Interpretive Economics

[Pre-labour report: Nothing interesting to report. Bah.]

Some of you may recall that I decided not to spend a single penny on baby items (in a gesture of control over our finances, since my income was halved by nausea this year). Reader Stuart foolishly claimed that when hormones and cuteness were combined, I’d be unable to resist buying at least SOMETHING baby related. This of course made my quest far more satisfying.

I had several advantages:

1. Two sets of financially stable, affectionate grandparents-to-be.

2. Friends who don’t take offense when I STRONGLY suggest a particular present for them to buy me (including brand and model).

3. A first-baby baby shower (and the general community thing of “Clear out your baby stuff and give it to the nearest pregnant lady”).

4. Christmas.

5. My birthday (which will happen only weeks after Louisette’s arrival).

I can now say with confidence that we are good to go. We have (or will soon have) a lot of high-quality brand new baby items (almost all of which I chose myself) including a cot, stroller, two car seats (one is a capsule – great for transporting a tiny baby without waking it up – and the other will last until she is four), a portacot (secondhand but high quality), and a nappy bag (I have a weakness for handbags, so this was particularly cool for me, and I picked it out myself).

We have a ridiculous amount of clothing, blankets, linen, towels, lotions, nappies, and so on. We also have most of the ingredients for motherly feeding independence (pump, steriliser, etc).

The only items that we’d really like and don’t know for certain that we have yet are a floorless playpen (that we can put around the baby, heater, or TV depending on the occasion), and a few more bottles. It is very likely that those items will magically show up (my side of the family hasn’t done Christmas yet, because it doesn’t happen until my sister and her family are in town, and they’ve just arrived). In any case, we don’t need them until several months after Louisette is born, so there’s no hurry.

I spent $65 on maternity clothes myself, and my mum bought me another $100 worth for Christmas. The “interpretive” part of my economics is that I did technically buy certain baby items myself, and I didn’t technically receive enough  cash to cover them all (namely, a $25 change mat and about $33 worth of Huggies brand nappies, which I’ve been told emphatically and vividly are the only ones that actually work for newborns). So I’m choosing to interpret my Christmas maternity clothes as “credit” on my baby-specific “account” (since maternity clothes aren’t technically a baby expense, but I saved money on them by waiting until late November to acquire most of them).

I therefore declare myself a winner.