That article got a bit of press and was well received.  The Baby Bonding Book for Dads reviewed and summarized the original Jam and added some great ideas to mine.

Some of their ideas were:

1) Instead of bringing gifts for the newborn baby (like stuffed animals, that your baby doesn’t really need), ask your relatives to bring food for your wife.  This will keep her healthy and strong, resulting in a good milk supply for your baby, which is the most important thing you can give it.

2) If your relatives refuse to bring you food, ask them to contribute to a savings fund or bond for your baby, which will help offset some big ticket costs down the road, like university or college.

3) Use natural oils for your baby’s skin, such as olive oil, rather than the really expensive fancy oils on the market.

4) If it is not necessary to wash something in warm or hot water, wash it in cold water.  This will save on your energy bill.  I will add to that and say that you can save a huge chunk on your energy bill by hanging clothes to dry rather than putting them in the dryer.  Baby clothes are small enough that they dry quickly when you hang them to dry anyways.  If you really want to save money and water, and you need a new washing machine, consider buying a high efficiency one.  It costs more than an old-school washing machine, but it will save you lots of money on energy and water in the long run, and you are doing the environment (and therefore, your kids) a huge favour.  Remember, we didn’t inherit the earth from our forefathers, we are borrowing it from our children.

Other good ideas given by commenters at the Baby Bonding Book for Dads blog:

5) Save money on crib bedding.  Your baby doesn’t need a pillow or a fancy comforter.

6) Do a reality check to make sure you are only buying the things you and your baby really need.  You might find that you can cut out the fancy, air-tight diaper disposal bin and just use your regular garbage bin instead.  (or laundry bin, if you are interested in saving even more money and are using cloth diapers).

Thank-you to the Baby Bonding Book for Dads and the commenters there for spreading the word about this Jam, and adding these additional ideas.

Now that Sweet Cheeks is almost six months old, I have started thinking about ways that we can save money in her next six months of life.

In terms of what a baby needs, not a lot changes in these six months.  Most obviously, your baby will start to consume foods other than just breastmilk, and will have outgrown some of its clothes and toys, but otherwise, her basic needs are still the same.  If you didn’t buy a bassinet for your baby, and went straight for a crib (a good way to save money right there), then you can continue using that crib through this phase.  Same goes for the stroller and/or sling.

Here are some ideas I have come up with so far.  Feel free to leave comments and add some thoughts of your own:

1)  Keep the clothing streams coming in.

Talk to your friends and people in your neighbourhood.  Get to know other families with kids slightly older than yours.  They will be happy to give you hand-me-down clothes.  Then, when you are done with them, pass them on to the next family in need.

2)  Keep using cloth diapers.

By the age of six months, the cloth diapers that you bought for your baby may be getting snug.  Don’t give up now and switch to disposable diapers.  You can buy a set of cloth diapers that will fit your baby from the age of six months right up until the age of two and a half or so.  We are using Bamboozles disposable diapers for Sweet Cheeks now, and they are the same Bamboozles diapers that fit Smarty Pants right up until he was potty trained.  So we have been getting huge value and use out of them.

3)  Continue breastfeeding.

At six months, you may start supplementing breast feeding with baby food, but it does not mean you need to stop the breast feeding completely.  Breast feeding is still an important part of your baby’s diet, and it is still free.  So keep it up.

4)  Buy second-hand, or go to swapmeets.

If you have swapmeets in your area, go to them.  They are a great way to get good stuff for your baby, including toys, clothes and other accessories, for really cheap.  If you don’t know what a swapmeet is, think of a flea market especially for kids.  If you don’t have swapmeets in your area, try some second-hand stores.  Baby stuff is just as good used as it is new, because babies outgrow things so quickly and barely use things before they outgrow them.  If you are planning on going to a swapmeet, check out my swapmeet survival guide first.

