Hey! As some of you know I'd love a baby in a few years time (3ish) once we're living together after uni and stable financially.

How much would you say a baby costs?

Do you have to get expensive prams?

What is the monthly cost for you?

Thanks for reading

I think if you always wonder how much it will cost, you will never get around to it. Babies are very expensive, but people manage. It's always surprising when these survays come out that say having a child costs X amount, it always seems a fortune, and lets be honest it probably is. Like I said people manage.
at the moment Oscar is costing £7 a week on food and £10 a week on nappies, wipes, bubbles, aprox. The rest is just for fun stuff.
You have 9 months to get the rest of the essentials, and don't forget family and freinds love to buy baby clothes.
You will know when you feel ready. I personally would have waited untill I qualified and was in my role a year before trying, but I would never change Oscar for the world.

You don't need to get expensive anything. If you can afford to, then that's nice, if not, you can still do it. My baby wasn't planned and I paniced about so much but it's suprising how easily we're doing it. I think we'd actually have found it harder if we had planned it..

What I meant about expensive is, do people need to get a £400 pram, or will a £80 pram do the same thing? is it just a label that makes it cost?

You can get £400 prams off ebay for £80 even if you wanted a £400 one. I'm sure a £400 one does more than an £80 one but that doesn't make an £80 one any less suitable in my opinion.

hehe cool! thanks for your input! Ooooh I can't wait to have a baby :-)

no, you don't really need the expensive stuff. For example, ikea do cots for 50 quid or so, or you could get one for 500. at the end of the day, it does the same job.

At the moment we spend about £20 a month on nappies as we always get them on offer from Asda. His formula is free as he gets it on prescription as he has reflux but it would be costing us about £7 a week. Clothes we rarely buy cus nanna and grandad always like to buy those! Yes kids are expensive but you'd be suprised how much you can cut costs and how much is unnecessary! The initial costs where ok for us because my parents bought the cot for us,and it was just a cheap one. my friend gave us a pram that was pretty much never used...you can get some brilliant bargains in shops now though. Whats the point in spending hundreds on things a baby's only gonna use a few months? A baby doesnt care what its pram looks like and they all pretty much do the same job! .You get by.I think its when they get older you start to struggle!x

You can do things pretty cheaply if you need to.

For example, we got our pram second hand for £140 (retails at £280) because we couldn't afford it brand new, and it was the one we wanted. It's in great condition and comes with a car seat. Couldn't have asked for a better buy.

Also, we asked for vouchers and money for birthdays and christmas. We got tonnes of Argos, Mothercare, Asda and Next vouchers which have been fab.

My parents are buying us a cotbed when the time comes, and we inherited a baby changing unit from my aunties.

All in all, I think we've probably spent about £200 of our own money, but thats only because we've planned everything really really carefully.

It is possible on a budget, and we have bought the best we can afford for our baby. Nothing is like bottom of the line stuff. Its just down to planning

xxx

I got my pram on freecycle - you can get loads of baby stuff on there for free. www.freecycle.org If you apply to the one in your local area you can get things that people don't need anymore, and put stuff you don't use back on there for other people to have. It's completely free My pram is a graco 3-in-1 and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Sorry for this sounding like a major advert, but it's made things a lot cheaper for me and thought it might be useful for someone. x