According to a national survey developed by the parenting club Bounty which analysed 580,000 babies born in 2009, Jack (for boys) and Olivia (for girls) are still the UK’s favourite top baby names, a leading preference which both names retained from 2008 when they were also acclaimed Top Baby Names 2008.

According to the authors of the survey, popular culture is a major source of inspiration for parents, with names related with celebrities, movies, sports and TV shows playing a big role on the naming of the future generations. It’s all explained on the Telegraph’s article.

Being Portuguese, I think I am relatively immune to the British celebrity cult. The English version of my baby’s name (Eleanor) ranks a modest 77th position in the top 100 girl’s name of 2009.

TOP 10 BABY BOYS NAMES 2009:
1. Jack
2. Oliver
3. Charlie
4. Harry
5. Alfie
6. Thomas
7. Joshua
8. William
9. James
10. Daniel

TOP 10 BABY GIRLS NAMES 2009:
1. Olivia
2. Ruby
3. Sophie
4. Chloe
5. Emily
6. Grace
7. Jessica
8. Lily
9. Amelia
10. Evie

Given that every single parent around the industrialized world has (or should) have one pushchair to move the baby around, how hard can it be to choose one for a newborn baby? It’s easy, right? To help you answer that question, take a look at this article published in the Financial Times about the Maclaren baby strollers and after that, to put a bit more of sensation on top of it, take a look at the headline of the Daily Mail about the same subject.

What it states, essentially, is that the US Consumer Product Safety Commission says that the popular “[Maclaren] baby stroller’s hinge mechanism poses a finger-tip amputation and laceration hazard to the child when the consumer is unfolding/opening the stroller”. And as a consequence, 12 children suffered amputations from getting finger tips caught in the hinges in the USA. It’s easy, right?

I happen to be one of the customers in Britain who have bought one of those Maclaren baby stroller models (a Techno XLR) but, together with my wife, we still decided to use it because, as far I’ve read until now, the risk is low (12 children affected for one million units sold over 10 years) and requires a reasonable degree of lack of attention and bad luck for something so terrible to happen. I am not paranoid and I certainly don’t have the litigant spirit of the American people, so for me this news, although very disturbing, serves only to emphasize even more that every single detail counts in the first months of a baby’s life.

Here’s the criteria I used to choose this baby stroller:

Safety and confort. The baby’s well being is the primary and ultimate goal. This pushchair looks spacious, comfortable and has a 5 point harness for added security. The BBC program “Watchdog” considered it to be one of the safest pushchairs in the UK market, last September.

Use. Living in a second floor without lift means I will have to carry it up and down the stairs every day. Also, I don’t have a car so I’ll probably use public transports often, so it was important that it was compact and lightweight. The Techno XLR weights 8kg.

Price. There are strollers for practically every budget. I looked for something in the middle range that could be good value for money.

Duration. Ideally, I intend to use the stroller for as long as possible, unless it proves to be strictly necessary to get something different for different ages. The age range is from birth to 3 years.

Customer reviews. I searched online, compared prices and read reviews. Most of them about the Maclaren Techno XLR are very positive, with ratings usually ranking an average of 4 points out of 5.

Reputation. I never paid any kind of attention to Maclaren’s baby strollers until my wife was pregnant and, until this incident, I heard nothing but good things about the Maclaren brand. I have to assume this is still valid. And every baby shop (Kidicare, Mothercare, Bambino Direct, etc…) sells them.

Style. Looking good is not my top priority, but of course I want my baby to travel with style!

What about you? Will you still buy a Maclaren baby stroller for your newborn after what you’ve read here?
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Now that the birth date of my baby is becoming closer, one of the things that I started thinking about is a newborn baby gift to celebrate the arrival of the little one. After all, the birth is a very unique occasion which deserves something special to mark the date. Truth said, the princess (I already know it’s a baby girl) will hardly distinguish a doll from a bib, but in any case, more than anything, getting one or several unique newborn baby gifts is a very pleasant way to celebrate the bundle of joy caused by the arrival of the princess.

In fact, as a dad-to-be I started long ago focusing in getting all the baby essentials, which I compiled on my printable document Essentials Baby Checklist. Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been thinking about the importance of start searching for baby learning toys that can somehow facilitate and stimulate the baby’s understanding of his new world.

Now, compared to the hard task of packing the basics for baby I would say that there is not much science in finding the right gift for a newborn: all it takes is a bit of imagination and creativity. One can even be a bit pragmatic and get more things which will be absolutely necessary for the first months. And in that sense, the Anglo-Saxon tradition of doing baby showers can be quite handy and a precious help to parents, specially when its the first child.

