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A Sleek Diaper Bag
Béis The Diaper Pack
A Nose Unplugger
FridaBaby Electric NoseFrida
A Cozy Carrier
BabyBjörn Baby Carrier Mini
Transform a Stroller Into a Rocker
Rockit Rocker
As the resident parenting reviewer here at WIRED, I look at a lot of parenting gear. From baby monitors to the best strollers, there’s a ton of gear to consider when you’re a parent. I’ll never forget how overwhelming it felt to make my baby registry before I was a mom—what would I need?? How could I possibly know before meeting my kid and finding out what parenting was really like?
Now, I’ve got a better idea of what’s handy, as do other fellow parents here at WIRED. If you’re gifting for a new parent, these are some of our favorite innovative solutions to make the gross, grueling parts of early parenthood just a little easier. Members of our Gear Team have tried them all. And yes, some of them are pretty cute.
If you’re looking for more early-days gear, don’t miss our guides to the Best Baby Monitors, Best Strollers, and Best Breast Pumps. If you’re shopping for older kids, check out our guides to the Best Stem Toys or the Best Subscription Boxes for Kids.
Updated October 2024: We’ve refreshed this gift guide for the holiday season with new gifts and ideas.
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Adrienne So contributed to this guide.
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Photograph: Beis
A Sleek Diaper Bag
Béis The Diaper Pack
I adored this diaper bag for my early parenting days. For the first year, everything is small (like your baby!) and I found the Béis Diaper Pack (9/10, WIRED Recommends) was the perfect companion. The bag is perfect for errands and short outings and can fit plenty of diapers, wipes, extra onesies, a couple of soft toys, and a 5-ounce bottle. It also comes with a changing pad, which sits in its own pocket. It’s too big to truly wear as a comfortable hip pack, but it’s the perfect size for any parent to sling across their back before scooping up their infant.
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Photograph: NoseFrida
A Nose Unplugger
FridaBaby Electric NoseFrida
This is a fact: Newly born humans are so small that they can’t blow their own noses. Amazing! Through the first year and especially into a cold-infested toddlerhood, this handy electric nasal aspirator has been worth its weight in gold. It’s been much easier to get this aspirator into my son’s nostril and hit the On button rather than wrangle both him and a tube, then manually sucking the snot out before he rips his head away from the contraption.
Frida has a whole line of attractive, no-nonsense solutions to other common baby issues, like passing gas and cradle cap, but the nasal aspirators are our favorite (though I’m also a fan of the cheaper, manual nasal aspirator). Every parent needs a fast, effective way of giving their little disease vector some nasal relief.
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Photograph: BabyBjörn
A Cozy Carrier
BabyBjörn Baby Carrier Mini
Do you ever try something and immediately regret not having it sooner? I tested this baby carrier right before my son turned 1, and as soon as I strapped it on, I wished I’d had it from day one. The cross back was much more comfortable to me than the big hip straps that are on other carriers, and the soft jersey feel felt like everything a baby wrap promised to me without the struggle of, well, baby wrapping. It’s only designed for that first year or until baby is 20 pounds, but I’d have used this every day if I’d had it with my little baby.
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Photograph: Amazon
Transform a Stroller Into a Rocker
Rockit Rocker
This is one of my favorite gifts we got that wasn’t on any registry or list we had. Our best friend gifted us the Rockit after seeing that we could attach it to any stroller and use it to lull our baby to sleep. And it worked! It was handy to turn on whenever we took a long pause on a walk, like at a farmers’ market booth or chatting with a neighbor, to keep my son from waking back up due to the lack of movement. It can’t full-on move the stroller back and forth like the Cybex e-Gazelle S (8/10, WIRED Recommends), but it’s the next best thing.
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Photograph: Beaba
A Quick Masher
Beaba Babycook
If you want to buy a new parent something they might not get for themselves, you might want to consider a baby-food maker. Many new parents might think it’s a luxury, especially with critical grandparents shouting, “In my day, we mashed food with forks!” But for a year, the Babycook helped me feed a hungry baby who was just too grouchy and impatient to gum down cut-up pieces of cooked carrot.
Whenever WIRED reviewer Adrienne So was cooking dinner for the rest of her family, she simply threw a couple pieces of food into the Babycook. You can steam and mash with single servings or multiple ones, in an appliance that takes up very little room on the counter and is easy to clean. She could cook several days’ worth of food at a time and either freeze it or store it in the fridge.
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Photograph: Loop
For Overstimulated Moments
Loop Experience 2
Being a new parent is an onslaught of exhaustion combined with a lot of noise, especially if you have a fussy baby. There are some days where babies just need to cry it out; some kiddos are just colicky and tend to cry more than others. If your parent friend is talking about how much they can’t handle the crying anymore, get them a pair of Loop Experience 2s.
These earplugs are designed for concerts to make the music a safer decibel, but I found them handy to grab on meltdown-heavy days so I could still hear my kid, but didn’t want to rip off my skin anymore at the sound of screaming. This helps me stay calm, which in turn, helps baby calm down, too. Plus they come in fun colors and have a tiny case you can easily attach to your keys (it’s where I keep mine!) so it’s handy for sudden loud locations.
