I like to read blogs of other mothers. It's fun to follow their pregnancies and see how they do things. One blog I look at sometimes recently had a post about how much the mom spends a month on her baby. The total was over $1,000 a month. $700 of that was full time daycare, but the other $300 was for formula, clothes and toys. wow!
I got to thinking about how much we spend on Evangeline. We've always had to be careful with our money and even as Dan has advanced I have held onto the mentality that we need to be super careful with what we spend. It's become sort of a game for me to see how little I can spend on the babies. Sweet Caroline broke her baby spending down into five categories so maybe I'll try that here.
1.Day Care- $0
2.Clothes- $40 maybe?? I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to calculate this. We didn't really have any girl clothes since Giddy was a boy and born in winter...so even gender neutral stuff wasn't going to work. I've had to buy everything for her for up to 9 months, but I have a lot of handmedowns from friends that will take us through size 2t. I probably have spent $250 total on all her clothes and won't buy anymore for at least 3 months unless I need something special. That $250 would have been a lot less, but I spent about $150 at gymboree because I was being plain stupid. I got a ton of clothes for her there, but she outgrew them within 2 weeks. grrrr
3. Diapers/wipes/necessities- $0. I use cloth diapers and cloth wipes. I don't use diaper creams, pacifier wipes, lotions, or anything. I did buy a $10 bottle of California Baby Wash for her before she was born and there is a ton left.
4. Food- $0 She's had nothing but mama milk. I don't usually introduce solids until a year. If I do, it will be something we're eating that I've ground up.
5. Toys-I have bought one toy for Evangeline which was a playmat. It was $40. I am going to buy her a Sophie the Giraffe for her Christmas present. So basically I'm going to say $0 for toys. I can't say that I will buy her anything until her first birthday. There are plenty of things around here for her to play with.
So my grand total is $40 a month. Babies are SOOOO expensive!! LOL Next time I will do way better on the clothes spending. This time I bought all white onsies and socks so that I will have those for either gender!
Some fun things
-I found the bouncer I wanted for $10 on a FB swap/sell page.
-Her crib was handed down to us by a friend
-Her bumbo, carseat, exersaucer and some cloth diapers were from Gideon. (and I paid next to nothing for them since they were mostly bought second hand)
-I made her cloth diapers from materials I had and only had to buy the microfiber for the inners. I want to say I used about 3 yards of it. So maybe $30 for at least 9 months use out of these diapers. When I am done I can either save them and use them again or sell them and get back 100% of the cost.
-We splurged on a crib set from Pottery Barn. $150 I believe. It's beautiful and I will keep it for my grandchildren.
-I could have gotten a used playmat for $10, but I just had to have a certain one. It has a star with a smiley face on it that is at the very top. Thea, Mareea and Gideon loved that smiley star and would coo and smile at it. By the time it got to Gideon, the playmat was on it's last legs and finally broke. It was totally worth the $15 I paid for it used. Unable to find another used one, i found it on amazon. I sure wish I'd saved that star and could have just attached it to any old used one.
This is probably my lamest post ever. It is late at night and for whatever reason I often feel compelled to make listed and calculate spending late at night. I'm 99% sure that no one is interested in my exact spending for my baby, but it seems really important to me right now that I write it all out. :) So forgive me.
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