An interesting links, even though I’m not a parent. As an aunt expecting another little nephew or niece, I wish I could get my brother and SIL to stop and think about the money they simply throw away in the name of taking care of their kids. I find it hard to give my nephew anything at all, because he simply doesn’t appreciate it. It’s not his fault at his age, but he just has *way* too much stuff to value yet another toy.

Have you read Amy Dacyczyn’s books? She’s the author of the Tightwad Gazette and a mother of six kids raised on a single modest income. Unsurprisingly, she used cloth diapers too.

I respect everyone’s opinion, but this is my first baby and I am not scrimping on a thing. I’m 43 y/o and we waited a long time for this blessed event and I want to enjoy every single disposable diaper changing, baby bath tub giving, boppy using MOMENT.

My wife and I are the proud parents of a healthy, happy 2-year old. Of course, two years ago we had a newborn. We carefully looked at baby expenses to determine what would be necessary and what wouldn’t. The biggest area of savings was diapers - we purchased cloth diapers and used them instead of disposables, except when we were taking baby out for the day.

The cloth diapers (we got them from http://www.motherease.com) cost us around $400CDN for the initial purchase. Sure, this seems like a huge amount of money, but disposable diapers cost around $25 a WEEK for the baby’s first six months or so. The result is that the initial outlay for the cloth diapers was paid for in the first four months, and after that it was pure “profit”, in the sense that we didn’t need to buy many disposables. Of course, now we’re planning on a second child, and we’ll still be able to use the cloth diapers, saving even more money.

Yes, we need to do more laundry, but it honestly isn’t that big of a deal - we just dump the diaper pail into the machine and turn it on.

We do, however, use the Kushies “diaper liners” which are basically a really heavy duty piece of toilet paper that can be put into the cloth diaper. If there’s a poop, you just grab both ends of the diaper liner, and drop it into the toilet. This keeps the cloth diapers clean, and eliminates the problem of removing poop from the diaper.

MUCH needed! We’re due in June. One thing you might want to blog about is how to take advantage of company cafeteria plans to cover baby expenses and other tax saving solutions for the new baby owner. Owner?

I’m confused. The “Baby on a Budget” link is just about cloth diapers, but you mentioned a changing table. Is there a sub-link I missed?

I know this sounds crazy, but I have a bunch of friends who do Elimination Communication (link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elimination_communication) and thus have babies who almost never soil their diapers at home. This saves them loads and loads on diapers. EC is pretty time-intensive, though- they’re stay-at-home moms. (And, no, they are not crazy hippies, and most of them didn’t think it would work before they tried it.) But it seems worthwhile if the woman is going to stay at home anyway.

My experience after 15 months — most baby stuff is not only unnecessary but total marketting BS. Maybe you could use those items if your baby was a practice doll. Borrow if you can because it would suck buying something your baby refuses to use. (Why waste more oil in this world on a new hunk of plastic?)

Here’s how we cut out a big chunk for those who formula-feed: Costco baby formula. It’s just about identical in formulation to regular Enfamil and Similac, which cost about $23-25 for a regular-sized can. Even if you use the checks they send out, it’s usually at least $18 apiece.
But Costco formula is $19.97 for TWO cans. Less than half the regular price. Our doctor said it’s fine and our baby tolerated it just like the other two. One caveat: It bubbles more. Just buy the CVS brand infants gas drops (half the price of Milicon) and put ONE drop in each bottle. Yes, this adds to the cost, but maybe a dollar a can at most. Also: We took back many of the new, expensive baby clothes we got as gifts and traded them in for diapers and wipes. I am using hand-me-downs and clothes from the Goodwill and lots on eBay instead of new for the first year at least. I put the $ I would have spent into her 529.

Here’s the right link for the Diapers on a Dime Book

http://stores.lulu.com/supermommy