The Most Stylish Baby Stuff Makes the Perfect Gift for New Parents

German baby brand Cybex is synonymous with car seats, which is what happens when you engineer arguably the safest – and most stylish – car seats on earth. Since 2005, the company has dedicated itself to products that make parents' lives easier and children safer, at the same time honing a reputation for products that look as good as they function (collabs with the likes of Jeremy Scott, Ferrari and DJ Khaled are testament to its aesthetic ambitions). The Z-Line of car seats has won more than 350 awards for safety and design, and features industry-leading cushioning and protection, app-enabled safety sensors and innovations like a rotating seat base, which means you can get your little one in and out of the car without any contortions. It's peace of mind in a very sleek package.

Nursery furniture is almost always hideous, either unforgivably twee or designed like something that orphans in a Roald Dahl book might sleep in. But just because babies don't have a developed sense of aesthetics, there's no reason that they should have to live with something completely bereft of style. Enter the Melfi range, by Mamas & Papas, which not only looks good, but is designed to grow with your child until they do actually start to care about the stuff in their room. The set includes a chest of drawers, wardrobe and a particularly smart cot, which they can sleep in from birth but, as they grow, can be rebuilt as a toddler bed that's big enough to house them until they're four years old. Smart and chic.

This extremely smart baby monitor not only beams HD video and audio of your sleeping baby to your phone, it also tracks their movements and wake-ups to create a bespoke sleep training plan, just in case it turns out that they're not quite as good at dropping off as you'd like.

Sure, a swaddle is a functional thing, but that doesn't mean it can't also be a beautiful thing. These, by Aden and Anais, are crafted from soft and skin-friendly bamboo viscose, which is also bombproof enough for hundreds of hot washes. We're particularly taken by the indigo shibori pattern, but they come in a range of designs that will brighten up a nursery, and provide all manner of visual stimulation for the baby wrapped up inside them.

For parents who are kept up at night not by their baby's crying, but because they worry when they go quiet, the Bluebell Baby Monitor tracks everything from breathing rates to skin temperature, and will even warn you if they roll over onto their stomachs (babies should sleep on their backs to reduce the risk of SIDS). You get notifications on an app and a dedicated wristband, so you can always feel like you're keeping an eye on them, even when you're not in the room.

Picking a pram is always about compromises. Cut weight and you've got something nice and nimble for everyday use, but which isn't robust enough for long walks. Opt for resilience and you'll be cursing it every time you have to fold and unfold it, or battle it up and down tube station steps. Better, then, to not compromise at all. The Mamas & Papas Strada has a lightweight steel frame that's easy to lift, and unlike most prams that claim single-handed folding, you actually can pack it away when you're holding a baby. But it's also rock-solid, with chunky wheels and spacious underseat storage, which make it perfect for parks and picnics as well.

This is not your average bassinet. Created by cult baby expert Dr Harvey Karp, Snoo is designed to emulate the experience in the womb, rocking and shushing your baby to sleep. It even reacts to their crying by ramping up the levels of comforting, which helps them drift back off to sleep and trains them not to rely on parent pick-ups. Expensive, yes, but when you've got a newborn, sleep is priceless.

If you can't stretch to the full Snoo – or if you don't fancy trying to fit it into your carry-on when you're travelling – the Snoo bear houses a discreet speaker that plays the same white noise tracks as the crib, which are shown to help babies fall asleep more quickly, and stay asleep for longer.

Despite what Piers Morgan might think, carrying your baby around in a papoose is in no way emasculating (if Daniel Craig does it, then so should you). But it is fair to say that most baby slings aren't all that stylish. Enter Artipoppe, an Amsterdam-based brand whose luxurious, design-led papooses are worn by tough guys like Vincent Cassel, Chris Pratt and Josh Brolin. You were saying, Piers?

Nothing keeps a baby quiet quite like rhythmical movement, which is why many a parent has resorted to a joyride up the M4 when they just won't stop crying. BabyBjorn's bouncer will save petrol (and your sanity) as it rocks away whenever the infant inside kicks or wriggles. It's also much sleeker, quieter and more compact than those shrieking plastic options.

Many babies sleep better when swaddled, as the compression mimics the feeling of being squashed up in the womb. However, swaddling them tightly enough can be tricky, and wriggly sleepers will quickly become untucked. Halo's swaddles let you wrap a baby up in seconds, and lets you pick one of three positions – arms in, hands to face or arms out – to suit their favourite sleeping position.

Breast pumps are generally more agricultural than aesthetic, but British start-up Elvie is on a mission to create unobtrusive, mum-friendly pumps that mean dads can also help out with feeds using expressed milk. Unlike traditional breast-pumps, Elvie slots into a bra and does its job silently, meaning that pumping can fit around a mother's schedule, rather than the other way round. A quiet revolution.

You may wonder whether a pushchair really needs this much carbon fibre, but that space-age chassis means that, at just 5.9kg, there's a good chance that this pram weighs less than the baby you're putting inside it. Unlike plasticky city prams, the Melio feels rigid and less likely to fall apart if you take it across cobbles. It's also an all-in-one solution, with four seat positions, including a lie-flat orientation that works for newborns (although it will work with Cybex's cot attachment, too, as well as its car seats, for simplicity on the road). It's also, for our money, the slickest pushchair on the market, the infant-transport equivalent of a Porsche 911.

Originally launched in 1972, Tripp Trapp is a bona fide design icon, a high chair that grows with your child and means that they're included at the dinner table right from birth. Not only is it better for the planet than a plastic high chair that you'll bin after a year, it also helps nurture the sense of belonging that comes with communal eating, from their first bites of solid food right up to the point as a teenager when they want to eat all their meals in their room.

Ah, travel, how we've missed you. Which means new parents finally need a travel cot again. BabyBjorn's is the best – it's lightweight, compact, and goes up and down in seconds (unlike most travel cots, which seemingly double up as logic puzzles). When you're not on the road, it even doubles up as a playpen/baby prison.