The cost of having a baby

“Babies are a rip-off”, the midwife said, packing up the breast pumps and knitted practice boobs. She was laughing as she said it, but it’s a line that’s stayed with us ever since that breastfeeding support class. Ted is the smallest member of our household but he’s by far our biggest expenditure since his birth some six months ago.

I thought it might be helpful for prospective parents to see a breakdown of the kind of things you find yourself buying in both the lead-up to a baby, and the immediate aftermath – plus some reflections on which ones were worth it (or weren’t).

It’s worth pointing out here too that all of this is dependent on your personal financial situation and your definition of affordable etc. We’re extremely lucky to be able to buy the things we did and I’m conscious not everyone will have these options – but equally I think it’s worth discussing how best to spend your cash, whatever budget you have.

The must-haves

No getting away from it: these are things you’re going to have to buy. As the old adage goes, “buy cheap, buy twice”. There’s probably an updated version that goes “inherit second-hand, buy new” (or there was in our case). Note : I’m not bothering to include clothes on this list as that should be obvious enough!

1. A pushchair (aka “travel system”)

We bought a new pushchair (£597) that also came with a newborn-friendly carrycot attachment (£161), plus a few bonus things like a cupholder (£16!) and car seat adapters (£25!). That’s right: approximately £799 on the pram alone. Now, it’s worth pointing out here that this was the first thing Maddy and I argued about when buying stuff for the baby. The same brand we wanted had a sale on where you could buy the same model pram plus a car seat , for £200 less than what we ended up paying. Maddy didn’t like the colour, so we got the more expensive one. Her family had very generously given us some cash toward the pushchair so ultimately she won the debate, but if I had my time again I’d have argued for the cheaper one.

A pushchair is essential but we don’t use it that often, especially once Ted was a month or so old and we felt confident putting him in the baby carrier/sling instead. We avoided taking it on public transport until he graduated from the carrycot (four months old or so) because that part didn’t fold up, making it impractical to fit onto a train etc. It’s also awkward to manoeuvre into places like pubs and restaurants and when you’ve been for a walk in the park after it’s rained it’s not much fun scrubbing leaf remnants off your carpet afterwards. When we had it in the boot of the car in carrycot mode we could barely fit anything else in there.

Verdict : get a half-decent one, but don’t spend as much as we did unless you know you’ll use it every day. We could’ve done without the carrycot/bassinet and just used a sling/carrier, and saved a few quid that way.

2. A car seat (if driving)

Here’s where you should definitely avoid second-hand or pre-owned. All the NHS advice tells you this already but we still got given one by Maddy’s dad who got it via FreeCycle and assured us it was “from someone posh” who said it had never been in an accident etc. It was only a few weeks after Ted’s birth when we realised the straps were broken and couldn’t be adjusted that we got rid of it and bought a brand new one. You have to buy the base for the car (£126) separately from the seat itself (£99), but handily there are ones that adapt to larger car seats as your baby grows so you can keep the same base and just get a new seat. Handy for the manufacturers, that is.

Verdict : If you’re driving, spend the cash on something reputable and sturdy-looking as this may save your baby’s life in an accident. Also try to coordinate with your pushchair model as many newer car seats can be attached to prams, which is great when the baby’s asleep and you don’t want to wake them.

3. Somewhere for them to sleep

My mum was super keen to buy us Ted’s first cot but Maddy’s dad beat her to it, finding a brilliant pre-owned Mamas & Papas one on FreeCycle. This cot was too big for Ted as a newborn, so we bought a Snuzpod (£200) bedside crib, which attached to our bed with an open side so we could check in on the baby.

Verdict : He still sleeps in this now at six months old (although he’s pretty much at the size limit for it) so I’d say we got our money’s worth.

The everyday items

These are the cheaper things you’ll need for your day-to-day activities but probably don’t need as much research / budgeting compared to the big ones above.

