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You find out you’re pregnant.  You start shopping, or at least thinking about it.  When is it reasonable to buy maternity clothes?  8 weeks? 12 weeks? Second trimester?  Do you have to be showing before you start looking at cribs and paint colors?  Is it ridiculous to stop moms in the street to ask them about their stroller?

One of my closest friends just entered second trimester.  After nearly 10 weeks of waiting, she has released herself from the hold of “no shopping until…” and off she went to buy and buy and buy.  Her husband thinks the shopping is a coping mechanism to deal with the pregnancy.  I don’t.

I think it’s the pure joy and desire to have her outside world reflect what’s going on inside of her.  But that doesn’t mean the wallet should become a bottomless pit.

One really cool way I kept my maternity clothes spending down was to ask close friends who had recently been pregnant whether they were interested in a maternity clothes merry-go-round.  One friend jumped on the bandwagon.  She shared her maternity clothes with me.  I added to the collection and then lent them back to her or in our case, to another mutual friend who became pregnant next.  The collection grows and I didn’t have to buy an expensive maternity dress for a wedding that took place when I was 8.5 months pregnant.  And let me tell you, getting that huge dress out of my sight by mailing to my friend was more than a cost-saver, it was a sanity saver.

How do you keep your spending under control during pregnancy?  Do you and your partner agree on financial limits?  Who is the cheaper one?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Baby Prep, Finance & Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.