Baby Care

Baby baths, bath seats and hooded towels:

the classic newborn tub is rigid, with a moulded backrest, and sits on a counter or across a full-size bathtub. A folding tub collapses flat to hang on a hook, the pick for an apartment bathroom with no spare floor. A tub on its own stand puts the baby at waist height and spares a parent’s back, but it is bulky to store and awkward to move. Bath seats come later, once the baby sits up unaided. Hooded towels are where barely used pieces turn up most, washed once or never. When the tub is outgrown, the next step is a seat reducer from potty training.

Sterilizers, diaper pails and grooming kits:

Panama uses the same current and flat-pin plugs as the United States, so an electric sterilizer, bottle warmer or humidifier bought there plugs straight in. One brought back from Europe is built for a higher voltage and needs a step-up transformer, not just a plug adapter, so settle round pins before anything else. Diaper pails come in two kinds: those that wrap each diaper into a refill cassette made for that pail, and those that take ordinary bin bags. The first kind costs more to run, and a used one stops being a good buy once its refills no longer turn up locally. A changing pad belongs on a dresser from the nursery; the travel version folds into a diaper bag. Grooming kits put clippers, a file and a soft brush in one zipped case, and they cost so little new that most buyers want one unopened.

What a plain tub and a tub on a stand are worth:

a plain plastic tub is about $35 new and one on its own stand nearer $100. The plain tub holds little of its price used: it is cheap to begin with, and the plastic scratches and stains in a way that photographs worse than it is. The stand holds its value better, and so does a folding tub whose flexible sides have not split, because the hinge and the soft panel are what fail on the cheap ones.

Mould in the tub, scale in the sterilizer, dates on the cream:

start where water sits. Turn a tub over and look at the drain plug, the underside of any non-slip pads and the fold line of a collapsible one, where black mould and hairline cracks hide, and if it folds, fill it in the shower before you pay. On a diaper pail, smell inside the lid and check that the pedal still lifts it and the clamp still closes. Anything with a battery, from a thermometer to an electric nail file, should switch on in front of you with no green crust in the battery compartment. Inside an electric sterilizer, a little white scale on the heating plate is normal; a thick crust means it was never descaled. Creams, shampoos and wipes are a different trade: a sealed tube or an unopened pack inside its date is worth close to its shelf price, an opened one is worth almost nothing to a stranger, and months in a hot car or storeroom make even a sealed one a gamble.

Rating plates and tub photos for a buyer in Condado del Rey:

show what settles the sale before anyone gets in a car: a tub from above and upside down, a folding one both flat and open with its length given, and for a sterilizer or warmer the plate underneath where the voltage is printed, with a line on where it was bought. A diaper pail goes faster with the refills that fit it, so say how many come in the box. For creams and wipes, get the expiry date and the seal into the same photo. And if the baby was bathed in the tub for a few months and it has sat in a cupboard since, say exactly that, because that is the history a buyer of a used tub hopes to read.