Today’s Hint: Where to Create Your Baby Registry

Note from Hint Mama: Thanks to the folks at BabyList for sponsoring this post. I only write sponsored posts about services I truly recommend and that I’d be writing a hint about anyway.

When I was pregnant the last time around and putting together my baby registry, there was gear I wanted that wasn’t sold at Babies”R”Us and Amazon.com, the retailers where I registered.

So, I searched around for a way to add these items to my existing registries and the best solution I came across at that time was the universal registry feature over at Amazon.com. I used it to add the diaper bag, rocking chair and crib sheets I wanted from various retailers to my Amazon.com registry. However, the universal feature was clunky, and the items were listed at the bottom of my wish list — not surprisingly, no one bought them as gifts for me.

That’s why this time around, as I create my registry for my second baby (yes, it’s okay to have a registry for babies beyond your first), I’m using BabyList, a truly universal registry site I didn’t know about back in early 2012. Today’s hint is to consider creating your registry at BabyList.

At the 3-year-old site, not only can you put anything on your registry from any online store and transfer registries you’ve already created to your BabyList one, but you also can create custom items for services and used gear you want (think home-cooked meals, a professional newborn photo shoot, the cost of a doula, babysitting help and friends’ old baby clothes).

The gift givers would then typically just either buy you the item you want, give you the help you requested, or send you a check to cover the cost of a service like a professional photographer. In addition, you can even add monetary gifts to your registry by creating an account at a service like plumfund.com and adding it as an item on your registry.

At traditional baby registries, in contrast, there’s no real way to ask for these kind of personalized services and funds.

Along those lines, here’s the big benefit of BabyList: It ultimately may help you save money. It’s truly universal feature makes it more likely you’ll get the baby gear and help you really need and want, eliminating the need for parent purchases down the road.

And you can increase the odds that friends and family will give you what you want from your registry by following these four tips. In my case, I ended up buying myself the diaper bag, crib sheets and glider I wanted – if friends and family had bought them for me, I could have saved at least a $1,000.

There also are other ways BabyList can help you – and your gift givers – save money. The site’s registries show the prices at multiple stores for an item, and BabyList automatically keeps the various prices for the item up-to-date, so your gift giver can buy the item from the store offering the best deal.

In addition, BabyList offers a registry completion discount that allows you to get 10% off when you buy any remaining items on your registry from a number of retailers, including Diapers.com, Giggle and Land of Nod.

To be sure, the service doesn’t work exactly like a traditional online registry. For instance, besides the differences mentioned above, when gift givers are buying an item off of a BabyList registry from a given retailer, they need to add the gift recipient’s address (or their own) to the store’s Web site. BabyList shows the gift giver what address the gift recipient prefers, making the process somewhat seamless.

So, want to see an example of a BabyList registry, and get started creating your own? You can check out mine here and for first time parents, check out these other BabyList registries for inspiration.

Where do you recommend creating baby registries and why?

This is a sponsored post written by Hint Mama about my real experience with BabyList and all opinions expressed are my own. Follow Hint Mama on Facebook and Twitter, and read more about her and her disclosures.