Over the last couple of years, the maternity box given to new parents by the government in Finland has gotten a lot of attention.
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2013/06/finnish-moms-get-supply-box-for-newborns/
It’s a really cool idea: give every new baby the basics they’ll need for the first few months of their life. If you were really stretching it, all you’d really absolutely need for the first couple months would be the contents of this box (and the box itself, which doubles as a crib!) and milk from mom. Definitely not practical, but it’s a pretty amazing public benefit.
@Carol agreed: since we didn’t know Spencer’s sex until he was born, it seemed like a great idea to have a bunch of stylish (if decidedly European), gender-neutral clothes, without all the huge graphics and logos that we tend to avoid ourselves.
So I got to the task of trying to snag one. With the help of @superic, we got one the old-fashioned way: a friend of a friend of a friend, with lots of translation involved. The box they had was a few years old – from 2011, but had never been touched, since it was for their second child. At the same time, I tracked down someone on Facebook who was looking to sell their box, a brand-new 2013 model, and decided we might as well just get two boxes.
Here we are, and Spencer just passed his first birthday. For what it’s worth, he tends to float around the 70th percentile for weight and height. He’s far outgrown the vast majority of the clothes that came the boxes, but we still have a few pairs of pants that manage to fit him.
But for those first six or seven months, the clothes from the box were the workhorses of his wardrobe. Super cute, unique without being gaudy, really high-quality, and very soft and comfortable, there were relatively few days he wasn’t wearing at least something from the box. Granted, we had two boxes – without both of them, we’d have been doing laundry at a ridiculous pace (or, you know, we’d just have gone out and gotten more at the store, I guess), but we put most of them through hell and they handled it.
The Clothes
Clothes are definitely the bulk of what you’re getting with the box. In general, if you were to take a Carter’s catalog and transport it into a Scandinavian dimension, that’s what you’d be getting – basic everyday styles that have enough flair to be cute without being ostentatious.
Basically, they give you three or four days of clothes in each of three sizes: 50cm (0-3 months), 60cm (3-6 months), and 70cm (6-9 months). They don’t size them in terms of those ages, but that’s about what we found them to be anecdotally. With both boxes, we had about a week of Finland attire for each of these stages.
We’ve got an epic gallery of all the contents below, but they give you a half-dozen bodysuits, a few “rompers” (below – full-length sleeveless footed things that will really show off that budding chest hair), and a few pair of pants. They also give you a super-soft set of pajamas, which I seriously wish they made in my size – I’d look like a lumberjack-turned-teletubby, but it’d be worth it.
For us, moving from San Francisco to Boston, we were interested in some of the outerwear the box had. For instance, the ridiculously-cozy snowsuits. He definitely fits into them now, and I’d imagine that no matter what time of year your kid is born, you’ll get at least one winter out of them.
They give you one dry snowsuit (just for warmth when in the stroller), and one wet snowsuit (for romping around). The dry ones are quite a bit smaller, so I’m thinking they assume you’ll use those in the 3-6 month range, while the wet ones are more 6-12 months. That’s in addition to a handful of weather-related accessories, like hats (including a balaclava!), mittens, etc.
We’ve had a massive winter here in Boston so far (12 days into February, and we’ve already set the monthly record for snowfall), and while I won’t say that Spencer really loves playing in the snow, we’ve definitely been able to keep him warm and protected with the suits from the box, even now that he’s past a year old.
The Extras
You definitely get far more than clothes, though. Remember, this is supposed to basically be everything you need for those first few months, if you’re really willing to keep on top of things like laundry.
Everyone will make use of the hooded bath towels, the bath thermometer, probably even the toy. Some might take advantage of the cloth diapers, while others might just use the inserts as ridiculously-absorbent burp cloths like we did. The teething toy works well, and is a useful thing to have around, and the toothbrush definitely does the job once your kid has a tooth or two to actually brush.
They include a sleeping bag as well, which we didn’t really know what to do with until a few days ago, when Spencer moved into the toddler class at his daycare, and they said they wanted a sleeping bag for nap time. Problem solved! It definitely won’t last more than a few more weeks (maybe a couple more months?) before he outgrows it, but they say it works really well for now.
But it doesn’t even stop there. Condoms, disposable bra pads, nail scissors, a hair brush, a bib, sanitary napkins all come inside. There’s a tube of cream – which is not Desitin-style diaper cream, but more like a moisturizing skin lotion – that we’ve made great use of since the cold/dry winter started.
The Box Crib
The showstopper, the headline-grabber, for this box is definitely the fact that you can use this box as a crib. They give you a thin-but-surprisingly-soft mattress, a sheet, and a duvet cover and blanket.
We actually used this as Spencer’s crib for the first few months – my Amazon purchase history tells me we bought a travel crib about two months in, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t use it for a few weeks after that. We were living in a tiny apartment in San Francisco, knew that we’d be moving across the country in just a few months, and didn’t want to invest in a proper crib.
Was it perfect? No – eventually, he started finding the sides of the box with his kicks, and it’d wake him up. But it definitely did the job for a while, which is exactly what we wanted.
The Verdict
A few businesses have sprung up offering an American-sourced, easier-to-obtain version of the Finland box, and I don’t blame them – we thought about doing just that here at Kinsights. It’s a great thing to have as a new parent, and would be an amazing gift to receive from parents or a group of friends who thought you were worth it.
The Inventory
Okay, as promised, here are photos of everything in both of the boxes we received. A pretty epic gallery, but you should get a pretty solid sense of what you’ll be getting. Enjoy!
First, the 2013 model:
And here’s the 2011 model:
