Our little man has been attending daycare since he was ~3 months old. As we approach a year, what we’ve kept at daycare hasn’t changed much, the only changes have been to accompany season changes. To be short, our daycare is AMAZING, we love our teachers, and for the most part we haven’t had to keep too much at daycare. Confirm with your own daycare or care giver what requirements they have, and see my list below.
- Diapers
- Wipes
- Butt Cream
- Extra Clothes (current and next size)
- Pacifiers
- Bottles (if needed)
- Jacket
- Cooler Bag (if needed)
- Carseat
- Sleep sack
DIAPERS!
First and foremost, diapers MUST be kept in stock at daycare. We do not use cloth diapers, we use disposable. I applaud my girlfriends who do cloth diapering, but that doesn’t fit into my life. My goal was to never get the notice saying “Your child needs diapers”, and I was *this close* to making that goal, but last week I knew we needed to size up to size 4, and hadn’t brought in my extra from home. Do your caregivers a favor and keep diapers stocked *. I know our caregivers keep extra on hand, but they pay out of their own pocket. Please don’t be that parent that waits to replenish the diapers until your baby is OUT. Our daycare checks his diaper about once an hour, unless they can smell my little boy’s stinky butt, so he can easily go through 9-10 diapers a day. Easy way to stay ahead is to bring in a pack of diapers every Monday. I’d also recommend keeping a pack of diapers in your vehicle that is off-limits to your own use. It’s my backup to the daycare backup.
WIPES
This does not need explanation. However, a tip for keeping your wipes at daycare is to also put your child’s name and room number on the pack. This way they don’t get mistaken for somebody else’s. As a loyal momma to Water Wipes *, I’d be grumpy-cat mad if our wipes got mixed up. I tried venturing to other brands, but(t) my little one’s behind had his worst diapers rashes when we switched wipes. Lesson learned. I also shared with my daycare providers that if they ever needed wipes because somebody else was out, to just use ours for that poor baby butt. I knew Water Wipes wouldn’t cause a reaction, so I didn’t mind or fear sharing.
BUTT CREAM
Just like my favorite wipes, ya gotta keep your baby’s butt cream stocked. I like to keep an extra un-opened tube in the closet at school, and it’s come in handy when I’ve traveled and dad forgets to check the supply all week. He’s an awesome hubby and magnificent dad, he just doesn’t catch all the minute details that I do. I don’t have a recommendation on a specific brand here, we’ve tried everything under the sun, and can use about anything. I do recommend keeping a regular and maximum strength one on hand. Our fave butt-fixer-cream is the Boudreaux’s Butt Paste Maximum Strength *, but we’ve also loved Calmoseptine * (I can almost always find it at Walgreens and nowhere else), A&D, and a few others (Bourdeaux’s Natural *, Burt’s Bees, Earth Mama, Tom’s, Cetaphil, Babyganics). Of all the diaper creams, there was only one I disliked, and it broke my wanna-be-crunchy-heart, as my Burt’s Bee’s diaper cream kept separating, and so it’d come out simultaneously running and chunky. Gross. Also, skip the bucket/tub of cream and only send in tubes. Your caregivers will thank you.
EXTRA CLOTHES
If little one needed to change clothes at school, one of a short list of things happen:
-he peed himself
-he pooped himself
-he vomited on himself
-he bled on himself
-he got food or a drink on himself
All of these are because my kid is messy. So if he’s really having a crappy(!) day, I don’t need him to crap on brand new extra clothes. What I mean is, don’t spend your hard earned money on new clothes that he/she is very likely going to ruin. We’ve been blessed with hand-me-downs from friends and I frequent second hand stores. I have plenty of great-quality but not new clothes that I send to school as backups. This is nice as I then don’t feel bad if they are RUINED, truly ruined, by my child. I also don’t feel bad if they are never worn and then they go right back into our donation bucket when we size up clothes. Our caregivers do keep extra clothes on hand, so also think about donating to the spare clothes collection as your little one sizes up. PLEASE: keep not only your current size as well as the next size up. Keep something to cover each season in there: short sleeve onesies, long sleeve onesie, shorts, pants, socks, a lightweight jacket (if not kept as listed below), and maybe even a pajama set. Label the bag with your child’s name and size range. I recommend non-plastic storage bags, so a packing cube or wetbag would work great. I haven’t used this AmazonBasics set, but here’s an example. Over 600 4+ star reviews *, now I want to use these instead of the bags we currently have!
