How much did your newborn actually cost?

mummy86_2

Hi, with my son who is now two and a half we spent £700 on a pram and got everything brand spanking new, now im 4 months pregnant and we have got a second hand pram and car seat off ebay for next to nothing and still have most of his baby clothes left over which are good as new.

I would say you always spend way too much on your first and end up buying stuff you never use and too many clothes etc. Plus people always buy you clothes and things like moses baskets.

Money wise mostly went on nappies and formula!

You can get a lot of things from ebay that are good as new and no one needs to know!

mrsrolfie

Sorry if this has been mentioned already but Aldi are having a baby event, it was a couple of weeks ago but still things in store, anyway their cellular blankets at our store are priced at £2.49 but are going through the tills at 99p. I got a white one but I assume it's the same for the other colours. Their cot sheets are a good price too. I've been given loads of stuff and if you join your local freecycle and are quick off the mark you might be able to score some baby stuff :-)

optimistic-mummy

this is my second (we had nothing left from our first son so starting again. so far i have spent £431.02p... we have nearly everything ... im hoping to spend £600 max ...

emsaint

hi

My little boy is now 11 months and i can't remember him costing us too much.

His cotbed , mattress and sheets - my parents gave as a gift
Steriliser, bottles - gift
Travel system (pushchair/pram/car seat) - £100 from mothercare - £150 reduction
Clothes - mainly gifts
Nappies - resuable from Bambino Mio and Little lambs -£150 in total. Only use disposables at night - convenient mainly , so buy now one 30 pack once a month £6.99
Wipes - old flannels chuck in nappy bucket (stores used nappies until full then straight in washing machine) disposable wipes once a month .99p
Unable to breast feed after 2 months - formula £9.49 a pop now down to 4 boxes a month.
All baby food made from scratch but snacks cost £15 a month
Everything else was borrowed, gifted or hand me downs

We signed up to everything. My husband looks after little one, so i went back to work after 6 months

DigForVictory

A long time ago, before I was reading MSE, I fell for the buy new, it being Our First Baby & all. That said we loved carbooting, so we were familiar with the idea that not *everything* came from Mothercare...

New cot £150 (Toys R Us)
New Mamas & Papas pushchair £180 incl cosy toes (Toys R Us - turned out it was wheelchair width & the devils own job in confined spaces, but Very Comfortable!)
(And getting that lot back when I was too big to drive meant a taxi, for which we were charged car rate & they sent a minibus. I was loaded like porcelain first & husband & driver hefted the rest into the back. Funniest moment of that pregnancy...)

second-hand cot £10 Barnardos - needed sanding & revarnishing & new mattress (£30) - as m'husband said "it followed him home" & meant baby could be tucked in a cot on any floor! (Turned out very handy as a toy tidy downstairs & then as a cot for baby #2.)
Bedlinens, bought BNIB at carboots £20 (topped up with ach-bleach-them, by weight, from car boots)
basic baby clothes about £30 from supermarkets & the rest car boots & gifts (I didn't twig eBay then, either.)

High chair gift from grandparents £120

I found I wasn't allowed to breastfeed (anticonvulsant medication gets into breastmilk) & the grandparents were sent off clutching catalogues:
Steriliser £17 (Boots)
Bottles £7 (Boots)
Orthodontic teats £5 (Mothercare)
(Time spent learning to bottlefeed baby lambs came in very handy.)
So we had the running cost of milk. Although looking at the three lads now, you would *never* peg them for packet mix poppets.

When baby #3 was anticipated, we needed a toddler bed that would fit between the windows of our bedroom - & a local bed & mattress making company made & delivered it for £100. High street prices were £300 & up. If space had not been an issue, he'd have gone into a single bed then!

Clothes then came from grandparents, work colleagues, the vicar's wife (who gave me all her cloth nappies! I did *try* to use them, but couldn't get it to work for us, any of the three times around), baby clinic (they had a box for outgrown stuff) and carboots!

Outgrown stuff went to assorted cousins & the local charity shops. One collected, & as I "nested" with #3, they collected *daily* from me. Well, babies & small folk devour storage space...

So. First get a washing machine & tumble drier. From John Lewis if you can afford it for the extra 2 years peace of mind. (Or buy using the right plastic for the same effect. We had kitchen cover & as the machines got a Lot of Use, we saw more of "Captain Hotpoint" than we did of the Health Visitor.) Freezer & microwave also darned handy in surviving newly hatched parenthood.

Everything else (I'm sure today's H&S will say that isn't right) you can get secondhand (althought I liked the new cot mattress) & you may appreciate it more if you've had a hand in fettling it - the cot from Barnardos worked as hard as its brand new counterpart but was more loved by me as I helped restore it. When we moved, it went back to Barnardos, for some other young family.

Why buy unless little coot has tried & liked it? Bouncy chairs we had several of as the lads loved them, but a rocking horse just got dusty. Try at mum & baby groups, borrow when someone outgrows (length, weight or gets bored with!) & then buy for as little as you can dicker for at a carboot...