Mother-to-be's little helper

You certainly look ready - what with only three weeks until your due date - but you still haven't decided whether to get the deluxe baby-wipe warmer with the built-in night-light, day care is still a mystery, and someone told you something about needing to baby-proof the living room.

With so many choices to make on an endless to-do list, what's an expectant parent to do?

Enter the baby planner.

For roughly $75 to $100 an hour - thousands of dollars for some custom packages - decisions like these can be outsourced to professionals who know for certain whether that super-cute Pottery Barn Kids crib bumper is unsafe.

"I think of it like wedding planners," said Shannon Choe, 36, of Berwyn, who founded one of the several baby-planning services offered in the Philadelphia area, Premier Baby Concierge, in 2007. "When they first came out, everybody was scratching their heads wondering why people didn't just plan their own weddings. Now it's an institution. I think one day it will be like that for baby planners."

An idea that virtually didn't exist three years ago now claims at least 40 businesses worldwide (and a professional organization, the International Baby Planner Association), many able to deliver just about anything but the baby itself: registry assistance, nursery design, pediatrician selection, shower planning, and pet and sibling preparation. After the bundle of joy arrives, they will help you hire a nanny, give you breast-feeding advice, and teach you how to make baby food.

Bottles to Britches, PA opened this year to provide baby-planning services in Bucks and Montgomery Counties and the Lehigh Valley, where couples can get help bracing for the chaos of multiples with the "One Fish, Two Fish" package - price tag $190. Baby planners there can also coach you on how to "green" your home to prepare for your infant's arrival.

"I was the first out of all my friends and all my family to get pregnant," said Bottles to Britches, PA co-owner Shannan Carr, a former auditor and information-technology specialist with three children, ages 3, 2, and 9 months. "I went to Babies R Us and had no idea where to even begin. It kind of took the joy out of having the baby because I felt lost and scared."

Indeed, stress relief is one reason more people, especially in big cities, seem willing to pay a professional to help them navigate the anxious journey through early parenthood.

Accountant Heather Mankes, 27, of Paoli gave birth to her first baby this month and turned to Carr for help with her gift registry and general parenting advice. "I'm already stressed about work and everything else - it's go, go, go with no relaxation time," Mankes said. "So I figured I could set aside some money every month to have someone take away the pressure of planning for this baby."

Kaitlin Stanford, editor at the pregnancy website TheBump.com, said baby planning services especially appeal to time-starved couples juggling dual careers, the growing number of older professional women becoming first-time mothers, and new parents living far away from their extended families.

Plus, the dizzying array of baby-care paraphernalia - there are more than 1,000 entries for "crib" on Amazon.com, and 40 diaper creams at Babies R Us - is enough to induce preterm labor.

"It's information overload," Stanford said. "And when you don't have an older sister or friends with babies to give you advice, it's easy to have someone swoop in and walk you through the process."

Swarthmore College psychology professor Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, believes too much choice can be paralyzing. In his own life, Schwartz recalls he and his wife accompanying their daughter on a trip to buy a stroller. "It was a daylong project, and I think if we hadn't gone with her, she'd still be looking," Schwartz said. "When all these options appear, there is the sense there has to be the right one, so it's very difficult to simply close your eyes and pick."

Choe is an early-childhood specialist who said she launched her business when she realized other parents could benefit from the know-how and experience she acquired from raising her three babies.

"I make people more comfortable with parenting and give them the confidence to make choices that will fit their family," said Choe, who now has 30 to 50 clients a year.

For Wendy McDevitt and her husband, Wade, Choe's services were invaluable. McDevitt, the copresident and chief operating officer of Anthropologie Inc., wanted to spend every possible second of her maternity leave with her newborn, not researching bouncy seats online or baby-proofing their Devon home. Their situation was perhaps more complicated because their son, Coulter, was born prematurely in November to a surrogate mother in California.

"There's the whole concept of 'it takes a village' to raise a child, and I believe having a baby concierge can be part of the village," McDevitt said.

Meredith Huffman, 37, of Malvern sought help from Premier Baby Concierge in finding child care before returning to her job as executive director of the Genuardi Family Foundation after the birth of her second child, Naomi, 1.

"My work requires a certain level of focus and professionalism that aren't necessarily conducive to being in mom-mode," Huffman said. "Having someone to help me navigate all the options and ease my transition back to work was very helpful."

Yet for every mother who praises the help of planners, there is another who questions the need and cost of hiring one. Critics say baby planners are capitalizing on the vulnerabilities of parents-to-be.

"I'm not saying baby planners are evil, or they are totally out to bankrupt you, but I do think they are savvy entrepreneurs who want to earn a living and have created a new little niche for themselves," said journalist Pamela Paul, who examined the high price of bringing up baby in her 2008 book Parenting, Inc.

Paul, a mother of three, cautions parents that hiring a baby planner might lead them to overspend on costly products their infants may never like. "You can hire a baby planner, but you cannot plan for what kind of baby you are going to have," said Paul, recommending that parents test-drive friends' gear, solicit hand-me-downs, or look for used items in consignment shops or online.

"We are under the illusion that just because you have a brand-new baby that everything that baby has needs to be new," she said.

Schwartz said parents could also benefit by realizing that caring for a baby isn't a process that can be perfected with the right kind of pacifier or expert sleep advice.

"Good enough is good enough, and they can get good enough a lot more easily than looking for and getting the best," he said. "But it's very difficult to convince people that good enough is good enough when it comes to unimportant things. So imagine how difficult it is for the most important thing on Earth - your kids."