My DW and I just had our first baby, Nathan, 2 months ago. We had a lot of the same questions and had a lot of people tell us different things. Of course I can only speak to the initial costs and realistically it depends on how generous your friends and family are at the showers. We were incredibly fortunate in that we only had approximately $500 worth of things to buy in order to be ready for his arrival and we bought most of it used so save a little (craigslist is a wonderful thing). We have not had to buy a single outfit and will not have to do so until around his 1st birthday or so. We haven't really had to buy many diapers as we had a ton given to us, and my wife breastfed, so we haven't had to buy formula. So far we have been able to keep our expenses well under $100/month.
The most expensive piece was the actual delivery. My wife and Nathan both hit their maximum out of pocket expenses for our healthplan at $2,500 each so we had to stash away $5000 in our FSA. The pre-tax benefit helped a lot.
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