9 Ways to Keep Your Baby Happy and Clean

Facts are facts: your baby is the best baby. And the best baby deserves the best baby stuff, right? Especially the best baby stuff to keep your baby happy and clean. There's never been a time like the present to keep things close, clean, and convenient, and we have some suggestions from personal experience (and being in the industry) that can give you some peace of mind. And there's a few ideas peppered in to keep *yourself* clean and happy, too! Because you're worth it.

So let's get started - here are 9 ways to keep your baby happy and clean with some of the best baby stuff on the market today.

#1. A Breathable Crib Mattress

According to Stanford Children's Health, newborns sleep about 8 to 9 hours in the daytime and about 8 hours at night. Consecutively? Oh, sweet summer child. No. Most babies don't start sleeping through the night (6 to 8 hours) without waking until they are about 3 months old. But when they ARE sleeping, give them that extra little motivation to stay asleep with this incredibly comfortable baby crib mattress from Newton. There's a lot for YOU to love, too: this mattress is 100% washable and 100% breathable, meaning you can spray the whole thing down when there's been a blowout, AND that you can lay face down on top of it and breathe *through* the mattress without obstruction. BooginHead Marketing Manager Jacky has personal experience with this mattress. She used it for her baby, and testifies that you *absolutely can* shove your face entirely into this mattress, cover and all, and still take a deep, restorative breath. She did it many times, just to make sure. You can also quickly unzip the mattress cover, throw it in the wash, and hose down the mattress itself out back, so you never get funky, festering odors clinging to the mattress even after the cover has been laundered. It's amazing. Peace of mind during baby sleep, and easy cleaning? Thank you, Newton.

#2. Cotton Baby Bibs

As a new parent you are going to encounter many baby bibs. Most of those baby bibs will be in multipacks, some of them in multipacks of 10+. This may look like an incredible value, and may make sense considering the number of bibs a baby goes through in a day, but these bibs are almost always going to be made of polyester or a polyester blend. We're here to tell you that COTTON IS WORTH IT.

BooginHead baby bibs are made of 95% cotton and 5% spandex for a comfortable stretch, for the gentlest touch on baby's skin, and the highest absorbency. They're multipurpose, too - BooginHead bandana teether bibs have a food-grade silicone teether on the tip of the bandana to massage sore gums when the ouchies strike, and BooginHead PaciGrip bandana bibs have our universal pacifier holder loop to attach any pacifier you choose. A soothed, dry baby is a clean, happy baby. You're going to love these bibs.

And look how cute they are!

#3. Diaper Service

Everyone knows the number one way to keep a baby happy and clean is to keep a baby's butt happy and clean. And there are so many options out there to do it. Diapering method is a very personal choice, a decision made after considering a thousand unique factors in your life, and whatever you decide to do is the right choice for you. But we personally love diaper services. There are many different kinds of diaper services, from cloth diaper delivery and laundering to subscriptions for disposables through Amazon. 

We're big fans of DYPER bamboo diapers and recommend it for the family looking to diaper sustainably and reduce their carbon footprint. DYPER offers soft, beautifully made bamboo disposable and cloth diapers, and they even offer a service called REDYPER, which allows you to return used diapers for composting. We encourage any new parent to research diaper laundering or delivery services in theie area - one less thing you have to worry about.

 #4. Bath Chair

Another highly personal parenting choice! How will you choose to bathe your baby? Maybe you're the separate baby bathtub parent. Maybe you're the foam flower in the sink parent. It's all good! But if you're just looking to use the bathtub or the shower you have, all you need is a little baby seat, like this bath support chair from Angelcare. Babies mostly love doing things WITH you, and girl, we know how hard it can be to get *yourself* clean in these newborn baby days, so this bath chair is an awesome option to plonk your baby down in the bathtub and get in the tub right next to them. (Shallow water, obviously! A chair like this always needs to be in firm contact with the floor of the tub.) Then you'll BOTH be clean and happy!

