A mama on Pinterest wrote this under the hospital bag pin: “I feel guilty spending money on clothes for a body that might change again next month.” The must-have lists do not help with that, because most of them are forty items long and half of it is for the photograph. This is the short one. Nine things that earned their place across three babies, in the order I reached for them, and then the five pieces of clothing that go with them. Everything else can wait until a gap keeps coming up.

A note first: I am a mama, not a lactation consultant. If feeding hurts beyond the first seconds, or there is heat, a hard lump or a fever, that is a call to your midwife or a lactation consultant today. Nothing on this list fixes those, and nobody should wait on a parcel for them.

1. A feeding pillow, or a firm cushion that does the job

The backache of the first month is mostly posture: hunching down to the baby instead of bringing the baby up. A feeding pillow that wraps round you brings the baby to the breast and lets your shoulders drop. A firm sofa cushion and a rolled towel do the same job for nothing; the pillow is simply easier at three in the morning. It is also, later, the thing the baby learns to sit up against.

2. A pump, sized to how you will use it

If you will pump daily, back at work or to build a freezer stash, a double electric pump pays for itself in time. If you will pump occasionally, for the evening out or the one bottle a day, a small manual or a wearable does the job and costs a fraction. Many health plans and some countries cover a pump, so ask before you buy. The mamas I interviewed for the Back to Work capsule mostly used a wearable at their desks and a double electric at home.

3. Nursing pads, more than you think

Disposable with a waterproof back for going out; reusable cotton or bamboo for home. Change them when damp, not when soaked. Keep a spare pair in the bag, the car and the coat pocket. The leaking weeks are short and they feel long, and the pads are the cheapest thing on this list. Clothing hacks for milk leakage is what to wear over them.

From the capsules

The Soft Landing Capsule

Twenty soft pieces, twenty-five outfits for the first weeks home, every one opening for a feed. $14.99 once, yours to keep.

See the capsule →

4. Two soft nursing bras and two to sleep in

Wireless, stretchy, wide band, clips you can open with one hand in the dark, cups with room for a pad and for the fullest hour. Fit them at the end of the day. Two for the day and two for the night to start; buy the rest once the first week has taught you the size. How to pick the best nursing bra is the whole drawer, including the pads and the pumping bra.

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5. A balm for sore skin, and a word about shields

A lanolin or plant-based nipple balm for the first weeks, when the skin is learning. It does not need wiping off before a feed. Nipple shields help some mamas with a difficult latch and get in the way for others, so they are a thing to try with a lactation consultant rather than to buy on a list. Hydrogel pads are the cooling fix for cracked skin and worth having in the drawer before you need them.

6. A cover that is just a scarf

The purpose-made nursing covers are fine and look like what they are. A large soft scarf does the same job over the shoulder, is the blanket in a cold car, is the colour near a tired face, and is already in the house. If you feed with the two-layer trick, a tank under a top that lifts, you may not want a cover at all; the scarf is there for the days you do. Ten outfits built around a scarf shows it doing all three jobs.

7. Water and a snack within reach of every chair

Not a product, but the must-have I forgot most. A big bottle with a straw, so you can drink one-handed, and something to eat in the basket by every chair you feed in. Feeding is thirsty, hungry work, and the moment you sit down with a latched baby is the moment you realise the water is in the other room.

8. A nursing station, which is a basket

A basket by the chair you feed in most: pads, balm, muslins, the water, the snack, the phone charger, a spare tank, the remote. Then a second basket upstairs. The basket is what stops the three o’clock feed from becoming a trip around the house with a baby on you. It costs nothing and it is the thing I set up first with my third, before the hospital bag.

9. Muslins, in every room

Ten of them, big and soft. They are the burp cloth, the spill cloth, the emergency pad, the cover, the sunshade on the pram and the thing you wipe your own face with at four in the morning. Nobody has ever owned too many.

The five clothes that go with them

Two clip-down nursing tanks, one pale and one dark, under everything. A button-down shirt in the size your chest is now. A wrap top or a fine cardigan that buttons. One dress that opens at the front, for the door and the christening. A pair of soft-waisted bottoms that sit above a scar, in this month’s size. That is the whole nursing wardrobe to start; the rest of your closet joins in with a tank underneath.

What breastfeeding-friendly clothes actually are is why the list is that short, and nursing-friendly loungewear for the first weeks is the free list for the sofa days.

Nine things and five clothes, and the guilt can go. Most of the list is cheap or already in the house: a cushion, a scarf, a basket, muslins, water within reach. The money goes on the bras, the pads and the tanks, and together they cost less than the pram’s rain cover. Mamas deserve to be cared for as intentionally as their newborns are, and this is what that costs.

If you are in the first weeks, the Soft Landing Capsule is twenty-five outfits for exactly this stage, built over these must-haves, soft and open and dressed enough for the door, with three pictures of you in them on the house. And if you would rather someone who knows your closet told you each morning which of the five clothes to wear, that is Anah inside the Atelier.

A basket by the chair, water within reach, a tank under the shirt. The focus is on you, mama.