Mother of two, grandmother of three here. You don't need much to start...you need to have a carseat to bring the baby home from the hospital, and a bassinette on wheels for the little one to sleep in and so you can wheel it around the house to wherever you are...or close enough so you can hear it fuss. You'll need more things in the initial layette than you think, because tiny babies are messy, and you'll want to change it, wipe it, etc. frequently. So little T-shirts, onesies, little warm socks, changing pads of some sort, burp pads (or just your dishtowels) for when it's up on your shoulder and spits up. Baby blankets. Baby washrags and those baby towels with the hood incorporated. Baby soap, lotion, shampoo. Alcohol and cotton balls until the cord drops off. Get your initial baby clothes no smaller than three-month size, and preferably six-month. They outgrow that stuff super-quickly, which is why, of course, so much is available as hand-me-downs. Little brush and comb. For diaper rash prevention, I always had far better success with A&D ointment rather than all the zinc oxide products. Some kind of bag that can be used as a diaper bag--doesn't have to be a dedicated "diaper bag." (I'm not getting into bottles, breast pumps...a whole other subject.) I would get a pac n play right away--very good if you're taking the baby over to your mom's house or anything like that. I think you can hold off on strollers for awhile, but I'll just say that I never had anything other than an umbrella stroller. I would just carry baby, shoulder bag with supplies, and stroller from the car through the snow or slush, and then at the mall or whatever plunk the little one into the stroller. I didn't use a lot of devices--my babies were usually on my lap or in my arms--I was like Gretchen Wilson in the country song..."With a baby on my hip." We were a military family though--moved around, travelled a lot, lived kind of minimally...didn't have a lot of "stuff."