• Moses Basket – £10 secondhand
  Don’t bother buying one of these new unless you’re feeling flush. Every parent we know is struggling to even give theirs away as every charity shop seems to stock them. Ask around and you’ll probably find grateful parents wanting to reclaim some space at home.
• Baby bath – £20 new
  These are worth having while the baby’s a newborn but again, they quickly outgrow them (and it can be quite fiddly to use them depending on your bathroom layout). You could probably go secondhand as long as you’re careful cleaning it, but we just grabbed one from Argos. Or alternatively skip the baby bath altogether and just hold them in the bath – we got an AngelCare bath seat for £25 or so which lasted longer once Ted was bigger.
• Changing mat – £15 new
  We bought two of these and situated one in the downstairs bathroom, right next to a sink – if you have the facilities to do this it’s a real timesaver. John Lewis does one that’s sloped at the sides which helps contain the baby on the mat as they start to move around more.
• Reusable nappy set – £80 new
  We’ve tried to love these because of their planet-saving aims, but the reality is that they’re expensive, absolutely stink when it’s time to open the bin (sold separately) and put them in the wash, take ages to dry out so you have to be really on top of your laundry cycle, and a nightmare when they leak (which means you have to wash a full set of clothes as well as the nappy). Disposable nappies are bad for the planet though, so see if you can overcome the difficulties.
• Electric breast pump – £35/month to hire
  Our breastfeeding journey didn’t turn out like we expected, but for a while we hired a Medela hospital-grade pump which was great. Tommee Tippee and co sell cheaper versions for about £40.
• Baby sleeping bags – £25 each
  Grobags are little sleeping bags for babies and are way better than blankets as they can’t pull them off or over their heads etc. Expensive for the well-made ones (Ikea sells a cheap and cheerful version though) but last for a while and really do work.
• Changing bag – £30
  We carry this thing everywhere and it probably has two or three more pockets/compartments than it needs (leading to urgent “which pocket is it in?!” confusion when we’re looking for a muslin). It’s a good price though, comes with a free changing mat, and combined with pram clips (£7) you’re good to go
• Bouncer chair / swing – £40
  This was great for the first few months to keep Ted entertained while we speed-ate our dinner. He’s too big for it now and the one we got from Argos needed weird square batteries we can’t use with anything else, but it did the trick. It might feel expensive for a short-term use but having a few minutes of uninterrupted time to eat is worth every penny.

• Wraps / carriers – £15 second hand
  We got our BabyBjorn carrier for £15 at an NCT nearly-new sale. These things are the best part of £100 new so I was chuffed (and would never pay that much for it). You can also get long single pieces of fabric for body wraps which are great but a bit harder to assemble (though much cheaper). If you’re in Birmingham there’s a woman in Selly Oak who has a “sling library” for hire.
• Play gym – £10 second hand
  Again, got this from the NCT sale. £70 or so new – just get a second-hand one off someone and give it a wash. Great to put the baby down when you need to drink a cup of tea (or microsleep).
• Nursing pillow – £15 ish
  Worth having (according to Maddy) for the early days. Ikea sells a cheap one
• Bottles / feeding equipment – £70+
  Ted quite quickly stopped liking the cheaper Tommee Tippee bottles we started with after getting lots of wind/indigestion with them. We bought the (more expensive) MAM bottles, although they’re self-sterilising (eg. you can just microwave them with a bit of water inside rather than buying a separate steamer container) which is great. We also ended up buying the Tommee Tippee Perfect Prep machine (£70) which made making bottles an absolute doddle.

Stuff for later

You can put off some purchases until the baby is older, eg:

• Baby monitor – £80
  I spent a while finding one that didn’t operate over wifi or pair with an app etc. Tempting as it is for convenience, this means your video stream is being shared publicly somewhere on the web, probably unencrypted, and given that most of these products are of dubious origin and resold under different brands, I wanted to stick with one that only transmitted locally. This one worked well for us.
• Cot mattress – £70
  We haven’t used ours yet at nearly six months so you can probably wait on this one too. Again the advice is to buy new rather than risk some other family’s potentially-infectious bacteria etc infecting your kid, or if they’re smokers etc. I learned this the hard way by accidentally buying the wrong size and I couldn’t find any takers to buy it off us (unused!) at a quarter of the retail price. Ended up giving it to a baby bank though so at least my error had a happy ending for someone.
• High chair – £12
  Just buy the Ikea ANTILOP one like everybody else and move on with your life. Get the inflatable insert thing though for when the baby’s a bit too small for it.

Closing thoughts

Babies are a rip-off. The items on this list total over £1766 and this by no means includes everything we bought for Ted (oh god, my Amazon bill those first few months).

I also haven’t included the furniture you might need to buy (eg. coffee tables for putting down the huge amount of half-finished mugs of tea or baby bottles dotted around the living room) or things like a changing table (eg. we bought the Ikea MALM chest of drawers and put a changing mat on top) as this is probably unique to your home and existing furniture etc.

If I was giving advice to anyone just starting out on all this (oh hey, I am! turns out that’s what this blog is supposed to be!), I’d say: find a pushchair you like that isn’t too bulky or complex, invest in a good car seat that is easy to install and remove, and ask your mates with kids ( not your parents because they almost certainly were advised to put you to sleep using techniques we now know kill babies in their sleep) what they recommend for putting babies to sleep in.

Everything else: see what you can get second-hand (especially clothes, regardless of gender – you won’t care at 4am) and use your common sense / best judgement for anything with a hygiene aspect (basically all of it). Best get saving!