All those items that seem to creep up on you, are the real tricky expenditures to be wary of, says Angela Hutchinson, new mom. Here's her list of money eaters.
Maternity clothes:
Buying maternity clothes is tricky, as you're not quite sure how large you're going to get and you don't want to spend too much money on clothes that you're really happy to see the back of at the end of your pregnancy.
It is necessary to invest in a few things though, as towards the end of a pregnancy, no matter how well
you're carrying, your ordinary clothes tend to make you look large and unstylish.
Buy a few understated key items that you can wear often without drawing too much attention to the fact and rather save your money for a few nice outfits after the birth.
Just remember after the birth that you have an interim weight period and need to buy a few items of clothing to see you through until you're back to your normal size again. I didn't expect this at all for some reason.
Baby's room and accessories:
It's amazing what you can put together in a nursery without breaking the bank.
I was given a really old pine cot that was not particularly attractive, but was actually a good design.
A coat of lime green paint (in non-toxic Velvaglo of course) transformed it in to a trendy cot.
I also spotted an old chest of drawers in my in-laws' garage doing nothing but housing old nuts and bolts.
It took some convincing, but I managed to talk them into giving it to me. It is a beautiful shape, made in the days when people took time over pieces of furniture.
I painted it a lavender blue, with two lime green drawers and finished it off with some hand-made knobs from The Rocking Horse.
It is slightly higher than a standard compactum, but I figured why waste money on something that will last a couple of months when I can use a nice piece of furniture that can last well into teenage years if I want it to.
I had an old couch that needed recovering and found some fabric at Jay Smith's sale for R10 a metre in a mint green.
A local upholsterer gave me a good deal on covering it, in the region of R600. Three cushions in lime green and lavender from Keedo finished it off and I now use it when breast-feeding in the nursery.
One day, by chance, we found a little shop in Lakeside, Decorwoods, that makes Oregon furniture and any item you like out of superwood.
Superwood is amazing in that it is far more durable than chipboard could ever be and it looks like a really
decent wood once painted.
We commissioned them to make a wardrobe (which we partly copied from a wardrobe we had seen in Le Quartier Francais in Franschhoek) for R2 000.
It is large and will last our daughter a very long time. As soon as she outgrows it we can use it as a great linen cupboard in a passage somewhere.
We had it painted a lovely mint green. The superwood wardrobes I found in the trendy baby shops costs anywhere from R3 500 upwards and any that did cost in the region of R2 000 were tiny in comparison.
We also bought a bookcase (as we have every intention of our little girl being a reader) and a mirror from the same shop, made in canary pine - the pine they use for ceiling beams when building new houses.
As a result, they were both very well priced and look fantastically chunky in the nursery next to the large wardrobe and the chest of drawers.
When it came to curtains, I spent quite a bit on a lovely piece of voile, with stars on it. Not being a person who likes lace curtains at all, I found this a lovely compromise to provide the room with a softened look.
To bring down the cost, I went searching for fabric for the curtains in an out of the way fabric shop I've often used.
I found a lovely green fabric with lavender flowers for R32 a metre, a real steal. It was very similar to a fabric that would have matched the voile perfectly, but would have cost R120 a metre.
The chosen room for the nursery was already painted the green I wanted - I had done that years before when we moved into the house, without even thinking of nurseries then.
To top everything off, I commissioned my father-in-law, who has recently begun art lessons and is painting fantastic oils, to paint a teddy bear in oils for the nursery.
I went out and bought a teddy bear, took photos of him and provided my father-in-law with the subject. The framing of that cost R130, in a simple wood to match the others in the room.
Finally, we hung two mobiles - a dreamcatcher and an origami mobile given to me by my sister.
The carpet in the nursery is one bought many years ago at a Design-For-Living and which matches the
room perfectly.
Of course, we have also bought things like mobiles, a donut for the baby to lie on, a changing mat (not cheap at R100).
I was given a Plonky Donkey (a wonderful cushion which is fantastic for breast-feeding) and a fabulous bath accessory which I highly recommend - a metal frame with a piece of gauze which the baby sits in when
being bathed.
The first time I bathed my daughter was without the device and I was terrified she would slip out of my hands. This device allows her to sit and bask in the water while I hold her with one hand and sprinkle water over her with the other. A happier baby you can't find.
Baby clothes:
This is an interesting category as you would be surprised at the number of things you get given.
All sorts of people that you hardly know provide endless gifts - it really is a wonderfully happy time for people and they really enjoy giving the gifts.
It's best to wait until after the birth to shop really seriously, although make sure you have the necessary blankets and towels handy.
Our little girl was so small when she was born, nothing we had fit her. I had to send my husband out to buy a whole bunch of newborn babygrows. We did limit the number and I wash them frequently, as I know she won't be in them for very long.
Baby toiletries:
This is another category where you are given many
gifts and hardly need to buy a thing for the first few months.
However, I did start buying disposable nappies and the odd toiletries during my grocery shopping expeditions at least four months before the birth. This way, I didn't notice the cost at the birth so much.
Nanny:
I am in the fortunate position of having had a wonderful woman working for me once a week for the past five years.
She has agreed to come on full-time to look after the baby when I go back to work. We are paying her R1 800 a month. She currently earns R1 200 a month from the five day jobs she has.
The extra money will help put her 18-month-old in a creche and will help with some savings. I really wanted my daughter to be in her home environment initially.
Maternity leave:
One of the disastrous aspects of having a baby is that at a time when you need money the most, you go on maternity leave, part of which is unpaid.
In my case, one month was paid and three months unpaid. A loss of my salary meant a drop of half our earning capacity.
As a result, early on in the pregnancy we began planning how to ensure we had the extra cash.
I sold a unit trust policy, we cashed in some shares, I put in a claim to UIF (I had paid UIF up to a certain salary years before and it provided me with about 1/8th of my take home salary for each of the three months), we built in my husband's December bonus, a bit of cash back from the tax man and in the end, ended up with almost my salary for each of the months I was on leave.
The moral of the story? You have eight or so months to plan for the arrival of the baby - use the time wisely to change your patterns financially.
Remember: breast-feeding, apart from all the positive health aspects associated with it, is a great money-saver.
The longer you can do this, the better. On the other hand, for me, although I recycle most of my rubbish, I hypocritically refuse to use cloth nappies and am quite happy to pay for disposables (both in money and in guilt) to save the effort of washing nappies and sterilising them.
As my sister once said, she'll worry about the environment when her children are out of nappies!