Michelle Frank, due to give birth to her third child next month, is waiting to pay her bill at Scarsdale, N.Y.'s baby depot, Buy Buy Baby. She has three full shopping carts.

She's amazed at how baby products have changed since her two children, now 6 and 10, were infants. This is Frank's second trip to Buy Buy Baby. Today's grand total: $976.

"My credit card company is going to love me," said Frank, of Irvington, N.Y. "There are lots of things now that make life simpler."

With advertising companies marketing wares to parents who might not know better, it's hard to differentiate between what's a necessity and what's not. Some say advertisers are preying on new parents' inexperience and fear by asserting that their products are essential to a baby's heath and safety. In many cases they're creating a need for something that doesn't exist.

"The list of necessities for a newborn is actually much shorter than people realize," said Laura Jana, a fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics and co-author of "Heading Home with Your Newborn: From Birth to Reality."

"It's the joke, but it's true that the baby can sleep in a dresser drawer on the floor," she said.

Not many new parents subscribe to that theory. Americans spend $6 billion annually on baby equipment. And it's easy to see how after walking into any of the large baby product warehouses. They're stocked floor to ceiling.

Lisa Berlinger, of Wesley Hills, N.Y., purchased a baby monitor to listen to 8-week-old Noah when she isn't in the room with him, but she doesn't use it.

"I can hear him if he starts crying and I didn't want to hear his every noise," Berlinger said. "It's nerve wracking."

Baby monitors have become more like baby surveillance devices. Very popular now are the two-way monitors that allow parents to talk to each other from separate rooms and ones with a screen and camera that show the baby on a mini TV monitor.

"Moms are constantly being bombarded by messages from advertisers," said Christina Vercelletto, products editor of Babytalk. "Pregnant moms think, 'If I don't buy everything my baby will die or not be happy.' They make it all seem absolutely essential."

Vercelletto points to other items that are less about the baby's health and more about competition between parents. The Bugaboo stroller is an example. It's popular because the car seat comes out of the stroller and snaps into a base in the car to become a car seat.

"It does have some good features," Vercelletto said. "You can face the baby a few different ways and adjust the height so you can keep the baby high off the ground. But the real appeal is to the sophisticated parent who wants a status symbol."

That's one of the indulgences Berlinger gave in to. It's the Porsche of strollers, and it's actually called a travel system. The version Berlinger has cost $729. She estimates that equipping Noah cost about $5,000.

"What's happening with babies ... is terribly concerning," said Susan Linn, associate director of the Media Center at Judge Baker Children's Center and instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

"The ability for kids to tolerate stress builds up over time. Parents are trying to reduce stress from their lives so they never have little stresses, like coping with wipes that aren't warm. They're going to have to cope with what life has to offer, its slings and arrows. You begin life by having little frustrations and learning how to deal with them."