#5. Baby Soap and Lotion

Speaking of... do you have a baby soap picked out yet? If not, we've got a recommendation for you. As far as we can tell it's not terrifically well known (yet), but it sure is highly recommended by dermatologists. It's Vanicream, a super gentle baby soap and baby lotion with no dyes, fragrance, lanolin, parabens, formaldehyde, harsh detergents, botanical extracts, or essential oils.

Your baby's natural baby smell is perfect just the way it is. No need to overwhelm it with all that extra stuff you're going to find in most other baby soaps and lotions. Calendula? Lavender? Nah. Just baby hair and milk breath for us, please. And, if you *are* going to plonk baby down in the bath with you, Vanicream is just as effective for adults as it is for babies. We're encouraged to baby our skin anyway, aren't we? Here's one way to do just that.

 #6. Baby Onesies

You are going to get sooooo many cute baby onesies as gifts. They are going to be adorable! And your baby will wear them a maximum of, like, three times before they're retired for being too small or are hopelessly destroyed by a diaper blowout.

What you are going to need are these: plain, white, workhorse baby onesies. Baby onesies you don't care whether they get dirty. Baby onesies you don't care about when they don't fit anymore. Onesies where you can throw 10 of them into a diaper bag and swap them out as the day goes on... one less decision you need to make in the middle of the grocery store on a Tuesday afternoon. Also, isn't your adorable baby the star of the show, here? Why distract from that cuteness with an elaborate haute couture baby onesie? Yes, up there in #2 we said not to go with the multipack bibs. But definitely, DEFINITELY go with the multipack white cotton baby onesies.

 #7. Pacifier Clips

Not every baby is going to take a pacifier. Not ever family is going to encourage a pacifier. But if your family is the pacifier type, and your baby is a pacifier lover, look no further than BooginHead's #1 best seller, the PaciGrip pacifier clip. Believe it or not, every other pacifier clip with a universal loop on the market is a copy of our founder Sari Davidson's original pacifier holder design. BooginHead was the first baby stuff company to market with a pacifier clip that had a universal loop allowing parents to attach whatever pacifier their baby loves - and not force onto their resistant newborn whatever pacifier is already attached to the holder. What's more, our patterns are all hand-designed in house by our Creative Director Elicia Kniffin so they're as cute and unique as they are functional and convenient. There's no better time to keep pacifiers close and clean, and BooginHead's pacifier clip is the best way to do it.

(Oh, by the way... do you have a face mask? Because a PaciGrip pacifier clip is the perfect face mask holder for kids and adults of all ages!)

Look at that! Perfect!

#8. Zip-up Pajamas

NO. BUTTONS. ON. JAMMIES. Do not do that to yourself. Yes, they are cute. Yes, the harken back to some idealized time in the past where kids minded their elders and wore pantaloons and played with hoops and sticks in a Norman Rockwell painting. But actually it's 2 AM, your baby is soaked in pee, and the last thing you want to do is delicately unfasten 4,695 buttons from their neck to their toe. YOU. DESERVE. ZIPPERS. Like these, from Target's Cloud Island brand. With zippers, your baby is going to get clean, quicker, and you'll both be happier, sooner. NO BUTTONS!

#9. A Baby Snot Sucker

Look. We know. But once you get past it, we swear you'll swear by it. Our favorite baby snot sucker is the NoseFrida, and it's going to be safer, cleaner, and more effective than any rubber bulb thing you get in your hospital take-home bag. Babies mostly breathe through their noses for the first few months of life, so keeping those nasal passages clean and clear are paramount.

There it is! Nine recommendations to keep baby happy and clean. Let us know what works for you, and any ideas or tips and tricks you have that we can share. Tag us on Facebook and Instagram with your favorite clean and happy baby solutions, and don't forget to check the BooginHead Blog for updates on what we're up to, our philanthropic efforts, and more!