Its not rocket science, but it will help you save some cash.  Kids don’t have to cost a fortune, and really, if you follow some of these cardinal rules, they won’t.  Oh yeah, you’ll still need to buy lots of coffee in these six months… maybe not as much as in the first six months… so don’t throw away that coffee-shop loyalty card just yet!

Till next time, keep on jammin!

Return to Parenting The Dad Jam Home

When we moved into our new place, we bought a new mattress to go with it.  It was fairly expensive, but we figured we spend 1/3 of our time on it, so we might as well make that time as comfortable as possible.

All was well in Never Never Land until “that night” that kicked our butts, woke us up, opened our eyes, and called us to action.

Smarty Pants woke up in the middle of the night that night, and we brought him to our bed to sleep it off.  It just so happened that he wet the bed that night too.  Our bed.

He doesn’t wet the bed often.  Rarely in fact.  But when it rains, it pours.  And it poured through our waterphilic mattress pad, seeped on past the pillowtop, and settled comfortably in the foamy core of our new, posh, mattress.

Luckily, the mattress cleaners came over faster than we could utter the words “microbial growth.”  We forked over the hundred bucks and they did their thing, leaving us with a soaking mattress filled with a chemical soup of cleaning agents.  We slept on the pull-out that night, waiting for the mattress to dry.  The spring driving into my back left me awake long enough to ponder the wonders of waterproof mattress pads.

We bought two – one for our bed and one for Smarty Pants’ bed.  They have been invaluable.  We would have had at least three or four more mattress cleanings and one total mattress replacement (for Smarty Pants’ mattress, after a night of diarrhea) without them.  That’s at least a thousand dollars saved right there, and I am sure there will be more liquidy nights to come.

So if you are thinking of getting a waterproof mattress pad for you and/or your kids, or if you have kids and don’t have waterproof mattress pads yet, I say go for it.  They are not so expensive and they save you lots of money and nights on the pull-out in the long run.

We bought ours from Sleep Clean and are very satisfied.  Sleep Clean is based in Canada – that link will take you to the Canadian part of their page, but they also sell and ship for free to U.S. customers, and their U.S. homepage is here.  Nobody is paying me to write this, I am just passing on the word about them because their waterproof mattress pads have served us well.

Our waterproof mattress pads look and feel like any other mattress pads.  They are comfortable to sleep on and really are completely waterproof.  For us, they have survived all of the following, without letting a drop of wet-stuff through to our mattress:

• breast milk overflows
• diaper leakages
• projectile-poos
• spit-up episodes
• bed wettings
• diarrhea (yeah, I wasn’t too pleased by it either)

You know if you have kids you will experience one or all of the above, and if you’re like me, you’ll experience them all at least once on a bed.  A waterproof mattress pad sounds almost too obvious, but it wasn’t for us until that fateful night.

So if you haven’t thought about getting a waterproof mattress pad yet, you might want to start thinking about one now… I can honestly say that it works, and I am sure it will increase the life your mattress by a year or two.

Flickr photo courtesy of soundfromwayout

Return to Parenting – The Dad Jam Home

Actually, the main causes of this trend seem to be money and career.  Since career basically equates to money, you can say the main reason for this trend is money.  People believe that having kids is expensive. They want to be sure they have established a career, house, car, yacht, etc, before they establish a family.  To me, this just doesn’t make sense and is kind of sad.  Do we all need to be Donald Trump before we can care for a child?  I certainly don’t think so, and I think if we were, our kids would be making fun of our hair anyways.

So, I plan on writing a series of articles, starting with this one, to debunk the myth that you have to have a ton of money in order to have kids, and to share my tips for reducing the cost of having kids.

Part 1:  The Newborn Baby

Kids are actually at their least expensive when they are between the ages of 0-6 months.  If moms are able to breastfeed, this is the time when babies can be exclusively breastfed.  I highly encourage feeding babies breast milk exclusively for at least the first six months of a child’s life.  But don’t take my word for it, The World Health Organisation recommends breastfeeding exclusively for the first six months of age as well (see here).

