Baby Update - February 2009

[mandysee_mandydo]

Yesterday painted_wolf and I went for another visit to the OB/GYN. We got to hear our baby's heartbeat again, and also heard the baby moving around, too. PW still isn't feeling any movement, but she most likely will soon. In two weeks we're going for another ultrasound, so we're really looking forward to that. Our next visit to the OB/GYN is in a month. I can't believe how quickly it's flying by. It seems like only just a few days ago that we found out, but PW is 16 weeks along. We're almost at the halfway point!

We've signed up for parenting classes through the OB/GYN and start those in May. In the meantime, we've been receiving so much baby stuff from friends, which is just so amazingly helpful. We're waiting on two more packages to come in, and then we're going to fill out our registries and send out a letter to friends and families with information on how to find the registries and information on how we plan to raise our child and how best everyone can help. We are very grateful for the help of chenoachem and quantumswordsmn with the information and baby stuff they've provided!

Comments

[chenoachem.livejournal.com]

Well it depends on your theories and ideas. On average infants will go through about 10-12 diapers per day. I think we ended up paying about $50 per month on diapers. Amazon has a diaper club that is worth signing up for since it is far cheaper than the grocery store or Walmart. We made our own baby food out of vegies and soft meats we were eating so that budget never really increased. We bought cereal (about 1 container per month) but we didn't start her on that until 6months old. We had an emergency backup of formula for day care, that was the expensive thing. Now that Helena is only eating people food we have increase our food budget (at 2 years old) about $50-$100 a week. The healthier kids version of things and 100% juice does get pricy. Hope this helps.

[chenoachem.livejournal.com]

If you decide to go with jar baby food, a healthy diet would be 1/2 jar per meal. It is not recommended to start on anything but cereal before 1 year. We started at 10 months, one vegi/fruit per week. That is how you can determine allergies and prevent them.

[srturtle.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for the information! It's extremely helpful! That's definitely more than we anticipated on diapers, but I think we still managed to add in enough to cover that much. I keep forgetting that in the beginning it's not going to be as much food cost as it will be diapers and such. Even still, I think if I leave things be we'll be good. I'm increasing our weekly groceries budget by $30 per week starting the week our child is due, so I think that will be okay.

Kathy and I have been talking about making our own baby food and I really think that's what we'll do, which means we have to get a new food processor at some point. We've been reading about it in some of the baby books we have and know which foods to avoid making ourselves. We would much rather make it ourselves because then we know what's going into our child's food.

[chenoachem.livejournal.com]

There are baby food processors, which we have, that are about $30. Better for portions that will be good for them. There are a lot of information out there for freezing baby food too.

Also, Make sure, that after the baby is born, that Kathy has food high in iron. I lost a lot of blood so it was crucial to have red meats and fruits. I know I didn't eat much after she was born, just forgot to since I was so busy. Other things to keep in mind.