Hospital Bag for Birth - What to Pack?

Generally most pregnant women start thinking about what to pack in their hospital bag at about 26-28 weeks, so when the time comes to get to hospital to give birth they can just grab the pre-packed hospital bag or bags on the way out the door with no further thought or panic! 

In this blog post, we provide a link to download our hospital bag for birth checklist which includes everything you will need for mother, baby and support partner.  We also talk about organising your bag into compartments or smaller bags so you can find things quickly and easily when you need them.

Start with a checklist

 

To help you pack your hospital bag, we here at The Nappy Shop have put together a handy hospital bag checklist for birth that you can download, print and tick off as you go. It has everything you might need to take for your hospital stay for mother, baby and support partner.

 

Organise your Bag or Bags

 

Realistically you will need more than one bag! We suggest having a bag or compartment each for Mother, baby and support partner plus a nappy bag. We have everything you will need to get for the Nappy Bag over at The Nappy Shop.

For Mother

Clothing including lots of old underwear or disposable pants, labour aids, snacks, toiletries, paperwork, and anything else such as the "Other Things" category on our checklist should all be organised into smaller bags or compartments.  For example, once the labour is over you won't be needing the labour aids any more so you can pop that bag out of the way.

 

For Baby

Surprisingly, baby's things won't take up that much room in your bag. If you have a separate "Nappy Bag" to keep everything you need to change your babies nappy then all that is left is baby's clothes (which are so small they won't take up much room at all) and Formula and bottles. 

Although feeding aids are optional, if this is your first baby you may want to pack them just in case you are unable to breast feed straight away.  They will also come in handy if your milk is light on because you can mix it with the formula you have chosen.  Also if you have too much milk then you can express and store it in the bottle to feed baby later on.

For Support Partner

Probably a  separate tote bag for your support partner is best for things like change of clothes, snacks, camera, chargers, pillow and blanket.

Conclusion

Packing your hospital bag shouldn't have to be a daunting task but it can be if you leave it until week 38! We suggest start getting your hospital bag ready around week 26 that way you will have your bag packed and ready to go if you don't go full term or complications arise. Use our checklist along with your hospital's guidelines of what to pack to make packing your hospital bag for birth easier for yourself.

Leave us a comment

We would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. If you had something that you found particular handy whilst in labour or that you used during your hospital stay we would love to hear what it was.  Please let us know via the comments link below.

 

Next Blog Post - September 2016

In our next blog post we will talk about everything you should do to make your home as safe as possible for your new baby or toddler. We will also share our baby and toddler proof your home checklist.

 

Resources

https://www.thewomens.org.au/patients-visitors/clinics-and-services/pregnancy-birth/labour-birth/