What you actually need for a baby
Baby shops will happily sell you two hundred things. You need about two dozen. This is the checklist we give Australian parents setting up a registry: 24 items across six categories, with the genuine essentials flagged, what to look for in each one, and how many to put on the list.
How this checklist works
Every item below earns its place. The ones tagged essential are the things you will use in the first fortnight; the rest are worth having but survivable without, so they make good registry gifts rather than urgent purchases. Quantities matter more than brands for most of the list: eight wraps beat one expensive one, and no newborn has ever cared about the print on a change mat.
If you are still deciding where to host your list, our best baby registry comparison covers the options. Guests wondering what a checklist item costs to gift can sanity-check against our guide on how much to give at a baby shower, and parents who would rather pool contributions can run a baby shower wishing well alongside the physical list.
How we choose the recommended picks
Some items carry a recommended pick: a specific product our team would buy for a typical Australian family. Picks are editorial choices, not paid placements. Each one is resolved from the retailer's catalogue on a regular refresh, so the price and details you see reflect a recent catalogue check and can change between visits, and we re-review the whole set quarterly with a dated check of the Product Safety Australia recall list. Australia has mandatory safety standards for infant sleep products, and we only recommend products where we can point at the evidence ourselves: every cot, mattress and bassinet pick records the specific safety-standard claim the retailer or manufacturer publishes for that product, and where and when we checked it. Those are the maker's stated claims, not our own certification, and for some products the stated claim covers one part of the rules rather than the complete mandatory standard: our bassinet pick, for example, states the mattress-firmness standard only. You will notice there is still no pick for bouncers. Before you buy any sleep product, read the safety guidance from Product Safety Australia and buy new from a retailer who can show the standard on the listing.
Travel: pram, car seat and getting out the door
The car seat is the one item you cannot skip: hospitals expect a properly fitted restraint before you drive a newborn home, and child car restraints in Australia are covered by a mandatory safety standard. Rather than parsing standards documents yourself, read Product Safety Australia's car seats guide before you shortlist, book a professional fitting if it is your first, and be wary of second-hand seats: a restraint with an unknown crash history or one past its expiry date is not a bargain.
For the pram, buy for your actual life, not the showroom. Check the folded size against your boot before anything else, then look for a one-hand fold, a seat that lies flat or takes a bassinet for the newborn months, and wheels that suit your footpaths. One good pram is plenty; skip the matching accessories until you know which ones you would use. A baby carrier is the optional extra that earns its spot fastest; before the first outing, read Product Safety Australia's baby carriers and slings guide and keep your baby's face visible and airway clear the whole time they are being carried. Any bag with a fold-out change mat can be the nappy bag. You need one of each item here, no backups. For fitting services, second-hand rules and the boot test in detail, our pram and car seat checklist goes deeper on this whole category.
- Pramessential
- Car Seatessential
- Baby Carrier
- Nappy Bagessential
Nursery: sleep, changing and monitoring
Sleep gear is where safety guidance matters most, which is why we recommend reading before buying. Since 19 January 2026 Australia has had mandatory safety standards for infant sleep products, and the practical advice in Product Safety Australia's household cots guide is short and worth every minute: a firm, flat mattress that fits the cot with no gaps, nothing soft in the sleep space, and no missing or modified parts. Buy sleep items new where you can, and ask the retailer to show the standard on the listing. A bassinet is optional; plenty of babies go straight into the cot.
The rest of the nursery is easier. A change mat does the job of a dedicated change table, and the safest place to use it is a clear spot on the floor, where there is nowhere to fall from. If you change your baby on a raised surface instead, the ACCC's change tables guide applies: barriers on all sides to stop a roll, everything you need within reach before you start, and a hand on your baby the whole time, because you can never step away. A monitor is genuinely optional in a small home, and it is a convenience, not a safety device: audio-only models are cheap and reliable, video models are nicer for watching a toddler resettle, and if the monitor uses wifi, change the default password. A night light earns its keep during 3am feeds, when you want to see without waking anyone fully. Setting the room up from scratch? The nursery checklist walks the sleep-space rules and buying checks in detail.
