When do you seriously start planning things?

I mean like getting the nursery ready, buying cots, changing tables, prams, car seats etc etc etc.

When do you start? Wife is about 14/15 weeks just now. (Due mid-late December). Do people normally wait until after the 20 week SCAN so if they wish can find out if a boy or girl, so they can buy pink or blue?

We are being very cautions after a previous (early) MC (still don’t like the word). But sooner or later we will need to realise its actually happening and start throwing money at Mothercare/boots/early learning centre etc.

Does it really matter?

awesome answer, thanks

Ours is due in late september. Got everything barring the pram. We were lucky in that my sister is borrowing us loads of stuff including cot, changing bed etc. Just finished painting the nursery so just clothes, nappies to buy although the missus is doing it little by little eg buying bits and bobs on offer in the supermarket.

Does it really matter?

Apparently not to you. Next?

start planning, don’t buy it. Remember, 24 hour supermarkets sell everything you could need. Don’t buy baby magazines or be tricked into buying tat you don’t need!

Don’t buy baby magazines or be tricked into buying tat you don’t need!

This. OMG there is a lot of carp out there.

Didn’t find out sex of either of ours, much more fun that way. (they were both curled in a ball at the time so hard to see anyway)

As for preperation, we gradually accumulated stuff. Choosing a pushchair was uneccesarily hard. I, an engineer and a cyclist, wanted everything. She, the sensible one, wanted something small enough to go in the car and light enough to carry. Caused no end of heated discussion.

Rest of the stuff just happened – we were given a lot of used stuff by friends & family which takes decisions away. As it was, we finished buulding the last of the flat-pack nursery furniture about an hour before she went into labour.
About 4 hours later, son number 1 was born.

Number 2 is a lot easier as you have most of the stuff, and have got rid of the uselss gumph. Labour was also quicker in our case (3 hours)

When your wife/girlfriend says she wants to do it. Usually massively too early but she’ll know when. One useful aspect of getting it all sorted early is you don’t have to manouver a heavily pregnant lady through shopping centres and things where she’ll get stuck in doorways and be generally knackered all the time.

Put the word out too. Loads of people you know will have loads of things they bought for their babies, used only once and then found out were too small, before you know it you’ll be over-flowing with unused kit.

We bought big things like prams, car seats and cots and that really early, before she was really showing. All the clothes and things just seemed to arrive until we had a massive pile of them. Nappies and arse cleaning equipment can be bought last minute, ditto feeding kit.

You’ll also be fed a load of misinformation between now and the birth about it being dead hard, nappies being the most vile thing ever, all men are useless at looking after babies etc etc. it’s all lies. the mechanics are really simple, babies break you in nice and easy, it’s actually a doddle. The hard bit is the worry and strife about being totally responsible for another life. And that never goes away.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/CTA-Digital-iPotty-Activity-Seat/dp/B00B3G8UGQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371733223&sr=8-1&keywords=ipad+potty

This is all you really need …

On a more serious note, when your partner feels it is the right time to do it.

I’d say after 20 weeks and before 9 months 🙂

As above, your other half will probably be pretty vocal on the matter.

IIRC we did it about 5-6 months for no 1, 7 months for no 2.

But I wouldn’t worry too much. You’ll always feel slightly out of control once he/she arrives. Once you get your head around that, you’ll be ok.

For us it was when the owner of the shop (where we were looking at double buggies) said something like ‘with twins they could arrive any time now. Don’t you have your overnight bag sorted yet?’

Errr, our overnight what?

We didn’t get much before 20 weeks. Pram can take a little while to order (well ours did, so think about that around 30weeks I’d say).

Baby is now 8 weeks old on Saturday and I’m just starting the nursery. She’s in our room at the moment so there was no rush.

Don’t buy too many clothes. You’ll get far to many as presents, they’ll wear them once or twice and then they’ll have grown out of them.

We’re due in a couple of weeks.

We got everything sorted quite early, by getting a bit here and a bit there. Didn’t get anything till after the 20 weeks scan mind.

Seems we’ve just been sitting around and looking at it all for ages now though…

Our first turned up the day I put the cot together. I like to think it was well planned but it was more like blind luck. I can’t remember when we had everything ready, but it wasn’t until quite late on. We were considerably more laid back for number 2! Made us realise just how much of the stuff we had for number 1 wasn’t actually required.

