Babies on the Cheap

It's been a long time since I had a baby in my house.  My 'babies' are currently 21, 18, 17 and 13.  But I know of several people who are having babies this fall and I've been invited to their baby showers.

I was amazed by the length of their gift registries!!  Way back when I had kids, in what now seems like the stone age, we didn't register for gifts for baby showers.  Everyone knew what you needed: diapers, blankets, and clothes.  If you had really generous friends and relatives, you might receive such gifts as a car seat, or a high chair.  But that was about it.  Everything else was luxuries. 

Here's a few examples of gift registry items that blew my mind:

A special gadget to pour water onto baby's head to rinse shampoo out of it's hair.  --  We used a plastic cup grabbed from the kitchen cupboard!

A shaped, cloth covered foam pad for laying baby on to change it's diaper.  --We used a towel laid down on the floor, the couch, the top of a low dresser, whatever was handy.

A 'nursing cover' for breastfeeding in front of others.  --I used a baby blanket.  They were there anyway and they were big enough to cover the essentials.

Soft tipped baby spoons in a 6-pack.  -- Six?!?  I had, at most, two.  Dishes were getting washed every day anyway, and how much soap and water does it take to quick wash one little spoon between feedings?

His and Hers diaper bags.  --Really?  You can't share a diaper bag?  It has the baby's stuff in it.  The baby needs the same stuff no matter whether it's daddy or mommy taking it out  of the house.  The bag belongs to the baby, the parents can share the dang thing.  I really have to wonder about a household in which mommy and daddy can't share.

I don't know, maybe my kids were deprived.  Maybe I was deprived.  I didn't have oodles of baby care items.    The crib and baby's dresser were hand-me-down items (but still within safety standards for the time).  The baby dresser was low enough that it doubled as a changing table.  Most of their clothes were hand-me-down, or purchased second hand at garage sales and consignment stores.  All newborn and nursery items were yellow or green since nobody knew ahead of time what the sex of the baby was going to be.  That way, those items could be reused for the next child no matter whether it was a boy or girl.

They didn't have tons of toys; they were babies!  They played with their fingers, toes, and anything else they could get into: cat food, the handle on the toilet, pots and pans from the cupboard, dirt, sticks, grass and rocks from outside. . .  They seemed to love that stuff more than the plastic specially-made-for-stimulating-baby's-mind stuff from the store bought by their loving and concerned grandparents, aunties and uncles.

They grew up anyway, healthy and happy.  Just like generations of babies for thousands of years who only had food, shelter, and clothing, not nifty little gadgets and multiples of essentials so that their parents didn't have to wash them so often.  Another item I saw on a gift registry that I couldn't comprehend: disposable sippy cups.  Disposable!!  Because washing them is apparently too much of a bother.

My second rant, if you want to call it that, is because of an article I saw in the local newspaper today.  A local woman, after seeing a young mother have to "forego essentials at the grocery store in order to afford diapers", has started a diaper drive to assist other local mothers in need and is asking for donations. 

Now, that's very nice of her to want to help others.  I want to help others too.  But when I read on in the article and it basically took the tone of 'we should supply diapers to low income people so they can afford to buy food', I got a bit annoyed.  Especially when it gave a dollar figure per month of what the average diaper cost is per child and said that amount of cash or number of disposable diapers was what needed to be donated regularly.

I wouldn't mind donating that dollar figure in diapers to someone.  However, I would not use those funds to purchase disposable diapers.  Instead, I would buy about four dozen cloth diapers, and about a dozen diaper covers.  Once.  One donation that would last until the child was potty trained.  Not expended every month for 2-3 years!

With four dozen washable diapers and a dozen or so diaper covers (covers in various sizes), a child could be diapered for years.  Mine were.  Was it convenient?  Well, no.  The diapers and covers had to be rinsed and washed and dried and folded.  I had to remember to rinse the diaper cover at each diaper change and put it somewhere it would dry by the next day to be used again.  But it wasn't impossible.  And, it was cheap.  Never once did anyone in my house go without groceries because we needed to buy diapers.  Baby number four was actually cheaper because she wore the diapers and covers that I had used for her older siblings and didn't buy any at all for her.

I am aware that modern day cares do not allow the use of cloth diapers because, supposedly, they are less sanitary than disposable.  Cared for correctly (ie, rinsed at each change, and kept separated by which child they belonged to), I just don't see the health hazard.  I had a few babysitters who cared for my children that did just that because they understood the financial need for using cloth versus disposable.  No one in their care ever became ill from a diaper waiting to be picked up at the end of the day when the baby was picked up.  In fact, it was perhaps more sanitary because at the end of the day all diapers were off the premises, instead of being wet and soiled and piled into trash containers waiting for weekly trash pick-up.

If you have to work and put your baby in day care, you can still save some money by cloth diapering at home.  If baby is home 14-16 hours a day (assuming both parents work full time necessitating baby being in day care for 8-10 hours daily), using cloth diapers during those hours means you can cut back by 57-66% on the disposable diapers needed versus saying "oh, I can't use cloth because the babysitter won't accept them".  57 to 66 percent!  How much more groceries could you buy with that money?  How about the money you save on weekends from not using disposables at all because baby doesn't go to day care on those days?

Babies don't have to be expensive.  They really need very little.  They need to be fed, dressed appropriately for the weather (note the word is weather, not fashion), and have a safe place to eat, sleep, and play. 

They don't need fancy sleeping places, just safe ones.  They don't need twenty changes of clothes in each size, just enough to get through two or three days between laundering.  They don't need three or four different bedroom ensembles, complete with matching dust ruffles for their cribs.  They need enough sheets and blankets that you don't have to do laundry in the middle of the night when the crib gets unexpectedly wet or spit up on.  And they don't even have to match.  The baby doesn't care.  They don't need brand new clothes either.  A baby changes sizes about every two months.  They aren't going to wear out their clothes in that short of time.  Shop the second hand and consignment stores for baby clothes.  For five or six dollars you can get an entire outfit instead of just one shirt.  Baby doesn't care that it didn't come from the mall.  Baby just wants something soft and comfortable to keep the chill or sun off it's skin.

If you want to save even more money, skip those bottles and cans of formula.  Breastfeed.  It's cheap, it's always 'on tap' and requires no prewarming.  Its formulated for even babies with allergies. I won't even get into the health benefits for baby and mother.

Don't tell me that you will be going back to work after baby is born and therefore can't breastfeed.  Baloney.  I did it, back in the days when I had to hand express in a bathroom stall on breaks, and store the milk in a small cooler until I could get home and put it in the fridge.  Times have changed, working mothers are much better accommodated now.  If breastfeeding worked in the stone age, it will work today, probably even better.

Baby food, at it's core, is just unsalted, unseasoned, unchemicalized food cooked and then ground until soft enough for someone with no teeth to eat.  A baby doesn't care if their carrots, peas, or applesauce came from a jar with a cute picture on the label.  If you cook a carrot and mash it up, baby will eat it just as eagerly.  Baby food was something I spent a lot of money on the first time around.  By the time my fourth child was eating solids, I'd learned to make my own baby food.  It's easy. It's cheap.  It's healthy.

I'll say it again: babies don't have to be expensive.  It's the adults that make infancy expensive.  Babies don't give a rip about style or what others think.  They just want to eat, sleep, observe and explore this world, and be loved.