9 must-have gadgets for first-time parents

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When you and your significant other walk through the threshold of your place with a brand new bundle of joy, any prep work you've done beforehand is going to help a lot. Painting the room, building the crib, and picking up a stroller are all easier to do in advance. 

There are many tech products for new parents, and we've rounded up a few that we think will help smooth out some of the first bumps in the road.

A white noise machine

Amazon

Low, ambient noise can help soothe your child before he or she goes to sleep. There are a lot of white noise machines specifically aimed at children, but we're going to recommend this one from Marpac instead. It may be as cute looking as your air conditioner, but what it lacks in looks it makes up for in functionality.

Two motors and a fan sit inside the case and can be adjusted to change the sound of the white noise it creates. Parents who've used this machine have raved about it on Amazon, claiming it really does help their baby sleep through the night.

Marpac DOHM-DS, Natural White Noise Sound Machine, $49.95, available at Amazon

A humidifier

Amazon

Keeping a humidifier in your baby's room helps to keep dry air from irritating their nose and throat, leaving them more susceptible to sickness. This humidifier from Pure Enrichment will dispense water vapor into the air for 16 hours once its tank is full and automatically turn off when the water level gets too low.

The humidifier is quiet, so much so that some Amazon reviewers were disappointed because they couldn't also use it as a white noise machine. Its most baby-friendly feature is the fact that it comes with a built-in night light.

Ultrasonic Cool Mist Humidifier by Pure Enrichment, $39.99, available at Amazon

A bottle sterilizer

Amazon

Instead of washing your baby's bottles in a sink or dishwasher, Phillip's bottle sterilizer lets you clean them in a microwave using steam. The main benefits of cleaning bottles this way are that the microwave gets hotter than those other methods, which helps kill germs, and it takes less time. Plus, if you keep the container sealed, all the bottles inside will stay sterilized for an entire day.

The bottle sterilizer holds six bottles, but the catch is that it's made to fit with Phillip's Avent bottles. If you don't own any baby bottles yet that shouldn't be a problem, but it is something to keep in mind if you own bottles from other brands. Amazon reviewers had mixed results when trying to use different bottles with this device. 

Philips AVENT Microwave Steam Sterilizer, $20.99, available at Amazon

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