The only thing I was concerned with having ready was the hospital bag. Make sure you have a couple of good books stashed in there and the camera has a full battery and room on the memory card!

start looking out for Baby sales in the supermarkets and Mothercare. Never buy anything full price as you have plenty of time to sort it just now. Decide what sort of equipment you want (buggies, car seats etc) and keep an eye out for offers. Dont just buy it cause its there just yet. good luck!

Also found that Argos was a fair bit cheaper on some stuff than the baby shops e.g. steriliser, bottles, breast pump from memory.

TK Maxx (depending on your local stores) can have some useful things cheap as well.

I found whenever Mrs Danny started demanding things got done which was about 6 months in.

I reckon I could have left it until the last week or so but apparently that wasn’t giving us nearly long enough!

Cheers

Danny B

Ours is due early october, bt cant start any decorating until we get a new roof put on the house, so will have the bathroom to finish and the nursery to decorate as soon as it is done…………

Not in any rush though to be honest, just as long as the nursery is complete the rest will get done when finances and time allow..

Oh, and one area of preparation I always recommend to new fathers is to make a list of organisms in the house in order of importance and then a list of how things will be rearranged once the baby arrives. For example, you may think it’s something like this now….

1. Husband and wife on equal terms
2. Dog
3. Cat
4. Goldfish

Once baby turns up, it looks like this.

1. baby
2. Wife
3. Dog
4. Cat
5. Goldfish
6. You.

This revelation is often met with laughter. ‘Not in our house’, is the reply. If I ask them 9 months later they usually agree I was right.

I think we started amassing stuff after the 20 week scan. We didn’t want to know the gender and so just painted the nursery yellow 🙂

Congrats to you both 🙂

When you do find out if the baby is a boy or a girl, don’t go mad with buying the media appropriate colour. If you decide to go for number 2 then you could be stuck with pink hand me downs for a boy.

If you and your partner have parents they will more than likely want to contribute and a small amount of competitive grandparenting is to encouraged and is good for your wallet.

Don’t go mad in Mothercare or Mama & Papas. All the main supermarkets do baby ranges, also Argos and Baby R Us.
If budget is important to you, apart from the cot mattress everything else can be bought via the internet and/or ebay and car boot sales.

As with Weddings, there seems to be a premium added on as soon as something is designed for a nursery.

We didn’t get a special baby changing unit, I found a chest of draws the right height from Ikea and used that with a change mat on top. To begin with used the top draw for nappy stuff, middle for his clothes and bottom for blankets etc, and then as he grew his clothes took over.
Get a nice comfy chair to go in the baby’s room to for night feeds, one with soft arm covers – you don’t need a specialist nursing chair.

We started kitting out our sons room from around 30 weeks. But don’t go over board with winnie the pooh and other cute Disney stuff. In two to three short years you will be upgrading to a big boy/girl bed and your independent toddler will want a say of what is on the walls of his/her room.

“, babies break you in nice and easy, it’s actually a doddle.” This but it won’t feel like it at first .

When to buy stuff do stuff is personal. we needed to sort out two floors and fit a bathroom so started while crankygirl was still fit enough to do the heavy lifting and decorating.

The buying was gradual . you can always just stuff a new born in a draw if you don’t have a cot . (do not shut the draw that is a bad thing to do) . You will need a car seat to remove the child from hospital these are best acquired well in advance . You will jointly put more effort in to this purchase then goes in to a new bike decision .

you will not buy enough baby grows , if you manage to buy enough baby grows they will be the wrong size.

Missus is 24 weeks tomorrow and we are due a baby (don’t know what sex) early October. I think we (read she) has bought maybe 10 varying sized baby grows from a nearly new fair, a brand new blanket from Mamas and Papas and we’ve visited both Mothercare and MandP once to look at travel systems (wheeled frame that incorporates pram, pushchair and car seat).

Apart from that nowt. A lot of reading and internet research but nothing more. I think we’ll go into overdrive in the last 6-8 weeks. Both sets of grandparents have offered to buy this, that and t’other so we’re being quite chilled about it all really.

As above wait for 20 weeks and be advised by wifey. Obviously you need to be prepared and large items can take time / are worth a bit of research to get the beat you can afford for junior.

Childcare vouchers can be obtained as of now if you intend to use a Nursery – often good to save those up in advance as obviously you get more than the cash value in return.

Also, you won’t believe how many baby wipes – literally thousands – and nappys you get through so if you see an offer (quite often 3 for 2) buy them and start storing them up

Nearly new fairs are brilliant, loads of virtually/actually new stuff nice and cheap.
For some reason buggies dont sell well at those fairs, we tried to get rid of one and there were loads unsold at the end of the day that I bet could have been taken with a really cheeky offer.
If someone had offered us £20 we would have taken it.