One of the ideas I am considering for my newborn baby gift is to create an everlasting reminder of my baby’s footprint or hand print – or something similar, original. This is because I want to get something unique and personalized that I could show my little one within a few years and know that it would still be a special gift that she will remember. In any case, I am sure that the best gift parents can offer their baby is their time, love and affection.

And of course, let’s not forget that after the delivery the true heroes are the proud parents – and for that, the new mom and dad will deserve a decent bottle of Champagne!  The Veuve Clicquot is already on the ice waiting…

Looking on the bright side, all the sleepless nights and hard work are incredibly rewarding work, both before and after the birth. But while we try to adapt ourselves for the little one, the problem is that the time-consuming household duties, the home-to-work-to-home commuting routine, preparing dinner, shopping for the baby (and the parents) and other little things will still remain an integral part of our daily life’s.

So, the question is how do we manage to fit all of this into our new daily lives? How can we find a balance between the commitment to the enormous responsibility of raising a newborn and at the same time keep the chains in motion in the household, career and personal life?

Unsurprisingly, the short answer is: buy your baby products online, buy your household goods online, shop for your clothes online, go to the supermarket online, pay your bills online, do everything you can online.

On a critical time like the beginning of parenthood and motherhood, that kind of convenience and flexibility is simply golden. Its well known, of course, that buying baby products online has obviously many advantages as it allows us to check prices, compare offers from different brands, search promotions in different websites, read other people’s reviews of the products we need, obtain detailed information about products, investigate compliance of safety norms, etc…

And not only that, as it is very common for online shops to have special discounts and targeted Internet campaigns with better prices than on the physical stores. In that sense, we should thank Tim Barners Lee for creating the Internet 20 years ago and for allowing us, today, to comfortably searching online for what we need, placing the orders on our PCs and simply wait for the purchases to arrive at our doorstep.

Bearing this in mind, I am referring a few online shops which I am currently using for my own price comparisons and where I buy baby products online. Since I live in London, UK, I usually try to take a walk to one or two reference stores (like Mothercare or Babies R Us ) and check some of the most important products with my own eyes, but I then buy almost everything online. Here it goes:

Boots.com	Mothercare	Toys R Us
Kiddicare	Bambino Direct	Babies in Amazon

A sample video demo of a Mothercare Spin Pushchair

As I am myself anxiously preparing for the big moment, January 2010, I have been – together with my wife -making a list of all the basics required for my baby arrival. And to gather that information, I have consulted with the best experts in the field (mums and dads, of course, and a couple of passionate nurses) and I’ve put together a checklist with the essential items  for the babythat I know I will definitely need for the first months. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it should contain all the basics for the first months after the baby is born.

As me and my wife were researching the web for a decent list of baby items that we would need for the first months, essentially to use as a baby shopping guide, we got a little frustrated. There’s an immense amount of information out there on the web, but I didn’t really find a quick checklist of essential items for babies that I could print and help me buying the essential things. As we faced the same dilemma, we decided to make this checklist for baby, which ideally contains all the essential items plus some we strongly recommend.

Hopefully, this website will help to fill that gap by allowing people to download our essentials checklist for baby and use it as guide to plan the newborn arrival. Oh, and by the way, if you find that this list is incomplete or something crucial is missing, please do come forward and help us improve with your comments and suggestions.

View checklist for baby

Nevertheless, children start learning since the moment they are born and, in their first months of life, they’ll absorb an incredible amount of information which will help them to interpret the environment around and guide their first steps in this world.

That is why I realized it’s so important to start thinking about learning toys for the baby that can somehow reinforce and facilitate their learning curve. After all, playing with baby learning toys is going to be absolutely crucial for my child development as it will determine how good and how fast the hand-eye coordination will evolve, and how the motor and visual skills will progress. And while it’s important to make sure that the baby is learning and growing, that can only be fully achieved if he or she is having fun at the same time while playing with the toys.

Paediatricians usually recommend parents to talk, sing and play as much as possible with their babies, saying that these basic activities will help them to develop the vocabulary and understand how to communicate, while helping the baby to build self-confidence and get emotional bonding with the parents. But they also emphasize that babies start developing speech, reading and thinking since they’re born.

The experts also say that in their first month’s babies and infants are better stimulated with toys which appeal more to their sight, hearing and touch. Recommend learning toys for newborn babies are balls, bath toys, soft books, plastic and robber toys with coloured pictures, etc… Later, when a baby is between 6 months and 1 year, mobiles and rattles should be placed around so that they can start picking things and develop their hand skills. After one year, the key of the game is really to stimulate the baby’s senses and curiosity with puzzles and games, musical instruments, educational games, and so on.