Baby products

My daughter surprised us all the other week when she simply sat on her potty and did a wee!  Hooray - outgoings will certainly go down significantly when I no longer need to buy nappies and wipes.  Having children certainly adds to the bills every month.  I guess in a lot of ways, the first child is the most expensive because after that at least you have the basics, and some clothes to hand down to the others.

I fondly remember those first shopping trips to Mothercare and other stores to buy brand-new lovely baby paraphernalia!  It is exciting - and such a milestone in your life - that it is only natural to want all-new bright things for the new addition to your family - assuming that finances can stretch.  However, as time goes on and baby budgets become depleted, you start to learn all the tricks of saving money as a parent.  First of all, there seems to be an awful lot of stuff that is never needed at all!  If you are lucky to have friends and family who have also recently become parents, then they are generally a font of knowledge for what is really needed and what can be done without.  We were lucky to buy both cot and pram second-hand from a friend, which is a good start.  Then there is always e-bay (a huge section for children), and the National Childbirth Trust (N.C.T) local sales, where both clothes and toys are very cheaply bought and can always be found in good condition.

We tried the cloth nappy option with our first baby, but seemed to be doing about 6 washes a day, as he seemed to leak down his legs every time!  There is a wealth of choice when it comes to which type of cloth nappy would suit your child's shape - but we learnt that a little too late, and eventually opted for the disposable eco-nappy route. This doesn't save money, but did make me feel a little better about using disposables!

I suppose my biggest bug-bear about spending money connected to babies is all the marketing that's focused on baby goods - and especially that relating to bottle-feeding.  I understand that a proportion of mothers will be unable to breast-feed, for various reasons, but otherwise so much seems to depend on having good support to surround mothers in sustaining breast-feeding.  I will try not to be militant here, so for the purposes of this blog it would suffice to say that it certainly cuts down a lot on cost and preparation to use breast milk.  Then there are the purpose-made baby foods.  It was only the other day that I discovered foods can be labelled organic if they only have 14% organic ingredients.  This was a great shock to me as this food is more expensive, but many mothers, if able to afford it, would give it to their babies on the premise that it is so important to feed your child good quality organic food.  As we have had more children, we have been more relaxed about giving our children specific baby food.  Our third more or less forced baby weaning on us, for example, by demanding a bite from the banana I was eating!  The ready-made foods certainly have their uses for travelling etc. but generally I think home-made is best - as well as being so much cheaper. By the time they are one year old, most babies are able to eat much more which looks like grown-up food rather than puréed mixtures!

Since I started this post, our daughter has decided that nappies are much more convenient, so the dreaded potty training may take longer than first anticipated - but nappy-free days are still in sight!