But mostly, if you dont buy brand new top of the range it does not mean you dont love you kid or could not afford it, just saving your money for the fun stuff.

N

We bought most things off eBay or clearance sections, Pram came from eBay, Cot came from clearance section in an online store, loads of stuff came from charity shops and friends.

Be very wary, there is a whole industry ready to take your hard earned cash. Do yourself and the planet a favor and buy as much second hand as possible and tell everyone you need baby stuff. Our neighbour came around and gave us a mountain of baby clothes, books and toys.

Don’t be seduced that everything has to be brand new! We got loads of hand me downs from friends/family that had got through the baby stage and didn’t need it anymore. The only item we bought brand new were the car seats (something I insisted upon).

Freecycle is also a really good way to get toys etc, just give them a good clean and they are usually good to go. Once we had finished with our little boys small clothes (we now have a little girl) we freecycled his baby clothes so that other parents could enjoy the baby without having to spend a fortune.

As to when to get started, whenever your partner decides it’s time. I don’t know if its true but pregnant moms seem to have a nesting instinct that kicks in, and when it does EVERYTHING needs to be organised!

The only clothes you’ll need are 3 packs of white baby-gro’s – small, medium and large. Keep the receipt so you can take back those that are too small 🙂

I strongly recommend buying as much as you can second hand. You’ve no way of knowing if stuff like a pram will suit you or the baby until you’ve used them a bit, at least with used gear, you can re-sell it pretty much for what you paid for it.

Lots of good advice there, all taht I can add is that Aldi do some reasonably priced nappies and wipes.

Oh, and enjoy it 🙂 it doesn’t last as long as you think it will…

1. baby
2. Wife
3. Dog
4. Cat
5. Goldfish
6. You.

I like to think I was above the fish.

Starting to look for second-hand gear is a pretty good idea, particularly things like small cribs (for the first couple of months) and cots – they’re not used for long so should be in pretty good condition. I imagine baby monitors would also be a fairly safe 2nd hand purchase.

Our kids’ buggies weren’t in any shape at all to be resold, they got a real hammering…

Babies don’t care what colour their nursery is, so paint it a nice bright yellow or whatever, and you won’t have to worry about whether it’s a boy or girl. When he/she’s old enough to care the walls will have been drawn or thrown up all over repeatedly, so it’ll need repainting anyway 🙂

Edit: and the bit about not getting sucked into buying baby-specific things: all true. When you do up the nursery stick in a kitchen counter height changing table/bench, no need to buy something special. Likewise a comfy chair.

See my advice in this dadsnet thread 😀

When he/she’s old enough to care the walls will have been drawn or thrown up all over repeatedly, so it’ll need repainting anyway

Two tips: washable paint and laminate flooring. Much better at resisting poo & vomit.

There is a risk with finding out the gender and going pink or blue mad, which is that the scans are not 100% perfect, something like 1 in 20 error rate. Person I know on facebook was selling a massive bundle of brand new pink clothes for not much money for that reason.

Most of the stuff is nice to have bu you don’t actually need much at all.
We chose to get the absolute minimum and then see what we actually needed.
Oh and people will give you loads.
Best of luck .

I haven’t read the thread, but:

Don’t go mad, just buy the absolute minimum. You need somewhere for it to sleep (cot bed, no need to get a moses basket or swinging cribs or whatever), a means to move it around (fabric baby sling is best, try close parent ones), and clothes. Don’t worry about buying blue or pink, WGAF if the colour is the official sanctioned colour? Ours were mostly white but included yellow, green, red, orange etc and blue. Yes, blue, FOR GIRLS! OMFG! For car seats, just get the maxi cosi baby one, it’s good and cheap.

If there’s something specific you need then you can get it from a 24 hour supermarket easily enough, provided you don’t live in the sticks. Don’t blow tons of money on matching crap, you’re just wasting it. Travel systems are a pain in the arse too. If your baby is sleeping in the car seat, just lift it out and put it in a sling – it’ll go back to sleep for sure, and be happier about it. And you’ll get a nice snuggly lovey dovey high from it too which you don’t when you push it around in a pushchair.

Oh and we’ve got two cot beds going here – one is battered and chewed, and free; the other is more sound, still a bit chewed, and would be yours for cheap.

Also got a high chair for cheap, and a nice mamas and papas travel cot WITH A MATTRESS! Which is decent and we would want some money for. In fact, loads – pm me