Book Review: Baby Bargains
Baby Bargains: Secrets to Saving 20% to 50% on Baby Furniture, Gear, Clothes, Strollers, Maternity wear and much more by Denise & Alan Fields Author Qualifications:
Denise & Alan Fields are writers that collected parent reviews of baby related products for Baby Bargains.
Stand Out Nuggets:
This book is a great guide to baby products that lays out the best options for your individual lifestyle and budget, so you can personalize each purchase. I used this book to make decisions on my stroller, car seat, carrier, baby monitor and to get ideas about baby furniture.
There are also "nuggets" of information in this book that I had never known before. For example, did you know that Walkers are so dangerous (not to mention bad for development) that they are actually banned in Canada?! Reading that totally surprised me, but I was happy to find another place to save money!
Another great tip from the book is to join Amazon Mom - it's basically Amazon Prime tailored for moms, and it's been essential for me!! Baby Bargains also has lots of tips of products to avoid, ways to save money, and reminders of things you might not otherwise consider (like baby proofing items) spread throughout the book.
What I Think:
This book is great! I found that researching & buying baby products can be so overwhelming and this book helped give a general picture of what products would work for me. Don't get me wrong, I definitely needed Amazon reviews, too. However, I found going straight to Amazon to be too exhausting in the beginning of my research. It was great to have side by side comparisons of products for items like infant car sets and strollers, and explanations of what companies have done to improve their products since the last Baby Bargains book review.
My only hesitation in giving this book a perfect review is that there isn't much on non-toxic products - not just house cleaning products but things like lotions, soaps & shampoos. For non-toxic research, I generally refer to the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Database, which rates individual products' toxicity levels. You can easily to Google "EWG Burt's Bees Baby Lotion" and find a direct link, or go straight to their website and search all "baby lotions."
The Takeaway:
I would definitely recommend this book - even if you have a lot of pregnant or mom friends who are dying to give you advice on the products they used, because your lifestyle and budget may be different from theirs. I was lucky to be able to borrow my sister-in-law's copy of Baby Bargains from 2011 (the newest is 2013), but the book is fairly inexpensive and may save you thousands in the long run. I can't imagine searching for baby products without this book, but I also combined my product research with Amazon reviews and ratings from EWG.
Did you find Baby Bargains helpful? Would you recommend it to a newly pregnant friend? What would you change or add to this book?
I hope you're enjoying my parenting Book Review series! Please comment and let me know what you think! I love hearing from you! :)
xo kristen genevieve
Denise & Alan Fields are writers that collected parent reviews of baby related products for Baby Bargains.
Stand Out Nuggets:
This book is a great guide to baby products that lays out the best options for your individual lifestyle and budget, so you can personalize each purchase. I used this book to make decisions on my stroller, car seat, carrier, baby monitor and to get ideas about baby furniture.
There are also "nuggets" of information in this book that I had never known before. For example, did you know that Walkers are so dangerous (not to mention bad for development) that they are actually banned in Canada?! Reading that totally surprised me, but I was happy to find another place to save money!
Another great tip from the book is to join Amazon Mom - it's basically Amazon Prime tailored for moms, and it's been essential for me!! Baby Bargains also has lots of tips of products to avoid, ways to save money, and reminders of things you might not otherwise consider (like baby proofing items) spread throughout the book.
What I Think:
This book is great! I found that researching & buying baby products can be so overwhelming and this book helped give a general picture of what products would work for me. Don't get me wrong, I definitely needed Amazon reviews, too. However, I found going straight to Amazon to be too exhausting in the beginning of my research. It was great to have side by side comparisons of products for items like infant car sets and strollers, and explanations of what companies have done to improve their products since the last Baby Bargains book review.
My only hesitation in giving this book a perfect review is that there isn't much on non-toxic products - not just house cleaning products but things like lotions, soaps & shampoos. For non-toxic research, I generally refer to the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Database, which rates individual products' toxicity levels. You can easily to Google "EWG Burt's Bees Baby Lotion" and find a direct link, or go straight to their website and search all "baby lotions."
The Takeaway:
I would definitely recommend this book - even if you have a lot of pregnant or mom friends who are dying to give you advice on the products they used, because your lifestyle and budget may be different from theirs. I was lucky to be able to borrow my sister-in-law's copy of Baby Bargains from 2011 (the newest is 2013), but the book is fairly inexpensive and may save you thousands in the long run. I can't imagine searching for baby products without this book, but I also combined my product research with Amazon reviews and ratings from EWG.
Did you find Baby Bargains helpful? Would you recommend it to a newly pregnant friend? What would you change or add to this book?
I hope you're enjoying my parenting Book Review series! Please comment and let me know what you think! I love hearing from you! :)
xo kristen genevieve
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