Today the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit released the results of a cohort study between April 2008 and April 2010,  looking at care in labour, delivery and birth outcomes for the mother and baby for 64,000 ‘low risk’ births in England.

It covered 97% of NHS Trusts providing home birth services and nearly 90% of midwifery units took part.

What I find so interesting is how robust academic data can be interrupted in such different ways by our various British newspapers and media.  So while many of the broadsheets offer a balanced and fair coverage some of the tabloids (and those with the highest circulations) choose to focus entirely on picking out and sensationalizing any statistic that potentially generates shock and fear among their readers.

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The Guardian published this great article with some useful links about the cost of having a baby.  I loved it because I can really relate to the couple in the article as when Maya was born we didn’t have much money so using washable nappies was primarily a financial choice – the environment and health issues were learnt later.  We probably spent less than this couple as we luckily had a lot of hand me downs from my sister who had had a baby just 11 months earlier.

If you’ve been in one of our shops or on our website you might wonder how shopping with us could save you money as we are not and never have been a pile it high sell it cheap nursery store.  I’ve often heard people walk past the shop and comment that it is expensive without even coming in! This bugs me because if they had done some simple things like:

1. used washable nappies instead of disposables
2. bed shared instead of buying a cot
3. breastfed instead of bottle fed
4. used a sling instead of buying a fancy 3 in 1 travel system that they only used for 2 months, they would have saved hundreds if not thousands of £’s.

Saving money on the big items means you have more to spend on the things you love – like chemical free toiletries or a few gorgeous treat items of clothing.

I’m not saying never buy disposables, a cot or a pram, we sell them and they are useful when they are useful, but my point is to not buy them without assessing if you realy do need them, and if you decide you do need them buy quality that will last and can be useful (ie it grows with the child) can be resold or passed on when finished with – a great example is the Stokke Tripp Trapp.

There is so much stuff that is marketed to vulnerable parents-to-be who to be safe tend to buy too much rather than feel like they may be caught short. I love taking customers on a tour around the shop to show them the essentials, which when you get down to it is very little.  So in fact a visit to us can actualy safe you money, leaving you spare cash to spend on things you really need or love.