Shopping for
Bath Time

Something to Bath Them In

The confusing part isn't whether you need somewhere to bath the baby. It's that half these products are versions of each other, sized for different stages and different backs.

Baby Bath

The classic for a reason. A small plastic tub means less water, quicker filling, and a baby-sized space instead of the large slippery adult bath. You can use it on a bench, in the big bath, or outside on a hot day. Most bubs outgrow it somewhere around six months, so it's a short-lived but hard-working purchase.

Inflatable Baby Bath

The travel-friendly cousin of the baby bath. It blows up when you need it and packs flat for holidays or Grandma's house, and the soft sides are forgiving on wobbly newly-sitting babies. No tub at home? It sits happily on the shower floor too. The catch is it takes longer to set up than a rigid tub, so it suits occasional use better than the everyday routine.

Bath Stand

Nobody warns you what months of bending over a bath does to your back. A stand holds the baby bath at bench height so you can wash bub standing up. Worth a look if you've had a caesarean, have back trouble, or simply plan on your spine surviving the first year.

Bath Dam

What sounds like civil engineering is actually a rubber divider that suctions across the big bath to wall off a smaller section. Less water to fill, less water wasted, and a bub-sized zone once they've outgrown the baby bath but still look tiny in the family tub. Mums on water tanks tend to be its biggest fans.

Bath Support

Washing a newborn takes two hands, and holding them up takes two hands. A reclined cradle (fabric sling, moulded plastic or foam) takes over the holding so you can get on with the washing, right through the months before they can sit. It's a support, not a babysitter. You stay within arm's reach every second, because babies can drown quickly and silently in a few centimetres of water.

Bath Seat

Once bub can sit, the sling stops fitting, and the wriggling starts. A ring-style seat that suctions onto the tub floor gives them something to sit in rather than slide around. The same non-negotiable applies as with the bath support: it's a convenience, not a safety device, and bub is never left alone in it, not even for the ten seconds it takes to grab a towel. Get everything you need within reach before the water goes in.

Bath Flower

Yes, it's a giant plush flower, and yes, it goes in the sink. It cushions the hard porcelain, or stainless steel, so you can bath a newborn in the kitchen or bathroom sink at standing height, no tub required. Gloriously photogenic, genuinely useful for tiny babies, and it goes through the washing machine afterwards.

Shower Chair

Handy for quick cleans, small bathrooms with no tub, and the classic poo-explosion emergency. Shower chairs are freestanding frames that stand at your height in the shower, with a harness and recliner, that hold baby securely while you wash them (or yourself) under running water.

Bath Time Safety

This cluster is less about washing and more about the hazards nobody mentions until you've clocked them all: hot taps, hard edges, slippery floors and a fascinating power point at toddler height.

Bath Thermometer

Baby bath water wants to be around 37 to 38 degrees, and your elbow is an unreliable instrument at 6pm on no sleep. A bath thermometer (often disguised as a floating duck or fish) gives you an actual number. Once you've run a few hundred baths, you'll judge it by feel, but early on it buys real peace of mind.

Faucet Cover

The day your baby becomes a torpedo is the day the tap becomes a problem. A soft cover, usually shaped like a whale or an elephant, pads the metal and shields little hands from the hot side. If your bub treats the bath like a mosh pit, it's a cheap fix.

Plug Cover

Two different products share this name, so check the box. One covers the bath plug so a curious toddler can't drain the tub or fiddle with the chain. The other is the safety cap for electrical outlets, which matters in bathrooms where power points sit at exactly small-person height. Either way, it's a couple of dollars at Kmart.

Non-slip Bath Mat

Once bub is sitting or standing in the big bath, a rubber suction mat on the tub floor stops the slip-and-crack moment before it happens. Also worth considering one on the bathroom floor for the puddle zone, because the person most likely to go down hard in this room is you, holding a wet baby.

The Actual Washing Part

Newborn skin needs a lot less product than the shelf suggests. Plain water does most of the job for the first while; everything here is for when you want a bit more.

Baby Bath Wash

Regular soap strips the oils newborn skin needs, and adult body wash is harsher again. The soap-free baby stuff cleans without doing that, and a pea-sized blob covers a whole baby. One bottle lasts an impressively long time, which is lucky, because you might be gifted six.

