<prompt> Human: Almost three years ago my wife and I had our first kid. I kept track of everything that we spent money on that was kid related. Starting from the pregnancy test to the hospital delivery bill. We also estimated the value of any gift we received to give a full itemized bill idea of how much money was spent on our kid before she was even born. I made an ugly spreadsheet to track it all. I thought about posting this here when I was all done but decided not to because A, I just had a kid and was busy, and 2 I wasnt ready for the criticism I was inevitably going to receive. But, now I am ready and less busy, so here we go. Starting with the big number: To bring our baby into the world from scratch cost 9,984.55. My wife and I spent 6445.66. We estimated receiving 3,538.89 in gifts. I broke everything down into these categories:Category Cost------Gear 1,661.02Diapers Ect. 119.90Baby Clothes 294.54Mom Clothes 804.30Medical 4,170.05Books 248.78Toys 275.93Bedroom 2,305.53Feeding 161.21In anticipation of some shock on all this spending Ill add that we bought things that we felt would be useful to our lifestyle, within our budget, and that would last for many years to come. We could have spent less, and many people do, and many people actually go well beyond.The most expensive things were: The hospital trip to safely have a baby 3517 delivery related bills combined -Having a baby fall out of a woman in a hospital in America is expensive. This was after insurance covered their portion. A crib mattress that converts to a toddler bed and full size bed 890 total - gift -Kid is almost 3 and we converted the crib to the toddler bed shortly after she turned 2. She wasnt a chewer, so its currently in great shape to stay her bed until her teens or beyond. Mom clothes 804.30 -After seeing this final number I told myself I shouldnt ever gain too much weight because I now know how much a new wardrobe could end up costing me. We were at a point in life where most of the items were bought new and that was OK. A new glider chair 500 - gift -I wish we could have found this used but didnt have any luck. We wanted one with a high back because Im tall. Im thankful we found one, I spent so many nights rocking and dozing in and out of sleep on this thing, Im very happy with it. We still use it nightly for reading bedtime stories. The stroller 384 -We got one of those fancy BOB running strollers, I ran over a hundred miles with her and we walked plenty of unpaved trails at our local state park. She spent hundreds of hours in this thing. This was the only stroller we used, otherwise we carried her everywhere in the frontback carrier. Plus these strollers have a high resale value. Car Seat extra base 375 -We have two cars, a base for each car was great. Two camera video baby monitor 250 -We did a lot of traveling and having the extra camera to just pack and go was really handy. A video monitor is the shit, being able to check and see if a noise was just stirring or something more was great. A cute rug 239 -A cheap rug would have served the same purpose, but shit its our first kid, sometimes you gotta get that cute thing.Writing this with the benefit of hind sight I think we actually did a great job of getting the right thing for us on the first try. We tried to get things with the idea of potentially having another child. Of everything major that we bought, the monitor is the only thing we would need to replace if another kid sauntered into our lives. The battery is now totally useless and one of the cameras died last month. Also we dropped it, so the power cord is soldiered to the chip and Im awful at soldiering so it whole housing is glued together to keep it working. So can you do this cheaper? Absolutely, buy everything used. Babies arent all that picky. I lived in rural Illinois at the time and our availability to get nice used stuff was limited. Also hand-me-downs can help tremendously, our extended family had kids eight years or more years before us if they had any and lived many states away so most of their baby stuff was gone. Also, dont underestimate the generosity of others, there are people out there who LOVE babies and love buying baby things, hopefully you know one or two.Another money saving tidbit, use cloth diapers. Back when I was weighing the benefits of them, I found we would break even with cloth over disposable at two years. Our kid suddenly decided to be potty trained right before Christmas so our cloth diapers lasted a bit over 2.5 years, we definitely saved money with cloth. If we accidentally have another kid we will save a ton in diapers because the original ones we got are still in great shape. Also, you can find used cloth diapers around which can save tons, we hope to sell ours. A very appreciable downside to cloth, youre guaranteed to be washing the diapers about 2-4 times per week.A shout out to rpredaddit for all the helpful tips and stories that were so great at the time. Also usteeldirigible98 uSavingsJada and the several updoots for the courage to finally post this on this sub. I hope this info helps someone out there.Assistant: If you had posted this on rfrugal they would have eaten you aliveHuman: Im expecting it here too.  <response>: If you did research on your big items, waited for sales etc. Frugal would be proud. Plus things like the bob stroller have a really good re-sale value. I think the frugal sub would approve. Of course with babies, the whole thing is evaluating what you actually need. 