Guess what… breast milk is free!  Your baby’s entire nutrition for the first six months of life can be free!  A woman who is breastfeeding has higher energy requirements, so probably needs to eat a bit more, but not so much that it is going to break your budget.  Plus, breastfeeding reduces the need to buy bottles, bottle warmers, bottle sterilizers and all that other gadgets that the media moguls tell you that you need when bottle feeding, most of them unnecessary anyways.

What else does a 0-6 month old need, besides your love and attention?  The most important things are a place to sleep, clothes, diapers, wipes, cream, blankets and some small simple toys.

Additional things that you may need are:  a way to transport your baby and lots of coffee.

For all of these things, there are ways to save money.  Here’s how:

1. For a crib, you can consider buying a used crib and just buying a new mattress and sheets.  I recommend buying the mattress new, because there may be links between used mattresses and incidence of SIDS.  But the crib frame itself can be used.  You can find a lot of good used ones. People don’t use them for very long, so they are still often in good shape when they are sold.
2. For clothes and blankets, there are so many people who I have met since having kids that have offered to give us clothes and blankets that it is almost obscene.  People can be so generous with clothes, it is very heartwarming.  Oftentimes, they just want to get rid of the stuff so they are happy to give it to you.  That’s okay too, we’ll take them, and pass them on to the next!  Honestly, some of the clothes that you can get used from others have been worn one or two times and look pristine.  Its because babies outgrow things so fast.  This is the same reason why you don’t need to, and shouldn’t, buy Armani or Gucci for your baby.
3. For diapers and wipes, I recommend cloth.  I, myself, was a bit afraid to use cloth diapers with a newborn baby, but I tell ya, it works and it saves lots of money.  You have the one time cost of buying what you need, but then after that, you only have the cost of doing some extra laundry.  The total cost to you is much less than the cost of disposable diapers.  At the same time, you are doing the environment a huge favor.  For wiping, we use little face cloths (let’s call them “cheek cloths”) that we dampen in warm water.
4. For simple toys, you don’t need a lot.  Don’t worry about getting a huge stuffed bear for the corner of the room.  Your baby won’t even notice its there.  What you need are a few simple rattles and plush toys that your baby can look at and grab at.  You don’t even really need these for the first two months.  You’ll probably find that a ceiling fan is enough to capture your child’s awe and attention in the early stages (read proof here).
5. For transporting your baby, if you have a car, you’ll need a car seat.  We have a savings right there because we don’t have a car.  Luckily for us we live in a great city where we can reach everything we need by foot, bus or bike.  Even if you plan on walking or busing around (not highly recommended to bike with a newborn), you’ll need to move the baby around somehow.  A stroller is good for that, and you can find used stollers in great shape to save some cash.  Like cribs, they are not used for a long time, so are not really worn out when sold, unless the previous owner was a hiker or avid jogger.  Alternatively, you can use a sling, like we do.  A sling costs less than a stroller and is fun to use.  If you are up for it, you don’t need a stroller at all for the first six months, if you always carry your baby in your sling with you.  We have a stroller and a sling, but find that we like using the sling much more.  A stroller is needed eventually, when the baby is too heavy to always be carried in the sling, but for the first six months, a sling will do you just fine and give you a bit of a workout at the same time.  The other advantage of using a sling is that you have a lot less baggage with you whereever you go and you have your hands free.  I also find that sling time is a nice bonding time with the baby.  You can read more about our love for our sling by clicking on the “sling” link above.
6. For the coffee… there is no avoiding it.  You’ll need it.  Be prepared and find one you like, because you’ll be drinking lots of it.

So there you have it, for the first 6 months, your baby is not going to cost you an arm and a leg.  He may cost you some nights of sleep, but won’t break your piggy bank.  He will break your piggy bank when he is a bit older and you give him the piggy bank as a toy to play with – so don’t do that.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where I will cover the next six months of life.

Join the jam and tell me if there is anything I missed for this stage.  Also, what are your ideas for reducing the costs of having kids?