The Nappie Analysis

This time last year - I was blissfully unaware that I was about 8 weeks pregnant. I found out around the 25th of May when I was 10 weeks along. Naturally when you hear that you are pregnant - you start to think (and my father reminded me)... How am I going to cope with all of the costs associated with a baby? Here are some tips...

Know what you are shopping for

What I tried to do was research how many nappies my child would need from birth to toilet trained. In this way I could start to incorporate the cost of the nappies by buying a bag of nappies with every grocery shop, while ensuring I was getting enough of each size. My research also showed me which nappies were the cheapest.

I looked at what the average weight milestones are (for girls) at each month. The average daily consumption I found by looking at forums and asking moms. I then worked out how many nappies I would need for the month and then worked back to how many packs of nappies it would be as well as the cost per pack. I could also establish how many packs of each size I would need.

Below are the tables for 3 top brands in South Africa:

 Can you guess which brand was cheaper, overall? Look at the graphs below:

Interestingly - many "mommy forums" have a topic "Which brand of diaper do you prefer" 9 out 10 moms said Pampers... for the following reasons:

• They fit better
• They don't leak
• My baby never gets a nappy rash

I think that it is because they are the cheapest brand on the market.

I hear you asking me - so how accurate has your analysis been? Well - the number of nappies you go through at the various milestones is accurate but my baby grew at a rate of 500g per week. (Breast fed baby). I knew she was going to be a big baby - but I had no clue that she would literally grow out of the size 2 nappies in under a month... so although the theory is sound, in reality - keep all of your slips. I had to enter into major negotiations with in-ept managers to exchange my nappies for bigger sizes.

The other challenge with this analysis is that I enrolled my daughter into a school where for the school fee of R2450 per month, they supply all the toiletries for Peyton. This means that I do not go through my stock of nappies as quickly as anticipated in the analysis... so I had to negotiate to get shopping vouchers in exchange for the nappies so that I could buy the required size as needed.

You can use this or not - but it opened my eyes to terms of how much nappies cost! But there are ways to ensure that you absorb the cost:

1. If you know your baby is growing at an average rate during your pregnancy you can use this analysis as a guide to purchase nappies each month to create a stockpile (but keep your shopping slips - the store has to exchange the items according to the CPA if you have a slip)
2. Ask people to provide nappies as gifts at your baby shower - specify sizes (also ask for a slip)
3. Find a creche like mine...