How did you and your significant other financially plan for your pregnancy and the birth of your child? Since there is a chance that expected mothers could be put on bedrest, or lose several work days due to morning sickness or doc appointments, did you financially plan for that loss of wages? If you had to do it over again, how would you do it differently so that you were financially prepared for pregnancy?

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we have NEVER planned financially for a pregnancy.The were all "oops" babies. If I got to redo it I would have waited till AFTER we ere married to get preggo. I also would have worked for a few years.

Not sure we actually planned for it- we did try are best to live off dh salary and put mine in savings. Before we bought any big ticket item we taught about if we really needed it, would we still need it after kids, was it kid friendly- those kind of ?s.

Both of my pregnancies were planned. We didn't plan financially for them-I don't think that you are ever financially ready. One of the things I did before I got pregnant was made sure that I had short term disability that I used when I was on maternity leave. With my first I only took 7 weeks off & short term disability covered 6 weeks & I had some vacation I used also. So we didn't lose that much money. With my 2nd one I took off 12 weeks-I still had short term disability that paid me for 6 weeks & then I had 2 weeks vacation that I used also. The rest of the time I didn't receive pay for, but this is something that dh & I planned on financially. It was tight but it was what was best for me & the baby for me to be off 12 weeks & I don't regret it. The job that I had when I was pregnant both times we didn't have sick days so when I had my doctors appointments I just wouldn't take a lunch. I had great pregnancies & didn't miss due to any pregnancy problems or complications.

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Mommy to Ariana 8/11/01 & Davis 4/11/05
I love my kiddos!

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We pretty much winged it every time!! I was on bed rest once for 4 months and this was my 7th child. I had 3 preschoolers at home yet and I was not even allowed to sit up for more than a few minutes!!!! Somehow, we always managed to pull through.

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~Happiness is a large family~

We never planned financially for a child either. I have always heard that if you wait until you have enough money, you'll never have a baby because there will never be enough money! LOL I do think it is a good idea to look into how much maternity leave will you get, will it be paid, and what all your insurance covers.

My dh and I lived cheaply for 8 years, lived off of his salary only (saved just about all of mine), and had all of our debts (besides our mortgage) paid off before we decided to have a child. I quit when I found out I was pregnant because I didn't want to work while pregnant. It was nice having a relaxing pregnancy.

I don't think we really "planned" anything really. We were building a house at the time, and living with his dad, and paying his dad's bills, plus what our building loan was on the house. (my dh and his dad built our house) So we really didn't know what our bills were going to be, but we figured if we could pay all that we were then, we'd be able to make it in our house.

I was 5 months pregnant when we moved into our house, so we were able to sit down and see what our expenses were going to be, and we tried our best to budget, and get used to living off of dh's income.

We didn't really plan either. I thought if I waited for the perfect time it would never come. The only thing I did was save as much vacation time as possible to take while on maternity leave and 3 weeks pay to be off 12 weeks. Together we decided what our big ticket items for baby would be and planned ahead to garage sale and purchase just one bigger item a month rather than all at once. We have almost all of those items and 2 months before baby comes.

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Nadene

I am a planner, we got our big ticket items out of the way because I didn't want to be preg and remodeling. But you can't plan for everything, I could have handled ending up on bed rest. Instead at 7 months I totaled my car. That $280 we now pay every month for our car payment makes the budget alot tighter then we planned

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Kimberly Proud Mommy to Bethany Rose April 2006