Save a bundle on your new baby

Get maternal

Maternity clothes alone can be a budget-breaker. It's easy to spend $1,200 or more just looking presentable for the office. Even when you have a fairy godmother, as I did -- the world's most wonderful mother-in-law, who flew down to take me on a shopping spree -- you're still likely to supplement your wardrobe as your belly grows, the weather changes and you get sick, sick, sick of wearing the same black leggings every day.

Other mothers are great sources of recycled clothing, if any of them are between pregnancies. Also check out some of the big discounters, such as Target, for casual wear. I found some great business stuff at, of all places, J.C. Penney -- a store I hadn't shopped in since I was a little girl. The outfits were well made and professional enough that they passed muster on my CNBC appearances. Enough said.

You'll probably also need to get at least a couple pairs of new shoes (one set for the office, one for casual use) by your third trimester. Get slip-ons, so you don't amuse your husband too much trying to tie your shoes in the morning.

One of the open secrets of motherhood is that your feet grow -- and often, they don't shrink back. I so wish somebody had told me that before I dropped a small fortune on shoes before we conceived. Fortunately, a small-footed friend whose extremities swelled up to my old, pre-pregnancy size was delighted to get my nearly-new castoffs.

Find consignment stores

As I mentioned, I live in a place where fashionably dressed women pay $2,500 for a foreign-made stroller, $800 for crib sets with silk dust ruffles and $149 for a newborn's sleeper. But Los Angeles and other major cities have neighborhood consignment shops that sell both luxury goods and a wide range of more reasonably priced baby gear. At an outing to one, we found gorgeous velvet dresses for toddlers, seemingly unworn, for $5.

You can find name-brand strollers, toys and other baby gear for a fraction of the new price (although many safety experts advise buying car seats and cribs new if at all possible).

If you don't have consignment stores in your town, you might check out regular thrift stores and garage sales. I've collected plastic toys from yard sales since my friends first started having babies, so the little ones would have something to play with when they came to our house. A few of the more-finicky mothers blanch when I tell them where I picked up this or that bargain, but just about anything plastic can be sterilized in a weak bleach solution, then rinsed and sun-dried. Electronic toys and games can be blasted with disinfectant spray, and stuffed animals can easily be machine washed and dried, particularly if you put them in a nylon bag first.

Given what your kid will do to them in short order, it may be the last time they look so good.

Keep receipts, and don't wash new items right away

In a nesting frenzy, I did what I thought you were supposed to do, which is launder everything that might come in contact with baby's skin. More experienced mothers later told me it's smart to wash only a few of your newborn items, since the baby is likely to quickly outgrow them and you can take the still-packaged ones back to the store for a refund.

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Oops. I did the same thing by laundering the crib bedding, only to completely change my mind on the color and style I wanted for the linens and dust ruffle. I claim temporary hormonal madness, but the crib really does look cute now.

Expect a few splurges

On a related note, it's not just the mother-to-be who can wreak havoc on a budget. The daddy-in-training can also lose his mind occasionally, as mine did one fine autumn day when we were visiting New Mexico. He slipped away from me for a few hours with a credit card, and about a week later a packing crate -- yes, a crate -- laden with stuffed toys arrived at our home.

We did build some parental splurges into our budget -- including a few more dinners and movies out, in anticipation of the confinement ahead, and pregnancy massages, which I'm convinced made the aches of my expanding body more bearable. If these luxuries aren't within reach, at least make sure you make some nice dinners for each other at home, and learn a few massage techniques before the baby arrives. We've heard the latter come in quite handy in the labor room -- and beyond.

Liz Pulliam Weston's new book, "Easy Money: How to Simplify Your Finances and Get What You Want Out of Life," is now available. Columns by Weston, the Web's most-read personal-finance writer and winner of the 2007 Clarion Award for online journalism, appear every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. She also answers reader questions on the Your Money message board.

Updated Feb. 7, 2008

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