Every hospital bag guide is written as if you will be the one packing it, calmly, at 38 weeks, in daylight. Sometimes that is how it goes. Often it is your partner, at 2am, being asked over the phone where the thing is.
So the useful version of this list is not the most thorough one. It is the one somebody else can follow.
For labor
- Your ID, insurance card and any paperwork the hospital asked for
- A long phone cable — longer than you think, the outlets are never near the bed
- Lip balm, hair ties, a hairbrush
- Flip flops for the shower
- A water bottle with a straw or sport cap, usable lying down
- Snacks for whoever is with you, who will otherwise be at the vending machine at 4am
- Something to keep the room bearable — headphones, a speaker, an eye mask
For after
- Two or three nightgowns or loose front-opening tops
- Dark, comfortable underwear you will not mind losing
- Postpartum pads — more than the guides say
- Nursing bra, nursing pads, nipple cream if you plan to feed
- A robe and slippers, for hallways
- Toiletries in travel sizes, plus a towel — hospital towels are thin
- A going-home outfit that fits you at roughly six months pregnant, not your pre-pregnancy size
For the baby
- Newborn diapers, and a pack of wipes or cotton balls
- Three or four sleepers and onesies — assume two get ruined immediately
- Hat, scratch mittens, a cardigan
- Burp cloths and swaddle blankets. Every one you own
- A blanket and a going-home outfit
- The car seat, installed and inspected before the day, not in the hospital parking lot
For the person who is not giving birth
Routinely forgotten, then regretted for the entire stay.
- A change of clothes and a toothbrush
- Their own phone charger
- Cash and change for parking and machines
- A pillow from home
Make it findable by someone who is not you
Two things go wrong with a bag list. It lives in one person's head. Or it lives in one person's notes app, which is on one person's phone, which is with that person, who is currently in a delivery room.
Building it as a shared link fixes both. On MakerManifest each entry is created from a product page, so an item reads as the actual thing with its picture, not as a word that has to be interpreted. "Nursing bra" is ambiguous at 2am. A link to the specific one, in the right size, is not.
Use the note on each item for anything location-specific — "already packed, top of the bag", "in the linen closet", "buy this one if we have run out". Half a hospital bag list is inventory and half is shopping, and notes are how you tell them apart.
Then publish it and send the link once, early, to everyone who might end up involved: partner, whoever is on standby for school pickup, the friend who has offered to drop things off. They do not need an account, and there is nothing to install. It opens as a web page.
Pack it at 36 weeks
Have the bag physically packed by 36 weeks and keep the list as the reference for what is in it and what is still missing. The list outlives the bag anyway — it is the same list the next time, and it is the list you send to a friend who asks what they should be packing.
Make one free, share it once, and stop being the only person who knows where anything is.