How much has being pregnant cost you?

[ithinkineedahug]

Planning at the moment to ttc #1 and interested to know how much people spent in preparing for their babies to arrive. looking at total expenditure including maternity wear, baby furniture, clothes etc how much did you spend?

Oooh it will be a very wide range.

By far the biggest cost to me was a year on mat leave (even though I had a decent maternity package) and then me and DP both going back part time.

Maternity clothes including bras- £100-£200 in total
Baby furniture - £30 for a secondhand cot, was given a moses basket, £30 for a cot mattress & sheets, didn't really do a nursery as such
Tell a lie, we did buy a big ikea shelving unit (not a specific baby one) - £80
Baby clothes - for the first year maybe £100-200, also got given loads. before she was born I spent maybe £50
baby bath - £5
pushchair - gift from grandparents, worth £200
sling -£40, secondhand, a good one costs £100ish new
I breastfed and didn't buy any bottles/formula/etc
car seat - £70
nappies - bought a set of reusables for £50ish, but didn't use them till 3 months - nappies are around £7 / week
we bought a few things like a bouncy seat (£25) and playmat (£15) , but not till after she was born. I don't recall any very expensive purchases.

You do get given a lot.

I think we were relatively frugal, you can do it all secondhand for pennies or you can really push the boat out.

Child care is extremely expensive, if you do go back to work.

You don't NEED to spend anything. But you'll WANT to.

If you know people who have babies, you'll be inundated with second hand stuff. The only new things that are really recommended is a mattress and a car seat.

Even if you do end up spending, eBay etc are amazing sources of great quality (and often hardly used) cots, cot beds, slings, clothes (maternity and baby)...

It's like asking how long is a piece of string!

It depends. I bought as few items of maternity wear as I could. I was lent some clothes and was given (second hand) - a cot, high chair, pram, changing mat and baby bath. I bought a mattress for the cot and one for the pram, plus baby clothes. I didn't spend very much.

I had DD at 41 and knew she would be an only child. Given that all these things are used for such a short time I was very grateful to have been given all these things so I wouldn't have the expense of buying them for just one baby.

If you plan to have several children it is probably worth buying something that will last.

On baby and clothing, barely anything as we have been gifted a lot so far, the main expense will be decorating the nursery and the dreaded cost of carpet.

Most of my money disappeared through sickness. 21 weeks down and lost over £1000 in wages already due to hyperemesis leaving me practically bed ridden

The biggest expenditure is lost income. I don't think I can be frugal over it unless I don't have DD. I reckon all the baby and maternity stuff costed about a month a lost wages only. And I got a brand new bugaboo. I think most people look at this the wrong way.

reminds me of the mastercard advert...

pram 100 pounds
clothing 100 pounds
lost earnings 1000 pounds

having a baby? priceless...

seriously.. You don't need maternity clothes, primark/ supermarkets one size up are perfectly good. Second hand is great, gifts are possible. If the main concern is a loss of earnings then look into a career change or swap to enable you to accomodate having a baby, working from home etc etc.

the physical and emotional cost of being pregnant though? lets not go there ;)

Clothes - first time round I borrowed most stuff from a friend. Shes moved away this pregnancy so am getting stuff off ebay. Probs £100.

Big ticket items - loaned cotbed, bought mattress £80. Moses basket bought for us. We bought pram and carseat (£350), drawrrs and bookshelf from ikea £150. Bottles and steriliser £50.

Clothes and bits for baby - £100 give or take

good question!
mat clothes - £30 (my bump was tiny I fitted in all my usual clothes)
pram /car seat. - £300 ask for discounts, look online price match at toys r us
wardrobe storage for baby stuff - £40
expressing machine £40
reusable nappies £70
everything else we've been given and not had to buy a thing!

eBay!!!!!! And beg, steal and borrow (without the stealing). NCT newly new sales are brilliant too. You can get secind hand cots for example and just get a new mattress. Also remember, friends and family will want to buy you things. My MIL bought us a bedside crib, FIL a blackout blind. Baby clothes come in bucket loads when baby arrives. As for maternity clothes, you can buy high street very cheaply and I don't buy loads. Just got a pair if mat jeans from new look in the sale for £9. Plus I lent my old maternity coat to friend and plan to have that back this time around. Remember, all the cost will be spread over a long time.

This is all based on my opinion and i know lots of women are the types who must have that shiny new pram for £900. Good luck!

