All You Need to Know About... Baby Box!

This blog is all about the wonderful Baby Box, how you can go about finding them and why we loved them so much!

At first we had a really hard time deciding what we were going to do with two babies sleeping in our room. Should we buy two bassinets? Should we go with the mini crib? Should we put their full-size crib in our room? There were a lot of decisions to make since there are lots of choices out there. 

I was about 22 weeks when my mom emailed me a link to Baby box University. She saw the advertisement on a morning show that she was watching that day. I did a lot of research and looked into the various different companies that provided baby boxes and found out the best one was Baby Box University. I felt that the other companies out there appeared to have an agenda to push a particular baby product (like baby formula). And get this: Baby Boxes were free! This was going to be a great choice for us because we were already spending so much money on double of everything that this just fit our family perfectly. 

There are places around Toronto that carry the Baby Box and are open during business hours for you go pick them up. There is a small catch, if you can call it that: you have to do some e-learning. There are a series of videos you have to watch which are highly educational for new parents. At the end of the suite of videos there is a certificate that you can print off and bring with you to receive the box, in my case two boxes, for free. 

When you get to the Baby Box University website (https://www.babyboxuniversity.com/) you have to first create an account with them. Once logged in, go to the right side of the page and select your syllabus. This might seem a little confusing but depending on the region you come from the syllabus might change. In this case the syllabus I chose was for those living in Ontario. All you have to do next is simply watch the 14 short (and I do mean short, some were less than a minute long) videos. You do have to watch them all in order to print off that certificate. Have the hard copy of the certificate with you and go pick up your box(es). You can find a list of all Canadian Baby Box pickup locations here.

Although these videos were "mandatory” to pick up the Baby Box, I found myself watching a ton more videos on their website that weren't part of my syllabus. I loved them - they were short and to the point. Very educational and even if you aren't thinking about using the Baby Box I highly recommend it! 

What is included in your complimentary Baby Box? (from what I can remember.. you can find out more by going to Baby Box Company):

- firm mattress (non-toxic and certified safe by CertiPUR-US laboratories)

- 100% cotton mattress cover (I got more as one is not enough for all those poop explosions… I got 3 “bassinet” sheets which I found fit them perfectly. I like the Kushies Bassinet sheets which I got at West Coast Kids)

- small package of diapers and wipes 

- wooden teething ring 

- baby shampoo 

- shortsleeve onesie size 0-6- reusable bra pad (so you aren’t leaking everywhere :) ) 

Our boys slept in one together for the first month until they got too big to be sharing. We moved them over to their own boxes where they stayed till around 4-1/2 months… after that we did sleep training (I will dedicate an entire blog all about the boys sleep training soon!) because mommy and daddy needed their sleep too. They stayed in their separate boxes until they were probably 5 months old. Really  they can be moved to the crib when they grow out of the box! 

We loved the baby box and wouldn’t have done it any other way. They traveled well in the car when we went places overnight. We filled the box with their things and away we went!