- Cotessential
- Cot Mattressessential
- Bassinet
- Change Matessential
- Baby Monitor
- Night Light
Feeding: bottles, pumps and the six-month high chair
Start small with bottles. Babies are opinionated about teats, so buy two or three of one brand and see how it goes before committing to a full set. A microwave steriliser is the simplest way to keep up with the washing in the bottle-heavy months. For pumping, a silicone catch pump costs little and collects the milk that would otherwise be lost mid-feed, which makes it a sensible first pump; hold off on an expensive electric until you know how feeding is going.
The high chair is the classic registry timing trick: you will not need it until solids start around six months, but gifts arrive before the birth, so it belongs on the list now. Look for a wipeable seat with no fabric crevices and a wide, stable base, and once it is in use, follow Product Safety Australia's high chairs guide: buckle the harness every time and stay with your baby while they are in the chair. Bibs are the opposite: cheap, constantly dirty, and impossible to have too many of. Ask for at least eight. The bottle trial, the sterilising routine and the pump decision get their own walkthrough in the feeding essentials checklist.
- Baby Bottlesessential
- Bottle Steriliser
- Breast Pump
- High Chair
- Bibs
Clothing: sizes, seasons and the wrap supply
Australian baby sizing starts at 0000 for newborns, but many babies wear it for weeks, not months. Ask for the bulk of the wardrobe in 000 and 00, and think ahead to the season your baby will be in each size, not the season they are born into. Six to eight each of singlets and zip suits covers the newborn laundry cycle; zips beat press studs at 3am every single time.
Muslin wraps are the most reused item on this list: swaddle, feeding cover, burp cloth, emergency change mat. Eight is a sensible minimum. If you wrap your baby for sleep, follow the safe swaddling guidance: face uncovered, wrap below the shoulders, and stop swaddling as soon as your baby shows signs of rolling. The one job a wrap should never do is cover a pram: NSW Health warns that draping even a light dry cloth over a pram restricts the airflow and pushes the temperature inside up fast; use the pram's own canopy for shade and keep the air flowing around your baby instead. Add a couple of cotton beanies for outdoors, remembering hats and beanies come off for sleep, and more socks than seems reasonable, because socks vanish.
- Clothesessential
- Muslin Wraps
- Beanies & Socks
Bathing: keep it simple
A newborn needs a bath two or three times a week, and for the first weeks the kitchen sink or laundry tub with a clean towel underneath works fine. Wherever you bath your baby, the Pregnancy, Birth and Baby guidance is non-negotiable: stay within arm's reach for the entire bath and never leave a baby alone in water, even for a moment. A dedicated baby bath is a convenience rather than a necessity, so it sits well on a registry. What you will reach for daily are hooded towels and soft washers: four towels and a dozen washers is a realistic supply. A grooming kit matters for exactly one reason, which is that newborn nails grow fast and scratch faces; the Pregnancy, Birth and Baby nail guidance says an emery board may be all you need in the newborn weeks, with baby-sized clippers or scissors equally fine options as your baby grows.
- Baby Bath
- Bath Towels & Washersessential
- Grooming Kit
Play: a mat, a bouncer and not much else
Newborns need somewhere safe to lie and something to look at, and that is the whole brief. A padded play mat gives you a clean spot on the floor for tummy time anywhere in the house; tummy time is for babies who are awake, with you watching. A bouncer gives you a safe place to put the baby down while you stay in the same room: babies must always be actively supervised in a bouncer, kept in sight and within reach, and never left to sleep in one. We deliberately make no bouncer recommendation, because the ACCC has reviewed inclined baby products and the safe-use rules matter more than the model; Product Safety Australia's bouncers, rockers and swings guide spells those rules out. On toys: a few high-contrast options made for babies, with no small or loose parts, beat a toy box, and the grandparents will handle the rest whether you ask them to or not.
- Play Mat
- Bouncer
- Baby Toys
Turn the checklist into your registry
An EasyRegistry baby registry starts with this checklist built in, so friends and family can see what is still needed and chip in for the big items together. It is free to create.