When you have Hamberger's you make Happy Meals!

Odds are, if you are about to become a parent, you have parents yourself. Maybe you are the first in your family to bring them a grandchild, or maybe you are the last of your siblings. Either way, it’s been a while since they last had to connect with such a young member of their family. I found a neat website that suggests all sorts of activities for grandparents to do with their grandkids.

Check out http://www.grandparents.com/ to check it out. If you aren’t very web literate, have your grandkid get you there. It even lets you select your grandchild’s lifestage (teen, infant, etc) to show you more relevant articles.

This particular post doesn’t have anything to do with saving money. Just about having a baby. I am actually really letting myself realize that we are having a baby. Many mothers have the common concern of losing their baby. And the fact is that miscarriage is far more common than any of us would like to admit.

We have reached a milestone in our pregnancy. No I haven’t felt the baby moving, no I am not showing to the point that anyone (besides my husband and my too tight jeans) would notice. I actually haven’t even been to the doctor yet (that comes tomorrow). I know that we are not “out of the woods” yet. But I am feeling more confident. The statistics say that when you reach 8 weeks your odds of a miscarriage drop to 5%. After having a miscarriage several months ago at 5 1/2 weeks, those statistics are reassuring.

After one … not so amazing… visit with my family doc, my husband and I are visiting an OB tomorrow. Not quite sure what to expect, but I am going armed with questions, note taking devices and information about what my insurance will cover when. So here is praying that more reassurance will be coming tomorrow.

The internet is a WONDERFUL tool to get information about what is going on with your baby & your body, as well as information about different products. Additionally, it is a great resource for deals and coupons. Which all of us of course love! But with all of these news letters, coupons, and quality control reports that arrive daily in your e-mail inbox. It can become a tad bit overwhelming. How do I find that e-mail about the family get together in the middle of the 27 e-mails from baby-gaga and what to expect?

The answer is simple: get a second e-mail address.

It keeps your main e-mail box clear of the “spam” and easy to find that important e-mail that tells you what to bring to the family dinner. At the same time it still allows you to benefit from the resources on the web. There are several web based e-mail servers you can use (such as Yahoo or Google -gmail) And of course the best part of the web based e-mails is that they are free!

OK, so it is time for a little honesty. I am not organized. In fact (as my family will attest to) I am quite disorganized. I have dreams of being one of those people who has a place for everything and everything in its place. Believe it or not a lack of organization bothers me, but it also depresses me to the point where I just want to ignore it, therefore making it worse… and so on. So in attempts to get more organized (baby steps people) I have tried little things. Like writing all of my class plans in one notebook that is labeled ‘debate class’, so when I teach again I don’t have to look for miscellaneous papers. This might sound rather obvious to you more organized people. But to me it was a breakthrough. 😛 Well when we knew we would be parents, I knew that I needed to get organized.

But I can’t do it on my own. So I started to price pregnancy organizers. (Its like keeping all of our baby plans in one notebook) those things can get EXPENSIVE! Then I found this amazing organizer, at my favorite price, FREE. Just because it is free (actually it was 3.99 b/c you have to pay for S&H but that was a small price to pay) doesn’t mean that they skimped. I love it and could go on and on about it, but since I already have gone on and on I’ll give you my highlights.

Section 1 A Healthy Start
*Interview questions for your OB or Midwife
* Place to keep track of info from each Prenatal visit
* Tips on healthy eating & diet tracker
* Fetal movement chart
Section 2 Preparing for baby
* 10 pages of suggestions for baby registering (of course all organized wonderfully between basics & helpful extras 🙂
* 3 pages for thank yous to be sent out.
* A place to organize your borrowed items
* Suggestions for saving time around the house.
* Pediatrician and daycare interview questions
* And of course a place to put your favorite baby names, your spouses favorite baby names and then the ones that you can actually agree on. (That list is rather short 😉
Section 3 Preparing for Childbirth
* A walk through on deciding your birth plan
* Packing lists
* Check list for my wonderful husband
* Contraction tracker charts
* A place to record your childbirth memories
Section 4 At home with baby
* Feeding and diapering charts
* Diaper bag essential check list
* Well baby & postnatal check up record
Section 5 Resources
* 5 Pages of books and websites to check out.

Of course since the book is free there are a lot of advertisements to pay for the book. But they aren’t overwhelming and they are helpful (some coupons are involved!) I have learned that the quickest way to overspend is to not have a plan. And this organizer certainly helps you to develop a plan. So in the long run I would say its a pretty good return on $3.99.

One week ago today we got the wonderful, frightening, amazing, scary, awesome, exciting news that we were going to be expecting a baby! My husband and I are self proclaimed nerds, so of course one of the first things that we wanted to do was set up a budget. There are a lot of costs involved in having a baby, and raising a child. In the first year alone the average cost of raising a baby is $10,000. Talk about sticker shock! Not that a precious little one isn’t worth ten times that much, but there is also reality as to how much a budget will stretch. So me being a big bargain hunter, and my husband being a major budgeter/number cruncher, we started looking for some ways to go about parenting in a cheaper way. (Hence the name of the blog)

Our goal is to give our child the best care possible, without paying the highest price possible. I make it a personal goal to spend substantially less than the average person for just about everything (you are talking to someone who got 4 skirts and a top for $25.00). We know that we aren’t the only ones who are on a tight budget, so we thought we would share our journey with you. We will share our tips on how to save money and get great quality. We hope that you will find this blog helpful, as we travel through this amazing journey called parenting!