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Photograph: Amazon
An Easy Downtime Activity
Amazon Kindle (2022, 11th Generation)
Both my husband and I were gifted Kindles when our son was a couple of months old. We were both so delighted to switch to an e-reader after spending so many 2 am feeding shifts and rocking sessions looking at Reddit for the 374th time. (I’d like to thank every dramatic member of r/AITA for keeping me awake at those hours.) Having a book to grab instead of scrolling the internet was easier on the eyes and the brain. I liked reading mystery and fantasy books with enough drama to keep me as awake as silly internet drama can. I grabbed a library card and started getting books through Libby to send to my Kindle, but you could add a Kindle gift card (or give a gift card if you know they already have a Kindle!)
★ New Kindle on the Block: Amazon just announced new Kindles, including the first color Kindle and a new basic Kindle. The Kindle Colorsoft ($280) is available for preorder now with October 30 as a ship date, and the new Kindle ($110) is available now. We haven’t tested these yet, so stay tuned to hear how they compare to the rest of the Kindle lineup. But I wouldn’t blame you for jumping on a new Kindle now—personally, I’ve got my eye on the matcha green Kindle.
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Photograph: Walmart
A Double-Walled Kettle
Beautiful by Drew Barrymore Beautiful Electric Kettle
New babies mean little hands you have to keep safe from hot surfaces. If the parents in your life are obsessive tea drinkers like I am, or pour-over coffee fans, get them our favorite electric kettle as a gift. Not only is it beautiful on the eyes and easy on the wallet, but it has a ton of preset temperatures for their tired brains to quickly tap the one they need, and it’s double-walled, so swinging baby hands (and eventually rambunctious toddler hands) won’t get burned if they accidentally touch it.
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Photograph: Aqara
A Temperature Sensor
Aqara Temperature and Humidity Sensor
Babies are not relaxing to have in your house. You have to worry about a lot of things, including if they’re warm or cold enough. You don’t want babies to be too warm (that can make them dangerously lethargic), but if they’re too cold, they’ll keep waking up. Instead of guessing their room temperature and whether you need to run the AC again, get a smart temperature sensor to place in their bedroom. That way, you can easily check the specific temperature of their room from anywhere in the house and can even connect a smart thermostat to it to have it kick on at certain temperatures.
I used the Aqara Temperature and Humidity Sensor when my son was little and loved it—you will need an Aqara Hub ($60)—but Google’s newest thermostat, the 4th Gen Smart Learning Thermostat (9/10, WIRED Recommends), comes with a temperature sensor included and no hub required.
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Photograph: Eufy
A Good-Looking Baby Monitor
Eufy SpaceView Baby Monitor
This video monitor looks nice and will serve a parent even after their child can start crawling, moving around more, or getting out of bed. An easy choice is the affordable (in the world of baby monitors) Eufy SpaceView. It doesn’t require Wi-Fi and instead uses more reliable FHSS radio connection. It’s simpler to set up and more secure than using Wi-Fi. Check out our guide to the Best Baby Monitors for more suggestions.
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Photograph: Nena Farrell
A Great Wearable Pump
Imani i2
If your mom bestie is lamenting about wanting a wearable pump, buy her the Imani i2 (7/10, WIRED Recommends). It’s much more affordable than other wearable pumps, but just as powerful and easy to use. There’s no app, just a motor and handful of controls on the top of the pump, and the silicone shields are super comfortable for pumping. I got some of my best pumping results with this zero-frills pump.
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Photograph: Parker Hall
A Great TV Streamer (and No Lost Remote!)
Google TV Streamer (4K)
This might not be your friend’s first kid. That’s a great thing, but if they’ve got a toddler around the house while dealing with the newborn stage at the same time, things might be going missing. Maybe their keys (grab them a Bluetooth tracker!) or maybe their TV remote, which is especially heartbreaking when you’re already exhausted and can’t figure out where it went.
Google’s new TV Streamer (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is easy to set up, pretty on the eyes, and is a nice improvement over the previous Chromecast experience. You can even use it to monitor and control your smart home devices and video feeds. But best of all, there’s a button on the primary device to make the remote beep so that it’s easier to find.
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Photograph: Aura Frames
A Digital Photo Frame
Aura Carver
Another place to put those thousands of photos on your phone is onto a digital photo frame. I love using Aura’s frames since you can add photos easily through the Aura app, or just connect it to a folder in Google Photos. Little ones change so much in their early months (and all the years after), so it’s such a treat to see a photo pop up with how small your child was just a few months ago.
It’s easy for family members to add to, and easy to add to other digital photo frames that might be at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. They want to see the photos too, after all!
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Photograph: No Reception Club
A Bag for Frequent Travelers
No Reception Club Hideaway Duffel
In some ways, traveling when your baby is little is easier than wrangling them during the toddler years (less need for entertaining!).
For those parents who you know love to travel, or can’t avoid plane trips even though they’ve got a little one, No Reception Club’s duffel bag is supremely handy. It has an included organizing insert, multiple ways to carry it, and several pockets to keep everything—including, perhaps most important, an insulated pocket in the front. It’s perfect for baby bottles, pumped milk, or even toddler snacks that need to stay cool.