1. Cribs/Cots and Cotbeds. It’s fairly recent practice for babies to sleep separately from their parents, particularly their mother, up to around the age of 8-10. Whilst many believe co-sleeping to be the ultimate proverbial “rod” for one’s back, it has proven benefits that include encouraging breastfeeding, lower rates of SIDS when practiced safely, more secure attachments and better long term emotional regulation in children. And with cribs costing anything from £100 to £1000+ this is one major expense you can definitely do without.
2. Bottles. It goes without saying that some women cannot breastfeed or struggled with a lack of adequate support. For those women, the expense of bottles can certainly mount up with new parents spending roughly £150 in the first year of their child’s life on a variety of bottles, teats and sterilising equipment. However, you can drastically reduce the expense by purchasing second hand glass bottles. Naturally BPA-Free and proven to reduce colic symptoms, you can use glass bottles on multiple children without worrying about contamination or massive expense. Sterilising is also free, with most glass bottles only requiring some simple boiling in a saucepan.
3. Prams. It was once the norm to carry babies and toddlers around in long pieces of woven fabric. The introduction of prams for royal babies and babies born into wealthy families started a trend that segregated poor families from wealthier families and babywearing quickly fell out of favour, with many families wishing to give the illusion of money by using prams. Over the years they have become the norm for almost every family, and with the average travel system costing parents £300 to £1000 they represent the biggest expense for most families by quite some way. Often, a simple woven wrap will cost as little as £50 and the benefits of babywearing are numerous, from improved bonding to easier breastfeeding. Most parents find their babies much more settled when being carried due to the security of being held close and the relief being upright can bring to issues such as colic and reflux. Mums of more than one child often report that they are better able to get on with the housework and continue to meet the needs of their other children whilst babywearing their sleeping newborn.
4. Clothes. It might come as a surprise that the average parent spends roughly £300 on their child’s clothes for their first year of life. Whilst the temptation to buy cute little outfits for babies is almost too much to resist, often they aren’t as comfortable for baby and involve a lot of fiddling to get them on which presents another source of discomfort. Simple vests and sleepsuits tend to be the comfiest option all round and come in a wide variety of jazzy prints and colours with embellishments to boot. The cost for even the fanciest of vest and sleepsuit combinations tends to come in at around half the price of kitting baby out with a full wardrobe.
5. Nappies. The most recent estimates suggest that using disposable nappies can cost the average family roughly £500 per year and with most children not using the toilet day and night until the age of 3.5 the cost of using disposables is staggering. And that’s before you consider the environmental implications of carting thousands of nappies away and throwing them into landfill. A good quality cloth nappy kit that will see 2 children from birth through to toilet using costs around £250. That’s a saving of well over £2000 if used on two children. Better yet, they are better for your baby’s delicate skin and they look a whole lot cuter too.