Baby Shampoo

Made to be mild, and thankfully tear-free, because the fastest way to create a bath hater is one stinging eyeful. Newborn fluff barely needs it, so this one earns its spot once there's actual hair to wash. Plenty of families just use the bath wash top to toe until then.

Bubble Bath

Purely for fun, and the fun is considerable. Baby-formulated bubble bath is gentler than the grown-up stuff, but bubbles can still irritate brand-new skin (and little girls' bits especially), so most mums hold off until later babyhood and keep it as an occasional treat rather than an every-night thing.

Wash Mitt

A dropped washer in a slippery tub, with one hand on the baby, is a small nightly annoyance. Slide your hand into a mitt and there's nothing to drop. Toddlers will also happily "wash themselves" with one shaped like a shark, which buys you time to do the actual washing.

Face Washer

The workhorse of the whole bathroom. Small, soft cloths handle faces, folds, and everything in between, and in the early weeks, a warm, wet one laid over bub's tummy keeps them cosy while the rest get washed. They moonlight as burp cloths, spill wipers and emergency bibs, which is why the stack in your linen cupboard never seems to be where you left it.

Cotton Balls

For the first few weeks, midwives recommend cleaning bub's eyes with cotton balls and cooled boiled water, one ball per eye, wiping from the inside corner out. It's the one bit of newborn washing with an actual technique to it. After that stage they mostly retire to the nappy caddy, and a small bag goes a long way.

Rinsing Jug

Cupped hands don't hold enough water to shift shampoo, and the tap is the wrong shape for a baby. Tip a jugful over instead, and the suds are usually gone in one go. The ones with a flexible rubber edge seal against the forehead so the water runs backwards rather than into eyes, which is the difference between a rinse and uncontrollable crying.

Plastic Scoop

Sooner or later, something appears in the bath that isn't a toy (ahem, starts with p and ends in oo). A scoop gets it out in one move, no bare hands, no draining the tub while you decide what to do. It lives on the edge of the bath for exactly that moment, and it isn't a toy, no matter how much it looks like one to a toddler.

Bath Hat

The frisbee-looking one. A soft brim sits around the hairline like a visor so shampoo rinse water sheets off the edges instead of down the face. If your child treats water near their eyes as a personal betrayal, this little hat can end the nightly screaming match. Some kids refuse to wear it, so consider it a cheap experiment.

After Bath Care

Bath's done, baby's clean, and now you're holding a wet, slippery, rapidly cooling small person. This next lot is for the hand-off and everything after.

Hooded Bath Towel

Babies lose heat fastest through their heads, which is why the first thing you cover is the wet one. The corner hood flips up and stays put on a wriggler in a way a flat towel simply won't. It's also responsible for roughly 80 per cent of the cute photos on your camera roll, especially the ones with bear ears.

Apron Towel

Daycare-run efficiency for bath time: a towel that ties or poppers around your neck like an apron, so when you lift bub out of the water they land straight onto towelling on your chest, hood ready to flip up. No more one-armed towel wrestling while holding a wet baby. Mums who bath solo every night tend find these useful.

Baby Lotion

Warm water pulls moisture out of little skin, and some babies come out of the bath drier than they went in. A light everyday moisturiser puts it back. Plenty of babies never need it, while others drink it up, especially in winter. Fragrance-free is the safest starting point, and anything beyond ordinary dryness is a chat with your child health nurse.

Baby Oil

The multi-tasker: a few drops in the bath for very dry skin, a post-bath rub for baby massage, and a gentle way to loosen cradle cap flakes before a wash. One honest warning from mums who've learned the hard way: an oiled baby is a slippery baby, so oil after the transfer to the change station, not before.

Cradle Cap Lotion

Those yellowish crusty scales on a newborn scalp are harmless, common, weirdly satisfying and strangely stubborn. Lotion softens them so they lift away with a wash and a soft brush, rather than with your fingernail (put the fingernail down). If it spreads, looks red or bothers bub, see your GP or child health nurse.

Talc-Free Baby Powder

Modern baby powders use cornstarch instead of talc, and for good reason: powder particles shouldn't be breathed in, so it's always shaken into your hand away from bub's face, never straight onto them. Some mums love it for keeping skin folds dry in summer; many skip powder altogether. Entirely your call.

