newbornIf you’re pregnant or adopting a child, you’re probably obsessing about all the stuff leading up to the arrival of your kid. If you’re adopting, you’re worrying about the adoption going through. If you’re giving birth, I have one word for you: LABOR. But it’s actually the period immediately after the arrival of your baby that’s the most challenging’”and, too often, unnecessarily expensive.

Here are five tips that will save you money and time during that twilight zone when you’ve just become a parent. These are the things that I wish I’d thought of before I gave birth which can make that wonderful, scary postpartum time a little more wonderful and a little less scary.

1) Buy onesies and pants in a variety of sizes. Everyone and their two mothers will buy you those adorable teensy weensy onesies that say ‘œI Love My Moms’ in the newborn (0-3 month) size. But babies grow at a truly phenomenal speed; your peanut will outgrow his or her newborn wardrobe long before your stretch marks have faded. Our baby was a month premature, and she outgrew all her preemie clothes AND 0-3s by the time she hit two months! Stock up on inexpensive cotton onesies and pants in a variety of sizes. Ix-nay on the frilly dresses and elaborate sailorboy suits; you’ll get more of those as gifts than you can possibly use. Babies don’t take kindly to formal attire; what they crave are comfy cotton onesies, sleepers, and pants. In lots of different sizes.

2) Find a good lawyer and start the paperwork on the second-parent adoption if you have a partner (or if you are the partner of the birth mom). Whether you’re partnered or single, make sure that your will, power of attorney and health care proxy are in order, and that you’ve clearly designated who gets custody of your baby should you find yourself incapacitated or, uh, dead. Paperwork, and lots of it: that’s what you can expect from a second-parent adoption. It’s a time-consuming, expensive process; do all that you can before the baby arrives, so you won’t have to focus on this annoying aspect of being a queer parent in a homophobic society when all you really want to focus on is your amazing, brilliant, gorgeous baby.

Not every state allows queer partners to formally adopt their child. If a second parent adoption is not an option in your state, talk to your lawyer about the next best way to protect your family’s rights. To find a lawyer who practices in this area and is LGBTQ-friendly, contact your local LGBTQ center or call Lambda Legal. My partner is a lawyer, but since she doesn’t practice in the area of family law, we decided to hire someone else to handle this. The cost varies; ours cost about $1200 from soup to nuts, and took a total of 11 months to complete. See what I mean about expensive and time-consuming? If you’re a low-income family, an LGBTQ organization may be able to represent you for free, or hook you up with a pro-bono (donated services) lawyer. In any case, Lambda Legal is a good place to start your search for a lawyer.I cannot emphasize strongly enough how important second parent adoption is. Without it, the non-birth parent has no rights‘”zilch’” should your partnership end. She or he will not be recognized as a parent in the eyes of the law, and can lose custody, visiting rights, etc. With it, the non-birth parent has exactly the same rights and responsibilities’”financial and otherwise’”as the birth parent. In fact, in my state (New York), the baby’s birth certificate is changed to list both parents following the adoption. Even if you KNOW you and your honey will be together forever (famous last words’¦), it’s still crucial to do a second parent adoption so the non-birth parent can travel alone with and make medical decisions for the baby.

And at the end of the day, it’s really in your baby’s best interests to have your partner’s financial, legal, and emotional commitments to him or her formalized. It’s annoying to have to pay for a right that hetero couples acquire automatically. Just one more reason to agitate for same-sex marriage! But in the meantime, use the legal mechanisms available to protect your family’s rights and your baby’s best interests.

3) Make a visit to your bank‘”no, not to withdraw all your money to buy onesies and pay for that second parent adoption, but to set up a custodial account for your baby. While there are many other financial tools you may want to investigate later that can be used to save for college and so forth, this is a quick, cheap way to start saving money in your baby’s name. You may be getting checks made out to your baby at the shower, christening, bris, Wiccan naming orgy, etc., and you’ll need a way to deposit them. All the money in the baby’s custodial account becomes his or hers once baby turns 18; until then, you’re in charge. This money is untaxed up to $100,000, so it’s an easy way to start saving money for your baby without a lot of hassle.

4) This tip is in the category of what not to buy: consider holding off on elaborate baby furniture, nursery decorations, and the like. Here’s the deal with babies: newborns need to be fed every 2-3 hours, and require constant skin-to-skin contact with their parents. So it doesn’t make sense to plunk the baby down in a separate room, however well-decorated it may be. What worked best for us was having our baby sleep in our bedroom (we use the term ‘˜sleep’ euphemistically here). Instead of making a fancy schmancy nursery in which baby will be miserable and alone, we made a few adjustments in our bedroom so that our baby could have easy access to us.

I recommend a co-sleeper, which attaches to your bed and is inexpensive and space-efficient; a bouncer, preferably one that vibrates; and a changing pad. That’s it. Our daughter would only sleep in the bouncer for the first four months; she still hasn’t worked up to a proper crib, and at 8 months, now sleeps in her pack-and-play (cheap!) portable crib. Wooden cribs are expensive and space-devouring. Hold off until you have a better sense of your particular baby’s sleep habits and needs.

5) Arrange for a post-partum doula. In fact, if you’re having a shower, instead of registering for bibs, pacifiers, onesies and the like (all of which you can buy for yourself in bulk more cheaply) ask your friends and family to buy you some post-partum doula hours. What is a doula, you ask? A brilliant woman whose job is to help both the new parents and baby adjust to their life together. If you’re the birth mother’“to-be, you are probably very focused on your pregnancy and impending labor. But the truly challenging part of being a new parent happens later, once you’re home from the hospital (if you have a hospital birth), and you’re alone with this incredibly amazing, incredibly needy, incredibly sleepless little person.

A post-partum doula will do basic errands, like cooking and cleaning, but more importantly, will help you and your baby adjust to your new relationship. She’ll help you with breastfeeding issues, give you a little relief and watch the baby when you need a shower, a cup of coffee, or a good cry, and generally support you in your new role. She’ll also listen to, contextualize, and validate your unique birth (horror) story. When my partner had to go back to work five weeks after our daughter’s birth, I found my doula’s presence invaluable. She not only helped me with all the practical stuff, but supported and validated my experiences, helped me learn to trust my maternal instincts, and kept me from going over the edge when I was feeling overwhelmed. Especially if you live far from your families (or don’t have the kind of relationship with your families of origin in which you can rely on them for this sort of intimate care), a doula is essential.

In my area, doula care goes for $20- 30 per hour. This may seem expensive, but if ten of your friends paid for an hour and half each, that would cover a few weeks’ worth of doula time, and be so much more useful than yet another too-small onesie. If you are adopting, you might still want to contact a doula to see if she can help you adjust to caretaking for an infant. Your local midwife practice, Planned Parenthood center, OB/GYN, or LGBTQ center should be able to help you find a queer-friendly doula. Doulas rock!!!