PACIFIERS
I’m not here to argue with you about pacifier usage. My kid didn’t take his pacifier regularly until he started teething, and now he refuses to be without it. Oh well, there’s worse things in life. I recommend you have more binkies than you think is logical, now add four more. For daycare I label ours, otherwise they never come home. I found a lady on Etsy that laser-engraved ours, and it was super cute, but not necessary. She even special ordered and now carries our preferred pacifier, which previously wasn’t in her stock. At first I labeled with a Brother Label machine and those stickers are still on there. Heck, even a Sharpie-written-name would work. At the beginning of each week I bring 3-4 clean pacifiers to school, and on Friday I take them all home to sanitize. Hubby thinks 3-4 is too many, but relying on only one pacifier is like walking on ice if your child is dependent upon that to soothe to sleep at loud, noisy, chaotic, not-dark daycare. Plus, little man likes to sneak them home and then those remaining ones at daycare get us through the next day.
BOTTLES
I send bottles every day to daycare, as we are still doing breastmilk mixed with formula. If you’re exclusively using formula and can leave extra bottles at school, go for it! I’d recommend about 6-8 bottles at daycare (if left there exclusively). Plan for however many bottles your little one takes during daycare time, then double it. That way they can have extra clean ones as well as two days worth in case they aren’t dry or don’t get sanitized before you drop of little one in the morning. I sent bottles in each morning, but I’d almost always send one extra bottle of my milk, JUST IN CASE little man threw a fit and refused (*wasted*) a bottle and needed more milk before I got him home to eat.
*We used Dr. Brown’s * and then changed to Smilo* bottles. I can write a comparison post if you’d like, just let me know!* This link gets you 15% off Smilo and free shipping!*
BOTTLE LABELS
I’ll throw in a tip to get those reusable bottle labels * to ID your milk for your kid. It’s not just concerns about another kid drinking my breastmilk, its that the other kids could have an allergy that is in my breastmilk or in the formula my child drinks. You can also write directly on the bottle, but I didn’t like doing that. I’m a visual person, so seeing the label out each night next to the bottles to prep in the morning worked for me.
JACKET
Regardless of the time of the year, keep a jacket in your child’s current (or just larger) size. You won’t need it for months and then the weather will turn and your child will be cold as you leave daycare. We have a handful of jackets so sometimes we will end up with two at school. Similar to my Monday routine of brining in diapers and pacifiers, I often send in an extra jacket. Just like our extra clothes at daycare, I have found great quality jackets at secondhand stores and these are the perfect ones to keep stocked at school. This doesn’t need to be a giant puffy coat, nope, just a lightweight jacket will do. Plus, you don’t want to buckle little one in the car with a puffy coat. We’ve all ready plenty of (justifiably very) scary articles about car seat safety and too many layers of clothes and crash fatalities. If not, let me direct you another article by Consumer Reports. Read it. Heck, leave my blog right now and go read those articles.
COOLER BAG
Because we send in my breastmilk to school, we use a cooler bag to transport. No need too spoil the milk on the way too daycare! You will not need a cooler bag if you’re not taking your bottles in with milk. If you’re doing formula only and keep the recommended 6-8 bottles at school, then you don’t need this. I went through few variations before I settled on this Coleman nine can cooler *. It’s got bungees on top (slide baby jacket or clean clothes into there), zippered front compartment (clean pacifiers or any paperwork for school), and a few side pockets AND one additional net pocket inside on the top. Plus, we parents can use it to take some cold beer or soda on any weekend adventure. Thank goodness this isn’t a limited time use product like so many other baby items we’ve collected. The other reason we LOOOOOVE this cooler is that it’s got a removable hard bucket inside. We often use this bucket to thaw our milk overnight before we prep the bottles for school. It’s been amazing. We then toss it in the closet at school or with his carseat at the carseat shelf in the school entry, and its there to bring the bottles home, so either of us can pick him up.
CARSEAT
DOONA IS LIFE! I will stand from the mountain-top and scream at you how much I loved our Doona *. Sadly, little man has outgrown it but it served us exceptionally well. You don’t need the Doona, but a clip-in carseat makes getting to and from daycare easier, especially if you swap pickup duties with your partner or some other caregiver. We would leave our carseat at daycare, so that way whoever picked up little man was able to safely take him home. We also had a latching base in each vehicle which made this easy-breezy.
SLEEP SACK
Similar to my love for the Doona stroller carseat, is my love for the Zipadee-Zip Sleep * sacks. Oh my oh my oh my, these are amazing. Don’t go investing in multiple Zipadee-Zips unless you know your child needs/prefers those, so even another sleep sack for school would work. Other great ones are the Halo, SwaddleMe, and even IKEA. Once you find a sleep sack you love, keep a primary and spare at both home and daycare. If purchasing 4 is too much, commit to taking them to back and forth every day. I scored a Zipadee-Zip at my local secondhand store, and there are also some floating around on resale sites online. Find what works for your baby, and keep an extra at school.
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I hope this list helps you as you prep to send your little one to daycare, or perhaps your changing from an in-home care to a daycare school program. This has been all targeted towards the under-1 age group, but it transcends most age categories. The links listed above are affiliate links, but they do not change the price to you as the consumer. I hope to catch up with you again soon!
Love, Vicki Victoria
Love, Vicki Victoria 