Skincare

The catch-all shelf: barrier creams, eczema washes, sensitive-skin balms, massage creams. You don't need any of it on spec. This category exists for the baby whose skin announces a specific problem, and once it does, your pharmacist or child health nurse can point you at the right tube rather than the prettiest one.

Nail Clippers

Baby nails grow at a freakishly alarming rate, and those tiny talons find faces (yours and theirs). Post-bath is the moment: warm water softens nails so they clip cleanly without splintering. Baby-sized clippers or blunt-tipped scissors keep the cut safely away from skin, and the pro move from mums who've learned the hard way is to do it while bub's milk-drunk or asleep.

Hair Brush

Newborns get brushed mostly because it's lovely and they doze off, not because there's much to brush. The bristles are so soft they barely qualify, which is the point on a scalp that thin, and it's gentle enough to work on cradle cap flakes after a wash. It turns into a real tool once actual hair, and actual bedhead, arrive.

Detangler

Curly and long-haired kids get knots that a brush alone turns into a nightly fight. A spray loosens them first so the brushing goes through without tears, yours or theirs. Utterly irrelevant to a bald baby, and the mums of three-year-olds with ringlets and opinions will tell you it changes the whole after-bath routine.

Making Bath Time Fun

Somewhere around six months, the bath stops being a hygiene task and becomes the best twenty minutes of your child's day.

Bath Toy

Cups, boats, squirters, the iconic rubber duck. Bath toys turn reluctant bathers into kids yelling "BATH TIME?" like they've won the lotto. One tip from mums who've squeezed a squirty toy and watched black sludge come out: pick toys without holes, or seal the holes with a dab of glue, because mould loves a hollow toy.

Bath Book

Books near water usually end badly, which is why these ones are plastic. They get chewed, dunked and floated with no consequence at all, and some change colour in warm water, which counts as a magic trick when you're one. A gentle on-ramp to loving books, and rather more durable than the board books living near the toilet.

Bath Crayons

Crayons that draw on tiles and tub walls and wash off with water. Brilliant for buying yourself five stationary minutes with a toddler, and sneaky practice for pre-writers. Test a small patch first, because "washes off easily" and your particular grout don't always agree.

Bath Doll

Not filed under bath toys because it's doing a different job. A waterproof doll lets your toddler wash "their baby" while you wash yours, which is gold for new-sibling prep and for kids who cooperate better when they're in charge of someone. Check that it's a bath-safe doll, as soft-bodied ones might turn into swamp sponges.

Bath Toy Storage

Fifteen toys in, the edge of your tub is ringed with wet ducks that never quite dry out. A mesh bag or scoop caddy suctions to the wall and lets them drain between baths instead of sitting in a puddle. The scoop style doubles as a fast cleanup tool a toddler will actually use, because scooping is fun.

Kit for the Grown-Up

These are for the person doing the kneeling, lifting and hovering. Bath time is a workout; this is the gear that makes it survivable.

Knee & Arm Pads

Kneeling on bathroom tiles for a twenty-minute bath, every night, for years: your knees will invoice you eventually. Cushioned arm pads (or a folded towel, which is what most of us actually use) sit at the edge of the tub. The bought ones often have pockets for a washer and stay dry, unlike the towel.

Step Stool

Most mums would tell you to just buy the step stool, because it's about to run your whole house. At the bath, it lets a toddler climb in and reach the sink for handwashing and teeth brushing; it then gets dragged to the kitchen, the light switch, and everywhere else independence is happening. One of the rare buys that earns its keep for years.

Caddy

The golden rule of bathing is to have everything you need within arm's reach before bub goes in the water, because you never step away from the bath. A caddy is how that actually happens: wash, shampoo, thermometer and washers all in one basket, either suctioned to the tiles or carried in with you. It's the difference between an easy bath and a wet dash to the linen cupboard.

Scales

Baby scales live on this list because weigh-ins happen when bub's already stripped off for the bath. Your child health nurse tracks weight at regular visits, so a home set is far from standard kit, but some mums (especially those keeping a close eye on feeding) like watching the numbers between appointments. If the numbers start stressing you out more than helping, that's your cue to leave weighing to the nurse.

Every product here solved a very specific bath-time problem for someone.

You won't know which problems are yours until you're elbow-deep in lukewarm water finding out. Start small, bathe the baby, and come back to this list once you know whether you're dealing with a water baby, a hair-wash refuser or a mum with a dodgy back.

The shops will still be there.