Starting a family is incredibly exciting. Follow our tips and you won’t waste a moment

It all begins with those little words: I’m pregnant. For most of us it’s the start of an incredible adventure – and a big step into the unknown. Plenty of friends, family and colleagues might already have babies and toddlers. They might have told us all about the joy, the excitement, the expense and the sleepless nights to come. But it’s still incredibly hard to imagine how it’s going to feel – and how we’re going to adjust.

‘It can feel as if there are hundreds of things you need to do as soon as you realise you are pregnant,’ says mum of three Susanna Scott, founder of the huge BritMums blogging network. ‘When I was expecting my first baby I went into overdrive and wanted to research and buy every piece of baby-related kit I could find.’

She wasn’t alone. Shops love parents-to-be and tempt us with an ever increasing range of shiny new ‘essential items’. But how many of them do we really need?

Last year, researchers at Which? asked 1,448 parents about the most useful baby products they had bought – and about the ones they had paid for and barely used.

Stair gates came top of the ‘most useful’ category, alongside electric and microwave steam steriliser kits, audio and video baby

Pregnancy can trigger the mother of all shopping sprees!

monitors, changing bags, baby sleeping bags and digital ear thermometers. A baby’s dummy and a baby seat/support for the bath rounded out the ‘worth buying’ top ten.

Meanwhile the Which? research puts items such as nappy stackers and nappy disposal bins, special swaddling blankets and ‘top and tail’ baby washing bowls on the ‘nice to have’ rather than the ‘need to have’ list.

Best advice if you’re expecting now is to ask friends with babies about the things they regret spending money on and the things they couldn’t manage without. Don’t rule out second-hand kit and clothes – see below. And if money and time are tight, then focus your cash and research on the things that will keep your baby safe and take a lot of knocks: that means the car seat and buggy you’ll probably be using every day.