Family, Motivation

Preparing For The Birth Of A New Baby

Well, well. If you read my last post, then you know our good news. My wife and I are going to have another baby. He/She is due in April. We’ve spent the past three days telling our friends and family. We are so very, very excited. My daughter, 7, wants the baby to be born NOW. My son, 3, wants twins, so that “he can have one and she can have the other”!

Over the course of the next few months, I’ll be adjusting my budget so that I can be financially prepared for the birth. I will increase the amount that we budget for health care. (We have health insurance, but we will need to prepare for co-pays, prescriptions, medicines, and other incidental expenses.) I’ll begin to gather baby-formula coupons. (Our doctor usually has a big stack of coupons for Similac, our preferred baby-formula.) I’ll check Amazon for diaper specials. We’ll go through our closets, sorting through usable and unusable baby items. We already have a crib, a rocking chair, and other baby basics, but we’ll be looking for a new changing table/twin bed. (Instead of a changing table for our son, we simply used a twin bed. It served two purposes. We could lie him down on the bed to change him, and if one of us needed to sleep in his room at night, we could sleep on the twin bed. But, now HE’s sleeping in the twin bed, so we’ll have to get another one, if we choose to go that route.) As far as baby clothes go… grandparents baby, grandparents!

I’m really looking forward to being a daddy (again). Clearly, once the baby arrives, our lives will change. Household expenses will go up. Free time will go down. Budgets will need to be adjusted and belts will need to be tightened. But, it’s going to be awesome. My words fail, as they often do… so allow me to simply share the following from Psalm 139: 13-18

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there were none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

9 thoughts on “Preparing For The Birth Of A New Baby

  1. Sarah… I’d love to be able to use cloth diapers, but I’m a super wimp. As for the other, my wife takes a migraine medicine which prevents…
    (These are both great suggestions, however!)
    NCN

  2. Congratulation. Wow, a fellow blogger with a lot of experience being a daddy. Can you create a post with a checklist for a first-time daddy-to-be like me? I think that will be a great post. 🙂

  3. Pinyo… would you prefer a general ideas type post… or focused more on the pf issues? Let me know…. In fact, I might get MRS NCN to write a similar post… for first-time moms..
    NCN

  4. Congrats! Can you tell us how much do you think the first year will cost? I realize it’s cheaper later babies than the first, but I was thinking since there is a larger gap maybe you’ll be buying new car seat, stroller, etc.

    Can you blog about it?

  5. I’d like to suggest the breastfeeding option again. Talk to La Leche League, then talk to your doctor about an alternative medication. Almost every medicine that’s out there for almost every ailment has an alternative that can be taken that is safe for nursing mothers. Once again, talk to La Leche League. They are the experts on breastfeeding! They know more about it than most doctors.

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