anything and everything.

Well, we love them!

Bear in mind:

* Mass manufactured Finnish ones have a base-mat that fits snugly. A very slight gap is a suffocation risk.

* When your first baby arrives, you spend a lot more time than you're used to on your knees. Cribs, being raised, are far easier on your knees than a box on the floor.

My wife's grandparents actually made a metal frame specifically designed to hold the Finnish maternity box at a comfortable height. Now it's in use for our newborn, since the box size hasn't changed.

Very true. I have a 2 month old and I’m tall enough that the bassinet we bought was uncomfortably low. I ended up building a platform to raise it.

As a non parent surrounded by friends having kids I often wonder how much money and faff is wasted on things kids won’t even remember.

Not only that, but money wasted on stuff that gets used for 1-2 years then is no longer needed.

My wife and I joined a "free baby stuff" facebook group and got almost everything we needed for free.

At the earlier ages stuff doesn't even come close to being useful for a year. I remember going to a local charity shop and buying a sackful of baby-clothes. I paid €10 for a huge bag and I remember that some of the same stuff got donated back a few months later - having never been worn.

Babies can grow so quickly that buying clothes used and sharing stuff amongst other local parents is the only sensible thing to do.

Many things you buy for a baby are more to make your own life easier. Doesn't really matter that the baby remembers nothing about it.

As with most gifts, the giving of presents is often more meaningful for the person giving. The save with kids toys. The parents are really buying it for themselves, perhaps to express their feelings. As an aside, the parents are also learning. No one is born with experience, so experimenting witj things until you get it right, happens with kids stuff too.

A side effect of birth rates and other demographic trends, people no longer have a huge network of friends and relatives with kids, to talk sense into us, and to share outgrown stuff. When I was an infant, my parents probably had a dozen other families with young kids all living on the same block. You also experienced the baby-hood of siblings and neighbors while you were still a kid yourself.

As a parent, I look back and think how much time and money I've wasted on things and actions my kids neither wanted nor remember. I look at my current life and wonder what I'll feel that way about in the future. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell what is worthwhile and what is not at the time.

As another parent, I completely agree. Of course, I also look back at all the time and money I wasted in my early thirties before I had kids, and also in my twenties, and also in college...

Why would you set the benchmark at "the kid remembering it"?

If your baby is due in 4 weeks it’s likely it’ll be quite a few months until a crib is needed. The first months will pass in a tired blur of the baby sleeping only on you or your partner, followed waking up the second you try to put them on anything else. Once they use a crib though just buy one — you won’t have time to build and it’s important to make it safe.

That's not the case for all babies, imho they come with different habits right from the start. I have ~10 kids in my closest family, all with different sleeping habits.

I would think it's not the case for the majority of babies even. Some parents do keep the baby constantly at their side when sleeping and some are doing that weird co-sleeping thing with a raised cot right next to their own, but most parents (in modern societies where cots are used) seem to just do the usual: give the child their own place to sleep and let them develop a healthy sleeping habit right from the start.

We had our son in his own cot in his own room at night (within hearing range obviously) and in a wicker cradle during the day. We moved to an infant bed as he grew. He moved to a normal size bed a few months ago at 2½ (rather soon, but he's tall and outgrew the infant bed). He's a good sleeper.

I'm from Sweden, having a young baby sleep the night in a separate room is almost unheard of over here! How do you handle the first time with multiple nightly feedings?

We have 3 kids, we've had our babies between us in our bed for the first two weeks or so, thereafter a bedside crib for about 3 months until they've outgrown it, then switched over to a separate IKEA crib, still in our bedroom. We've then moved them over to their own bedrooms somewhere around their first birthday.

Check out your local Buy Nothing group on facebook as well. I have gotten tons of baby stuff from there. While we have purchased quite a few things over the past year, had I had a little more patience, and had my wife been more on board, I am pretty sure we could have acquired pretty much everything except diapers from Buy Nothing.

For the early months (or longer if you child proof the entire room), you can do just the crib mattress directly on the floor. This is also an easy way to set up a secondary nap spot somewhere else in the house (since it's safer for small infants to sleep in the same room as an adult vs. by themselves).

Don't stress too much about it. Very few items are really necessary for a newborn, most things can be gotten when you need them.

As DIY projects go, check out something called a "baby nest". It's an insert that can be used for either a shared bed or a crib, easy to sew and can be convenient.

Not sure if an Amazon box would be equal, they have a smell to them. It looks like the Finnish boxes are wrapped in some material and I'd guess that some kind of checks would be made to ensure safety.

I wish your family all the best.

Don't forget about wet cardboard smell, which is full of weird volatile organic compounds.

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