Shopping for baby stuff in London

[Weathergirl1]

We're planning a trip to London in the next month to have a look at the big ticket items - specifically prams/car seats. Our main aim is to look at John Lewis in Oxford St as it's got much more range than our local store!

While we're there I thought it would be worth looking at any other shops we don't have here. In particular Mothercare as ours closed down a few months ago and as we don't have a car, the nearest ones to us are all on retail parks so hard to get to! I've been on Google and see that there are stores in Westfield White City/Stratford (both which would be easy to get to from Oxford Street!) and one in Brent Cross which looks a lot bigger than either. Can anyone in the London area advise whether it would be worth going out to Brent Cross over the two Westfield ones?

Mamas & Papas are in both Westfields too so I guess the question is whether Brent Cross is really worth the extra trek or not?!

Any other shops in central London you'd recommend looking at?

Just wanted to come back and update. We did John Lewis on Oxford Street last Saturday with no appointment. Wasn't too busy as we got there around 10 and there were partners available to answer questions and demo the pushchairs. After trying both the Uppababy Cruz and Bugaboo Bee we settled that we preferred the Vista. We did have a look at the other brands but they were either not compact enough for us or too low to the ground. Had interesting conversation about car seats which gave us food for thought about getting one in the group 0 which we had previously disregarded, so lots to think about! Also managed to get some yarns reduced in the clearance for my DM to keep my DM supplied for baby knitting!

Managed to pop by the Seraphine store too near Paddington which was good to have a browse at.

Then we braved the Central line (utter muppets, should have done Jubilee from Bond St 🙄) out to Stratford to look at Westfield which turned out to be considerably busier than Oxford St! Was really good to look around Mamas & Papas but I was disappointed with Mothercare so glad we didn't bother to trek out to Brent Cross. We were really put off by the amount of stuff that was heavily gendered pink and blue - to the extent that DH reckons we shouldn't buy anything from there out of principle! We did then sneak back to John Lewis at Westfield - DH thought I was joking about seeing if they had any more yarn in the clearance, which they did(!) - and had another look round the car seats there.

Really productive day (nearly 4kg of yarn!!) so thank you for your recommendations 👍

If you don’t already have it download the bounty app and Emma diary apps as they often have discounts on car seats and proms as well as nursery furniture and Seraphine clothing. We have got lots from them but got the odd code which came in really useful and although the Emma diary code for Seraphine said it doesn’t include discounted clothes it worked for me! I’m surprised you found mother care very blue for boys and pink for girls as I was in our local one yesterday and although they had some like that they had the biggest range of neutral I’ve seen. The mother are by me is pretty big though so could be why.

• haven’t got lots from them

Hiya - the mothercare at Westfield White City is tiny! Not worth the trip unless you're planning to go to JL as well, but even then, I didn't find the advice particularly helpful. JL at Brent Cross were amazing though but I'm not sure about the mothercare at BC.

I know you mentioned not being able to get to retail parks, but if you do manage to get out to any, the mothercare in Hayes (Lombardy retail park) is brilliant. Good selection of everything and the staff have always been super helpful.

Hope that helps, OP :)

Ah, just seen you've already had your trip - my bad! Hope you got all the useful advice you needed and enjoyed a trip to London :)

@sunshinesophia no probs, we did thanks! 😁

Also realise I said Vista when I meant Cruz (d'oh!) - the interchangeable bassinet has confused me 🤯

@escapetheordinary thanks for the tips, but I'm staying away from marketing sites like Bounty - discounts not worth the cost of them getting my data!