So, if you didn’t know-you will soon find out with your little one that “upgrades” are frequent and can be quite expensive. In technology you see upgrades all the time-purchases for phones, computers, tablets and other gadgets and gizmos. You prepare and do research on these big ticket items and acknowledge it as the technology rush of must haves and make decisions accordingly.
Believe it or not-your little one gets many upgrades and the money flow can be as much as you want to put into it. Let’s just start with the basics here-bottles. Okay, so you may pick out the brand that you want after tons of research, reviews, etc-but when your little one comes along-they just may not agree with your purchase. I know that the doctor’s kept telling me to get the “Dr. Brown” bottle sets. I took one look at them and ran. I am sure they work great, but they are expensive, not easy to clean and the formula cannot be mixed in the bottle-you have to do that in something else. They even have a formula mixer that you can buy. I feel very lucky that we didn’t have bottle changes that we needed to make and our NUK widemouth bottles worked great for her. But even the bottles get upgrades. After 3 months you are supposed to change out the nipples and it might be that you don’t need the slow ones anymore at that point, but the medium flow. Then you have the fast flow for 6+ months. Then you need to upgrade your little bottles to the big bottle size. By the time it is all said and done you will have x sets of small bottles with slow flow, then you upgrade the nipples to medium flow, then you upgrade the bottle size and nipple size to fast flow-and then guess what? It is time to start the sippy cup!
Diapers are another fast upgrade-and the higher the size, the higher the cost of diaper! We started with Newborn size and have upgraded to now using size 3 and she is 5 months old. That doesn’t even count the cloths. We were quickly out of the newborn size and now she just upgraded again into 9 month size clothing. Buying cloths is a cute job-but when you have to do it as often as you do, it really just becomes added to the pool of baby expenses that you need to count for.
Then the big ticket items-car seats are always changing with safety requirements/weight , rear facing/front facing. The change from crib to toddler bed as your little one progresses in age. I mean literally the list goes on and on.
Then there are the toys! Okay, so by the time she was 2 months we started buying toys for her and we are now in our second upgrade of toys. Let me tell you if you were not handy with a screwdriver pre-baby, you will be a pro in no time. Don’t forget to stock up on batteries too! As your baby gets older the toys get bigger and you guessed it-more expensive. As all this is happening-you will notice your living space quickly dwindling and it can have the possibility of looking more like a glorified playhouse as opposed to a home!
We are quickly on track to an every 3 month upgrade. I have said many times that I don’t understand how to budget for a baby, but it is something that I am working on. This little blog comes from the fact that this week I had to upgrade both Bella Baby’s closet and toys. Something that financially I hadn’t been ready for. It seemed like last week her clothes were a little snug, but working-but this week hit a whole new level of not fitting. So what are you to do? Then after seeing her interact with bigger toys and coming home I watched as our baby looked at her toys and looked at me-almost saying “Mommy-these are baby toys.” I want to make sure that she has the proper tools to stimulate her senses and be able to learn mobile skills and develop. I didn’t buy a ton of toys, but toys are expensive-just like with everything else.
So I am hoping that maybe this little “upgrade” will be longer than 3 months, but not counting on it. This little post doesn’t even really scratch the surface. At times I can feel like my heading is spinning and wondering when it ends…with the realization that it doesn’t. Everything just seems to get bigger and more expensive the more I think about. As I look around our little 1 bedroom apartment, I can see us outgrowing our space and trying to figure out how to make it all work. We do have 1 open and steadfast rule and that is when she outgrows something-donate or re-sale it. I think you almost have to do this with most items. What happens when we have child number 2? Well, we have thought about it-and this is our current plan. Crib-keep it. Rocker/glider-keep it, but anything she didn’t like/use we are tossing. For example her swing-she hated it and we never really used it so we are not keeping it and donated it to someone in Maryland that could use it. Her rocker that we used prior to crib-that thing was a life saver and we even used it recently when she got sick-that thing packs away and is a keeper as well. Clothes-those we are not saving. What if we don’t have another girl? Everything that we get Baby Bella on the clothes front are items that we think she would look cute in, and we are going to want things for baby number 2 that are particular to her. Baby toys? Well, if it is gender neutral and something that was a great benefit-keep otherwise they get put in the donate/re-sale place as well. Books are a for sure keeper. So we have a plan, kind of. Right now we have a container for her toys, if it doesn’t fit in that-well then we have too many!
Here is the list of items that we got for her recently if you want to check them out!
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