So just to go he other way we decided we didn't want to buy everything second hand and this is our first and won't be last. Nothing wrong with second hand just personal decision we spent:

Nursery (furniture, inc moses basket and decorating) £500
Car seat and base £130
Pushchair and carry cot £400
Maternity clothes will prob be about £100
Monitor £40
Sheets/towels/muslins £40
Baby clothes for first few months £60
Changing mat £10
Changing bag £40

Yes you can do it for less and some people will say some of what we bought was unnecessary. Some people are lucky and get given lots but I don't like to assume! We still need to get nappies so haven't included them. We saved and got what we wanted - normally with 10% discount and could have spent a lot more!!!

We got a bit overexcited (dd was a long time coming), but more to the point had an over excited grandmother who funded a lot of this:

Nursey furniture (incl cotbed): 600
Mini cot + cocoonababy + spare sheet: 170
Pram: 750
Isofix x2 + car seat: 330
Playmat: 60
Bouncy chair: 60
Books / toys / mobile: 70
Monitor (video): 125
Clothes: 200 + this was stupid overspend as she can't possibly wear it all
Sheets / towels / muslin: 80
Maternity clothes: 250 ( had to have office wear and had a number of weddings etc)
Nursibg clothes: 150
Breast pump (electric) + spare bottles and storage bags: 130
Change bag: 60
Wrap: 40

Baby bath: 25
Blankets and swaddling stuff: 60
Bjorn baby & breast feeding pillow second hand: 7.50 (baby was born at this point and I had got significantly less precious)
Lightweight pushchair, as above : 20

Scary writing it all down. We do use everything but could have got a lot of it cheaper if I had been a bit less pfb before dd was born.

Thank you so much. I know it won't be our first but also don't want to massively over spend. Best friend as a 6 month old so I'm sure she will lend us some bits :) thanks for all the responses!

Would also recommend maternity wear that doubles as bfing wear (if you plan on bf). H&M do great tops and I've also picked up some nice stuff from the Mamas and Papas sale as well as JoJoMamanBebe.

I know some people on MN don't rate feeding tops but I found them really useful (and fairly cheap!)

Oh and in answer to the how much did you spend, the answer in c£30k pa in lost wages (now part time in a less senior role but much happier)

£6000 for ivf before we even got that second line! Planning on getting everything else second hand- one bonus of having kids after all my friends have is that hopefully we can get lots of their hand me downs!

I think I've spent about £400 on maternity clothes . I figure there's a good market for it on ebay so I hope to make up to £200 back selling it on. I love my clothes and would just be miserable rotating a few outfits for months.

Haven't really started on baby stuff yet but I'm sure DH is going to want a ludicrously expensive pram thing so I think the answer is we'll be spending a small fortune.

Not really planning to spend a lot, combining second hand, gifts and making stuff. HOWEVER atm being pregnant is costing me a fortune in groceries because I seem to have lost all self control/ability to stick to a shopping list . Also like other people said work related; taking relief jobs rather than a contract because we moved right before I got pregnant

Next to nothing so far but admittedly i haven't started looking at baby things. I do buy the odd bit of nice clothing in the charity shop for baby. I did invest in a good pair of maternity jeans. Still in normal tops at 5 months.

I've saved money by not eating out/drinking since pregnant. Basically, it costs as much as you are willing to let it cost.

I plan to buy a really descent pram. You don't need any baby furniture other than the Moses basket to start with. I wi buy a few nappies and bags of cotton wool closer to the time too.

I probably sound really tight but the reason most people spend so much is that business's promote so many things you probably won't need. Obviously you are so excited about the baby you want 'the best ' things out there.

Ps spending £10 on a pregnancy test is unnecessary too when you can buy about 80 on amazon for the same amount!

DC1 cost a fortune, the list of stuff that we 'needed' was really long.

DC4 is not costing so much, I had given away/sold pretty much everything after DC3 so I will need some bits.

So far I've bought maternity wear (about £200) and a few other bits, sling, rocker, and bottles. I will possibly spend another £200ish on a car seat and second hand pushchair/travel system. I will borrow a cot from a friend and buy a crib for the first few months.

Ocardo quite often have offers on bottles and ebay always have pushchairs/prams that have only been used for a few months. If I do buy a pram I'll buy a crib mattress to fit in the bottom and a new car seat that is compatible and clips onto the top.

