What to put on a baby registry for the grandparents

Tell your parents there is a baby coming and something happens. Within a month there is a cot bumper in the hall, a walker in the garage and a pram that folds in three stages and fits in no car anyone owns. Two of the three are no longer considered safe and the third never leaves the garage. Grandparents want to give, and they want to give big. A baby registry with a few items chosen for them is the polite way to point that energy somewhere useful.

Keepsakes they will want to be part of

Grandparents are drawn to gifts that mark the moment. They were there for your first year and they want a place in this one. Put a handful of these on the list and let them pick.

• A baby book with pages where grandparents write their own messages
• A hand and footprint kit, done at the hospital or in week two, before the feet grow
• A knitted blanket embroidered with the name, birth date and weight
• A wooden memory box for the hospital bracelet, the first hat and the scan photos
• A fabric growth chart that moves house with you and stays on the wall until secondary school

These are the things a family still owns when the child is twenty. That is exactly why grandparents like buying them, and why you should let them.

Soft things, in the versions that are safe now

Most grandparents want to give something soft to sleep in. The trouble is that they remember the receiving blankets, pillows and bumpers of 1990, and the advice on all of those has changed. Put the current equivalents on the list: a couple of cotton swaddles, a sleeping bag in the right tog for your house, and six muslins, because you will get through six.

The same goes for toys near the cot. A wool comforter from Steiff, a Ewan the sheep that plays womb noises at three in the morning, or a small cloth book they can chew. If it is on the registry, nobody has to explain at the baby shower why the enormous teddy with the plastic eyes is going back in its box.

Bath and feeding kit for the grandparent who will babysit

If a grandparent has offered to take the baby one afternoon a week, the registry is where you tell them what that afternoon needs. Bath time is the obvious one. A hooded towel, a foldable bath that fits their sink, and a pack of bath toys without holes in them (the ones with holes go mouldy inside within a month).

Feeding works the same way. Bottles of the brand you use, a bottle brush, a stack of bibs and burp cloths, and later a high chair for their kitchen. A second Stokke Tripp Trapp at grandma's house costs around €250 and gets used every Wednesday for four years. Few things at that price earn their keep so well.

The one big gift

Many grandparents would like to give one large, obvious thing and skip the five small ones. Let them. The pram, the car seat, the cot, the rocking chair for the nursery: new parents put these off because of the price, and a grandparent is often glad to settle it with a single transfer.

Do the research yourself first, then put the exact model on the list. The car seat is the one item where the specific model matters, because it has to fit your car and theirs if they will be driving. A grandparent who buys the wrong one has spent €300 on something that goes straight back to the shop.

Gadgets that did not exist in their day go down well too. A video monitor, a white noise machine, a bottle warmer that actually heats evenly. Older grandparents in particular enjoy buying the thing they wish they had had.

Books and toys for the visits

Board books are the safest bet on the whole registry. A grandparent reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the hundredth time is doing exactly what they hoped grandparenthood would be. Add a few classics they will recognise and a few newer titles, and pick the sturdy board editions, since paperbacks last about a week with a teething baby.

Then a small set of toys for the floor: stacking cups, a wooden shape sorter, a set of soft blocks, maybe a xylophone if you can live with the noise. Spread them across ages so there is something for the six-month visit and the eighteen-month visit. A grandparent with nothing to do on the floor will reach for their phone, and nobody wants that photo.

When you create a baby registry, put the big purchase, two keepsakes and a few books on it before you share the link with the grandparents. They will find the rest themselves, and this time it will be the right pram.