Save your pennies and buy second-hand (Preparing for Birth On a Budget)

Member Name: Biffa

Product:	Preparing for Birth On a Budget
Date:	06/05/01 (128 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheaper

Disadvantages: None

When we first became pregnant with our eldest daughter, we looked in Mothercare at all the things that people said we would 'absolutely need'. Brand new cot, travel-system, changing unit, baby bath etc etc - the prices of which were not cheap. In total, we priced up that if we bought everything brand new it would have cost us in the region of £2000. It wasn't an option - we'd just bought a house, were trying to sell another house (so were paying two mortgages) and only had one wage coming in.

So, off we went to our local second-hand baby shop. Everything was sold on a commision basis - ie: you take in your old pram, tell them how much you want to sell it for, they sell it and take 20% or so of what you get for it. From this little wonderland we came home with a nearly new 2-in-1 pushchair for £35, a moses basket and stand for £15, car seat for £25 and various other bits and pieces. My husband made a changing room out of an old door, some bits of wood and a winnie the pooh changing mat and bright paint for a total cost of around £6.00. We still use it now!

The cot cost us £50 and converts to a bed. The lady we bought it off also gave us a bin bag full of sheets, blankets etc. We bought a new mattress for it and gave it a lick of paint to freshen it up. Better than spending £350 on a new one from the high street.

Of course, I would point out that if you buy a second hand cot or moses basket to ALWAYS buy a new mattress to go in it.

Clothes are probably the main thing that you will need, and plenty of them. The thing is that babies grow very quickly - so that gorgeous little outfit from Mothercare that you bought for a newborn at the grand price of £16 will only get a few wears out of it. You'd be better off going to local charity shops and buying loads of little outfits for 20p a go. We were lucky - a friend of my mothers sorted out all her daughters old clothes and gave us three bin bags full of clot
hes. By the time we got them, they'd been used for 2 of her daughters - they were then used on both of our daughters and have now been passed on to a young couple we know who had a daughter a few weeks ago.

You can do it on a budget without spending thousands in mothercare in the process. Let's face it, all babies do to start with is sleep, feed and make a mess, so they're hardly likely to care whether or not their romper suit was brand new and if it has a designer label on it are they?

Check out your local second hand shops, and let it be known that you're having a baby. You'll be amazed at the amount of stuff people will pass on to you!

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