It's quite nice to get the balance right and be able to buy a few bits that you will really enjoy using or will make life much easier, but then not go too mad and buy stuff that you really don't need.

One thing that costs us, in my first pregnancy and now that I'm pregnant with DC2, is food, especially in the first trimester. At the very beginning I felt the urge to buy all organic, free range etc and couldn't stomach anything that wasn't high welfare - now I agree with high welfare anyway, but couldn't always afford it before, so that was a change! But also because, almost inevitably, you may find one day that you can't stomach what you loved before and you must have item x stockpiled. Or you think you have everything possible in the house, but you just can't bear any of it and want to get food out/takeaway in that moment.

For example, normally I just drink tap water and sometimes weak squash. At the moment I am living on Sprite and 7Up I know it's not great, but it's one of the few things keeping sickness at bay, I need the fizzy lemony-ness. So obviously that costs more, especially when I run out and need to buy some not on offer or from a local shop. My fridge is also currently full but just looking at it makes me want to gag (yesterday it was fine), so I've just ordered takeaway as the only thing I can think of eating right now is Chinese...

What I'm saying here is, save up some money for you for these impulses, cravings, aversions etc. It makes a big difference to how you feel if you can freely pick up the thing that helps you not feel sick, or the only thing you can stomach, without worrying about blowing the grocery budget.

Also ditto to not going wild on maternity clothes. It of course depends on what you do, and if you need a particular wardrobe for work for instance, but generally it's easier just to get bigger clothes, expanders for existing clothes, and clothes that are cut more loosely, as they're more flexible for postpartum also. Also shop in sales for maternity stuff. I bought 2 maternity dresses when pg with DC1, in the sale around £10 each, then I bought some tops from Primark in size 16 (I'm a size 12 normally). I was given 2 maxi skirts that had stretch so I could just pull them up to under my bust, they weren't maternity specific but they were the best items I had! I was also given an actual maternity skirt with a stretchy panel but I couldn't use it until I was quite big as the panel was oddly baggy.

My baby stuff this time didn't cost too much because (A)I am tight and bought loads 2nd hand and (B) I had literally had my bfp oooh a week after starting my new job so money was thin on the ground.
Instead of maternity stuff i bought leggings and bigger long tops, and had bras etc from dd1.
I seond the food and drink, i was working night shifts eating allll the time.
I spent fek all on "clothes" clothes just loads of babygrows and vests, am only now starting to properly dress her at 4months.
My whole steralising kit including bottles and warmer etc was £46 from argos, mean to be £100 but found a coupon online whilst it was also on offer. We probably spent....700 altogether.

We prob spent around £1500 in pregnancy/ first 6 months of baby. On not much stuff, but did by decent organic mattress for cotbed/ sheets/ babygrows etc.

Main costs for us were 6 months maternity leave - about £20k loss of earnings.

Childcare - with x2 now in part time childcare, London, it's around £2000 a month

So the organic matress that is still used at £200 was a bargain!

No I didn't say I regret earning less. I did put in less hours, travel less, and ended up with a redundancy about 1.5 years after I went back.

I don't agree with maternity wear as bf clothes or sizing up normal clothes though. First I got all my maternity wear from h&m and new look. Just got two new dresses and they are £12.99 each. Will it really be cheaper if I just buy a size 10? I went back to the same size within 4-5 weeks afte birth and in the in between period I wear maternity/wrap dresses to tie me over. So never needed that one size up. It's size 8 to maternity and back to size 8. Anyway, I think I spent about £100 last time on new clothes. They couldn't be reused this pregnancy because it is exactly 6 months apart!

Also I'm buying maternity work wear and prefer dresses, that is rubbish for bf. I used normal tops over a vest for bf. one top up and one top down. I can see bf top being useful. It just didn't work or me.

I also spent more on eating out while on maternity. I eat at my desk at work and most days I pack a sandwich. During maternity I just went out loads for coffee. And the baby groups aren't cheap.

I don't really get the 'just buy one size up' idea as a money-saving thing either - surely it's the same outlay on new stuff either way? Clearly I'm the wrong person to be taking advice from on the subject, given I've spent a small fortune, but I'd rather spend £X on stuff that fits properly than £X just to buy something baggy.

I've bought a fair bit on ebay on the basis that it'll probably hold its value and I'll be able to sell it on for a similar amount (I've sometimes even made a profit re-selling clothes on ebay).