Baby Care
Buy and sell baby care in Costa Rica.
A lot of Costa Rican houses only have hot water at the electric shower head, so the first bath at home starts with a pot on the stove and a tina on the kitchen table. Tubs and bath seats come up here new and pre-owned, next to the changing mats, the pacifiers and the sterilizer that cleans them, nail kits and thermometers. So do sealed boxes of diapers, left over when a baby moved up an etapa sooner than anyone planned. The plastic pieces pass easily from one family to the next; anything that touches skin or a mouth is worth having sealed.
The baby care routine, from bathtub to pacifier:
three jobs, each repeated several times a day. The bath needs a tub, rigid or folding, a support seat for a baby who cannot sit up yet, and some way of checking the water. Changing needs a padded mat, a lidded pail and the diapers themselves, disposable or cloth. Feeding brings pacifiers, a bottle brush and, in many homes, an electric sterilizer and dryer on the kitchen counter. The changing table belongs with the furniture in the nursery, the fold-up travel mat with the diaper bags, and the step after diapers is potty training.
A baby tub filled from the stove:
many Costa Rican homes have no hot water at the kitchen or bathroom sink, only at the shower. The bath gets mixed by hand, water heated in a pot and cooled from the tap, so a dependable way to read the temperature is worth more than any other feature. Some tubs have a plug or strip that changes colour with the water; otherwise a separate bath thermometer does it. Then think about where the tub will live. A rigid tub is the cheapest and hardest to break, but it claims a corner of a small house for a year. A folding tub stores flat against a wall, and some stand on legs or sit across the shower floor, so nobody carries a full tub to the table. A bath seat holds a newborn at an angle and frees both your hands; check the age range printed on it, because most only suit the months before a baby sits.
Why a sealed box of diapers is worth more than a used tub:
a plain plastic tub costs only ₡6,000 to ₡10,000 new, so a used one is rarely worth a drive. A folding tub with a temperature gauge runs around ₡30,000 to ₡40,000, and with only the hinges and plug to wear, a clean one holds its price. Diapers are where the money goes every month. A bulk box of more than a hundred costs close to ₡18,000, babies outgrow a diaper size faster than parents expect, and a sealed box in the skipped size should fetch close to what it cost, because nothing about it has changed.
Mould in a folding tub and scale on a sterilizer:
those are what give out first. Open a folding tub all the way and look into the silicone folds and under any non-slip pad, where water sits and black spots grow. Check that the plug seals and the temperature strip still changes colour, and flex each hinge: split silicone leaks and cannot really be fixed. On a sterilizer, lift the lid and look at the heating plate. White crust is limescale and comes off with vinegar; a pitted plate, a cracked lid or missing racks are reasons to leave it. Used bottles should be clear rather than cloudy or scratched, and plan on new teats whatever their state. Most electric breast pumps are sold as single-user, so if you take one on, every part that touches milk should be new. Creams, wipes and washes only make sense sealed and inside their date, and a pack that spent months under a zinc roof is worth less than its label says.
Passing on a box from the stage your baby skipped:
put the stage number and the count in the title, and photograph the box with the seal and any date in view. For a tub or sterilizer, show it working, with water in the tub and the gauge reading. Say whether it served one child or two, whether there are pets or smokers at home, and whether the tub was put away dry. Most of this fits on a bus, so a buyer coming across Heredia may ask to meet near a stop, and will want to watch the folding tub fold flat before carrying it off under one arm.