Baby’s First Cold Care Package & Free Gift Tag Printable
Help a first-time mom survive her baby’s first cold with this thoughtful care package stuffed with tried and true infant cold remedies.
Send this adorable care package when you need to support a new mom from afar … or wrap it up as a baby shower gift and make sure mama is prepared!
Scroll down for a bonus free printable “baby’s first cold care package” gift tag and complete your gift!
Here’s my dilemma: One of my very favorite people in the whole wide world is having her first baby! (Ok, that’s not the dilemma, stay with me here, folks)
The problem is…I live some 500 miles away. Ugh!
I want nothing more than to shower her with love as she’s preparing for her new addition, but what I really REALLY want to be able to do is help her out when things get hard.
But the distance between us doesn’t make that easy to do.
And one of the hardest times for any new mom is baby’s first cold.
My gift solution: Just becuase I can’t be there to help in person when she experiences her baby’s first cold, doesn’t mean I can’t ease some of her stress. So, I’m opting to send my personal favorite tried and true infant cold remedies in a “baby’s first cold” care package.
I want to make sure my friend’s medicine cabinet is fully stocked with what she actually needs (not just what she registered for).
Makes a Fantastic Baby Shower Gift!
This post contains affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase through them, I may receive a small commission from a third party at no extra cost to you. All opinions are my own and I only share links to products I personally use, love and trust.
I must admit, I’m not the biggest fan of buying an entire gift straight off of a registry. It always seems so generic to me. BUT, what I will do is take a cue from a registry and add one or two items into the gift I’m dreaming up.
Case in point: I purchased the infrared thermometer from my friend’s registry and added it to the care package. In addition, I got the exact humidifier from her baby registry to make the gift a bit more substantial.
While the whole gift wasn’t purchased from her registry, I made sure to get her exactly what she wanted but add items maybe she hadn’t thought of yet (like the Boogie Wipes, nasal spray, the easiest syringe I’ve ever used and infant Motrin).
My Favorite Tried & True Infant Cold Remedies
|| Little Remedies Saline Spray & Drops || I could not live without these saline drops! My kids have never had a problem tolerating them and they work perfectly with my favorite nasal aspirator.
|| Boogie Wipes || Make no mistake, Boogie Wipes work soooo much better than standard baby wipes when it comes to dried-on snot and eye crud. Lovely to think about, I know, but it’s the honest truth!
|| Concentrated Motrin Infant Drops || For some reason, Motrin worked better than Tylenol at reducing fevers for both of my kids. So if I had to give one or the other, I chose Motrin. But, always consult your pediatrician before giving medicine to a baby.
|| Ezy Doz Oral Syringe || I find that the cheap plastic syringes that come with OTC medicines and the ones pharmacies include with prescriptions like antibiotics are crap. Even though you can take them apart and clean them after each use, they tend to stick and not work as smoothly. So, I couldn’t live without these reusable and easy-to-wash oral syringes.
|| Infrared Thermometer || I don’t think you can have too many thermometers around the house. I can never seem to find mine when I need it!
These are my absolute favorite infant cold remedies, but you don’t have to stop there!
Here are some more ideas to make an even more helpful (and impressive) baby’s first cold care package or baby shower gift:
1 || Take-out gift card – For my friends who live out of town, I like to tuck a gift card to their favorite local take-out place into the care package.
If that friend lived closer, I know I’d take a meal over when shit really hit the fan, so why not feed from afar with a gift card? After a long day of tending to a sick baby, mom and dad need a break from making dinner. Treat them!
2 || Nasal Aspirator – Okay, so I know a lot of people swear by NoseFrida brand nasal aspirators, but I could never get on that bandwagon. I always preferred to use the medical-grade plastic suction bulb that came home with both my babies from the hospital. But, I admit, after a few days, that’s gross.
So, I decided to try this BoogieBulb nasal aspirator since you can take it apart and clean it with hot, soapy water. I buy a new one for both of my kids each year at the start of cold and flu season, and I use the heck out of it! It works like a charm!
3 || Humidifier – This is the exact Crane brand humidifier I’ve used for both of my kids (and occasionally myself). I love that you can clean it easily and it works great every fall after it sits unused in the closet for most of the year.
Make Your Own Medical Pouch
Want to make a medical pouch for all the goodies you plan to include in your Baby’s First Cold Care Package? Sure you do. It’s super quick and easy with a Cricut, so much so that I hesitated making a tutorial for it at all.
Of course you can upload a medical cross svg to Design Space, but it was just as easy for me to make my own.
Here’s how to do it…
STEP 1: GATHER YOUR SUPPLIES
- Blank canvas zippered bag – mine is 8×10″
- Black Cricut brand heat transfer vinyl
- Cricut Explore Air 2 and cutting mat
- Weeding tools
- Cricut EasyPress 2 – 6″x7″ (or a standard iron)
- Cricut EasyPress Mat – 16″x20″ (or thick towel)
STEP 2: CREATE YOUR CROSS SHAPE
|| Step 1 || In a new project, click on the “shapes” button in left navigation and select the square option.
|| Step 2 || Select the square shape you just created and a small lock icon should appear in the lower left of the shape. Click on the lock to unlock it and adjust the size of the square to make it a rectangle.
My rectangles are 4.5″ x 1″ and 1″ x 4.5″.
|| Step 3 || Select both rectangles and hit the “Align” button in the top navigation. Then, select “center”. Now you’ll have a perfectly aligned cross shape. But you aren’t done yet…
|| Step 4 || Lastly, with both rectangles still selected, hit the “weld” button in the right navigation. This will merge the two rectangles into one cross shape to be cut.
STEP 3: CUT, TRANSFER & ADHERE
So now that you have your 4.5″ x 4.5″ cross, click on the green “Make It” button at the top of Design Space.
Make sure you select “mirror” image and set your Cricut Explore Air 2 to “heat transfer vinyl.”
Once your cross is cut, weed your vinyl and use your heat press or iron to transfer your htv to the canvas bag. I used my Easy Press for 30 seconds at 315 degrees.
STEP 4: ADD MY FREE Gift Tag TO FINISH THE GIFT!
Simply download the above PDF and print it to white cardstock. Add a hole punch for lacing through ribbon, attach it, and you’re done!
STEP 5: SHARE YOUR CREATION WITH ME!
I’d love to see how you recreate this concept of a medical bag for a baby’s first cold care package! If you make your own, please share photos on Instagram (and tag me) or leave me a comment below!
AS ALWAYS – IF YOU NEED HELP BRAINSTORMING OR CREATING A CUSTOM GIFT, PLEASE REACH OUT TO ME! I’D LOVE TO HELP!
More later! The craft room is calling, and I must go…
OTHER GIFTS YOU WILL LOVE:
