Picking Up A Free Baby Box (Ontario)
Well, remember this post back in June? To recap, we just picked up a Graco Pack N Play play yard for $75. It contained a changer, a bassinet, and the play yard. It also came with a box for music and a vibration function.
Turns out, baby is not a fan of it. Who'd have thought. Good thing we purchased it used for $75 and not brand new at $200 or whatever they go for now.
That's not to say baby won't use it. If she's extremely sleepy, or if she's already asleep, she'll just accept it. However, the moment she wakes up, she realizes where she is and makes a little fuss. It was an interesting couple of weeks of dancing and bouncing around getting her to into a deep sleep only to have to wake her up again after 2 to 3 hours to feed her and then have to do it all over again.
So what to do? Well after the first couple of days, we realized it wasn't going to be a permanent sleep situation for the first few months and we needed better.
As a result, I decided to pick up a Baby Box.
I had read about such Baby Boxes in Finland and at the time, Baby Boxes were being handed out to parents of newborns in Alberta. Imagine my surprise to find that the program just launched in Ontario (thanks to the Government of Ontario) in August 2016 and would take place for a year.
Wifey and I were very interested in trying one, so I looked up the details. The first thing is we needed to sign up at Baby Box University.
Second was the sign up with our home address in Ontario. This would give us access to the Ontario Syllabus. Next step was to watch a series of videos about parenting. The videos ranged from how baby should be put to sleep, post partum depression, car seat sleeping, etc. The videos were actually informative.
After watching all the videos, you would take a quiz. If you got all the answers correct, you would receive a certificate of completion. With this certificate, you'd take it to a Baby Box distributor and pick up your free Baby Box. That's it!
Admittedly, the website for the distributor locations isn't exactly the best. However, it's better than nothing.
So what is a Baby Box exactly?
Well, this Baby Box is modeled after the Finnish program where the box doubles as a mattress for baby. How is this safe? Well, the Baby Boxes are actually certified safe for sleep by Health Canada. That's reassuring.
The Baby Box also contains some of the essentials for the first little while. Our baby box contained the following:
- newborn diapers
- wipes
- baby shampoo
- wood teething rings
- reusable nursing pads
- onesie
- Baby Box Co. bag
- coupons and information to resources
It also contained the mattress and the fitted cotton sheet for sleeping. Awesome!
Of course, we didn't pick up the box for the free stuff (it was appreciated, though). We picked it up to see if baby will sleep in it. Long story short, she did. We only woke her up for feedings. Wifey is extremely happy.
So there you have it. Rather than spend upwards of $75 or even $400 on a new fancy crib, you can get away with putting baby to sleep in a free Baby Box that has been certified safe for sleep by Health Canada.
This offer is only good until August 2017, so if you're expecting, you may as well pick up your free box now and you might even learn something you didn't know from the syllabus.
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