Monthly Baby Costs: Month Five


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Wynn Five Months

I feel like time is just flying over here! I can’t believe it’s time for another monthly update on little Winnie. It’s crazy how many changes can come from just a month of a baby’s life.

General Baby Thoughts

All Wynn wants to do every single day is go, go, go. She only naps for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, and then she’s up again, wanting to try new things. It can be kind of exhausting since she can’t actually do a ton on her own. She wants to be held and entertained by me. If I lay her down, she becomes frustrated within seconds that she can’t do more than just lay there or roll over. Speaking of rolling over, we had quite a scare yesterday morning. I laid Winnie on our bed for a diaper change, only to realize that we were all out of wipes. So I quickly ran to Sally’s room to grab some. Within seconds, Winnie rolled off the bed and fell to the ground! Luckily she wasn’t hurt, and Johnny was in the room and grabbed her immediately, but I felt so bad. Needless to say, I won’t be setting her anywhere but the ground from here on out.

Aside from being frustrated by not being able to crawl or eat human food yet, Winnie continues to be a ridiculously happy baby. She looks for opportunities to smile or giggle. She’s also super cuddly, always nestling her head into our chests when we’re holding her. Unfortunately, she’d like to do that all day, and I can’t get anything done if I let her. So she spends a lot of time in the front pack, which she seems perfectly satisfied with.

Financial Baby Thoughts

As usual, we placed a large diaper order over the past month. We spent $41 on Pampers Swaddlers. I’ve also been eyeing some headwraps from an Etsy shop, but I haven’t taken the plunge yet. Poor Wynn gets called a “he” about 95% of the time… “And how is Sally’s little brother?” “How old is he?” “Hi, little dude!” I could go on and on. It’s mostly pretty funny, but it does happen all the time, so I’m determined to buy her some head accessories that make her look a little more feminine. But for now, our only purchase over the past month was diapers.

We have had a few other “baby” expenses due to our older child, Sally, who is technically a toddler. We had to buy a new mattress for her because of some misbehavior I’d rather not recount, and that cost us $60. I’m also currently dressing her in clothes that are almost entirely too small, so we’ll be buying her a whole new wardrobe (shirts, pants, dresses, shoes) shortly. I’m hoping to keep it under $100 if possible. Finally, I’m planning to buy some floating bookshelves from IKEA for the wall in her room that will cost around $30. So we do have other baby expenses that aren’t documented here because they’re for our little Sal gal.

So the grand total for this month is $41. We have one more month before we start buying baby food, and I know at some point I’m not going to be able to resist buying Winnie at least a few clothes, books, and toys of her own. For now, she’s still the hand-me-down queen.

Wynn Five Months

For those of you with a little babe(s) of your own, how do we relate or differ? Also, here’s Sally’s five-month update if you’d like to compare :).

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9 Comments

  • Reply Ramona September 23, 2015 at 8:11 am

    My Nadia is still in diapers and we also use Pampers (Active Baby). I love them and they’re here to stay (until she’ll be able to constantly go to potty). I am cooking her food (always been). We tried to buy baby food once, when visiting my sister in law in Spain and Nadia just refused to touch it. So I just made a huuuuge soup with poultry (or veal, depending on the ‘recipe’), plus a lot of veggies. Drained it, blended the meat / veggies and froze the food in small cups (the quantity she’s eating at meal time). Now she’s grown to eat more ‘normal’ stuff, but we do have some ‘cans’ in the freezer 😀

  • Reply Kiara September 24, 2015 at 2:09 am

    I have one month old baby girl so I can totally relate! I use pampers, only at night and use cloth diaper for the rest of the day. Thankfully my mom helps me with laundry. And as for headbands, I really like browsing them online, but they are overpriced in my opinion, so I opened YouTube and learned to make them myself! Maybe you would like to try it too. Much more cheaper.

  • Reply Kelly September 24, 2015 at 8:24 am

    My daughter will be 5 months on the 30th. So far this month we purchased a box of pampers, wipes, and we pay for daycare 2x a week. Our total cost this month will be $360.

  • Reply Katie September 24, 2015 at 11:53 am

    I still don’t see how you manage to keep from buying baby clothes!!! I finally just put a little clothing allowance in our monthly budget for fun finds just because I know I’m a sucker for a cute baby girl outfit! Our second daughter is now 2 1/2 weeks old (!!!) and we’ve already had to spend a good bit on nursing gear. I was hoping to pump to supplement, but instead I’m exclusively pumping (I did it with my first and should have just assumed I’d do it again!). I had to buy some extra parts and a few bottles earlier than intended. Thankfully that kind of stuff is covered on our flexible spending card, so we haven’t had to spend a lot out of pocket.

  • Reply Kelly September 25, 2015 at 12:30 pm

    You should check out Poppy and Pippa on Etsy. She has adorable headbands and clips for little girls and they are very, very inexpensive!

  • Reply Anna Gering September 27, 2015 at 12:19 am

    Just a thought when it comes to cost effectiveness: We made the switch to cloth diapers not so long ago. The initial purchase cost is quite steep (we waited for a great sale on Bumgenius 4.0 Pocket diapers) and bought 21 to go with the 2 we already had for a total of 23. Although we spend a bit more on water and a bit more on electricity to run the washer, I do hang the diapers to dry, and the biggest hassle is actually just snapping and stuffing them. Other than that they work just like disposable diapers and we’re no longer paying for 4-5 bags, or 1-2 boxes of diapers per month. You also use detergent, but the special detergent we bought has lasted several months and will last several more. If you average out the amount of use we plan to get out of them (2-3 years worth, plus the same for a second child), it goes down to about 5-10/month on the diapers, plus another roughly 4 for detergent, plus a little more for water and electricity. So far less than $40/month, not to mention the knowledge that I’m not helping fill a landfill.

    We also make our own baby food, which based on the quantities our seven month old eats, would be hugely expensive if we fed him jarred baby food, plus we control all the stuff that goes into his food in terms of salt, sugar, and produce.

  • Reply Hannah September 28, 2015 at 4:21 pm

    $41 for diapers is great! We pay about $1200/month in childcare, and about $70/month for incidentals (diapers, wipes, baby specific shampoo, toothbrush, etc), but outside of that, our son (now 2) has been very low cost.

    Thankfully, our son sort of skipped baby food. He ate foods that are very soft (yogurt and sweet potatoes, applesauce, oatmeal) and then all of a sudden just seemed to be able to handle all kinds of foods. I hope we can replicate our luck with baby #2, because baby food actually makes me vomit.

  • Reply Natalie October 1, 2015 at 9:24 pm

    Question: Do you include any doctors visits, checkups, medicine, etc. in your baby budget? My husband and I are in the “let’s try and figure out how much a little human costs” stage of family planning, and I was curious if you included those things in your baby budget, or if they were in a separate medical budget.

    • Reply Katie Ball October 7, 2015 at 6:24 pm

      I hope it’s okay if I respond to this… depending on your health plan, you may not have to spend a ton out of pocket. With my plan, we were able to curtail the $350 hospital fee by participating in a program called “Baby Yourself”. We have a $150 deductible per family member so we’ll have to pay that for our new baby, but all of her well visits (they usually go 7-8 times in the first year for well visits) are covered at 100% – no copay. We only pay for sick visits (our copay is like $35 or something). But you should be able to contact your health insurance provider to find out more about your specific situation.

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