Spending the Baby Budget

After months of planning, scrimping and saving we've just started blowing it all away, finally spending the money we've put aside for baby on the very items we intended to spend it on. With just 6 weeks to spare.

In the past 2 weeks we've bought flat cotton fleece nappies, snappies, pins, newborn clothes, a stroller and 6 of those Bum Genius nappies I mentioned a few months back. We also bought a few items for my hospital bag including maternity pads (boy am I looking forward to using those, not), cheap knickers (which can be thrown away in a fit of disgruntled dismay, if needed), and a post-pregnancy nightie for hospital nights.

I really should write a separate article about the ordeal of buying a stroller, because it was such a convoluted process.

There's still plenty to buy, but anything else would be luxury items rather than essentials, or should I say essential items rather than bare essentials. We didn't want to buy absolutely everything on the off chance that family (particularly those due to visit from the USA) might want to give us a thoughtful gift, and not just some left-over rubbish that we don't really need or want, but something that will be a lovely addition to our baby collection. However, we do want to be ready for when baby comes.

We're not making the assumption that anyone will give us gifts, so we've still budgeted for everything. It's hard though, because you have to think about these things and consider family. Some people like giving stuff, especially grandparents when it comes to newborn babies, so it helps to consider what they may or may not enjoy giving without trying to imply that it's required.

We didn't have a baby shower, partly because I'm just not comfortable asking people for gifts and partly because we live far, far away from family and friends. People kept telling us "don't buy too much, because you'll be given it all as gifts in your baby shower" but we already knew that wasn't going to happen, so we really did have to budget for everything.

Luckily my sister came through with a treasure trove of baby clothes, accessories and a cradle from her 2 little ones, all of which were still quite new and in wonderful condition. That saved us a hell of a lot of money and we couldn't be more grateful.

Living in a small apartment, we don't have a lot of extra space for stuff so we're quite happy keeping it simple. All we really want now is the timely arrival of our healthy, beautiful baby.