Toddla™ ad: Read this if you're a new grandparent

I keep this photo on my phone to stop myself buying another giant teddy. My daughter sent it to me at 2:07 in the morning when her baby was three weeks old. No message. Just her kitchen bench under the light from the range hood. A cloth over the edge. Her phone. A cup of tea she'd made at some point and never got back to. That's what the first year looks like from the inside. Not the photo of the baby in the new outfit. This one. Whenever I'm in a shop with a new grandbaby to buy for, I get it out and look at it. It took me a while to learn that, and a cupboard full of my own mistakes. I became a grandmother five years ago, and I did it the way most of us do. With my whole heart and a very full shopping bag. 🧸 A teddy bear so big it needed its own seat in the car. 👗 A little outfit for the first proper photo, with a matching hat. 💡 A light-up baby toy that played three songs and needed a screwdriver just to put the batteries in. I was so pleased with myself. I think I told everyone at church about the teddy. My grandson Sam was about ten months old when his mum, my son's wife Rachel, asked me to grab a spare blanket from the nursery cupboard. I opened it and there was my whole first year of presents. The teddy was squashed on the top shelf with its head bent sideways. The light-up toy was still in its box. The outfit was in a stack of tiny clothes with the tags still on, most of them from people like me. Rachel saw my face and laughed, kindly. "That's the first-year cupboard," she said. "Everyone has one." She wasn't cross about it and neither was I. She'd been too tired to be cross about anything for ten months. But I stood there longer than I needed to, holding the blanket. Because I'd bought every one of those things for the photo. For the moment of handing it over. Not one of them was for a Tuesday afternoon, or three in the morning, which is where new parents actually live. Then she showed me the thing she did use. Every single day, since the week he came home. It was a small plain thing a friend had given her in a paper bag. It had cost less than the ribbon on my teddy. I'm not going to pretend I took that well. I went home and told my husband, and he said, "Well, what did you think a baby does with a bear that size?" Which was not the support I was after. A few weeks later I had coffee with my friend Jan, who was a midwife for over thirty years. I told her about the cupboard, expecting sympathy. She just nodded. She said a baby that age won't remember a single present. They don't know it's Christmas. They'd rather have the paper. But the parents remember everything about that first year, and they remember who made a hard day a bit easier. "Buy for the parents' hands," she said. "Not the baby's photo." I've thought about that a lot since. When my second grandbaby came along, two years later, I did it differently. My daughter's little girl, Ruby. I bought the small useful things tired parents reach for every day. Nothing big. Nothing that lights up. Nothing that needed batteries or an evening with the instructions. And one or two things that would still be useful once she'd grown out of the baby stage. Not one of them would have made a good photo. My daughter used every single one, and she told me so, which after that cupboard meant more than I can say. There's no first-year cupboard at Ruby's house. Or if there is, none of it is mine. I've run this page a few years now, and I get the same message almost every week. Someone has become a grandparent, or is about to, and they want to know what to buy a baby who won't remember it. I understand that question completely. I asked it myself, just too late. So here's what I've learned, for what it's worth. Don't buy for the baby. Buy for the two worn-out people holding the baby. Small things, useful things, things they'll pick up every day. One or two that grow with them. And if you want the big teddy for the photo, get one, just one, and let it be the extra. I got tired of typing the same answer, so these days I send people to a list instead. A registered midwife wrote it, not me. It's mostly the small useful things tired parents reach for every day, with a few things that grow with them. The list I send new grandparents to is below. And if you never buy a thing from it, next time you visit, ask the parents what they used today. Then buy that.