Who knew that choosing a baby bathtub would be so much trial and error? In my search for a baby bathtub that worked for our space and our family, I have literally purchased…let’s see 5 of them? I’ll describe the final winner here and review a bunch of other tubs just didn’t work that well for us.
First, I got a very highly rated baby bath support, the Angelcare baby bath support.
I thought that thousands of positive reviews would make this the one. It’s just okay. I knew going in that it was only rated for 0 to 6 months, and I thought I was okay with that. But this thing is enormous! I mean, in our small house, there is literally nowhere to store it after its lifespan is over, or in between baths. It just has to sit in the bathtub. Moreover, because it is so big that it has to be used in the bathtub, every time I wanted to bathe my tiny baby I would have to fill the entire bathtub up with water. In our drought-ridden state, this seemed like a criminal waste of water.
So next I thought I definitely need a smaller tub to go inside my tub to save water. Maybe even one that was just big enough to fit the Angelcare inside it. And, it had to be collapsible/storable to save space. Enter the Stokke Flexi Bath collapsible tub.
I thought this one looked neat, but it was very expensive. I found it to be generally too narrow, and it was definitely not quite wide enough to fit the Angelcare inside. It does fold up, but because of the way it’s designed, it doesn’t “lock” open. It’s always slightly folded or creased in the center. I used this one a couple times and gave up.
Next, I thought I would try to give inflatable baby bathtubs a try. At this point our baby was already semi-sitting up by himself and didn’t need a reclining bath support anymore, just a little bit of support to help keep him sitting up. Enter the next tub, the Inflatable Mommy’s Helper bathtub.
This one is cute and cheap, and it was slightly more successful than the Stokke bath. We used it for maybe a few months. It has a little inflatable “hump” in the center of the tub which is supposed to go between the baby’s legs to keep them sitting up. For our boy baby, this was a no go because it was very uncomfortable between his legs. We just left this part uninflated. My major gripe with this tub is that it was just too small. He outgrew it very quickly.
Having had success with an inflatable tub, I thought for our next go round I would size up.
These larger inflatable tubs are sold under a variety of brands/names on Amazon, but they are all pretty much the same as far as I can see. While it was definitely larger than the mommy’s helper tub, after awhile this one would start to lose air. It was a huge pain to have to reinflate the tub every day before bathtime! I have better things to do with my time than that. So this was a fail.
Too annoyed to go for another inflatable tub, I finally looked again at collapsible tubs. Then I found the one – bingo!
These collapsible baby tubs are also sold under a variety of brand names, including Costway, Gymax, and others. There are versions with and without the baby insert (I got one without). This one is a winner! It’s collapsible so it saves space, but once open it is very sturdy and freestanding thanks to the legs. It is large – my now one and a half year old can fit in it easily and will probably fit for a good many more months. But it is not too large – it still fits inside my smallish bathtub and I don’t feel like I am wasting water by using this. I don’t have to inflate it all the time. I wish I had this bathtub from the very beginning. If you’re looking for a baby bathtub, get this one. One and done!
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