This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Diana O'Pong.

I remember the day I walked into the baby section of a store after finding out I was pregnant.

I felt elated and simultaneously terrified.

I was staring at all of the products available and looking at the cost of everything.

Convertible car seats ranged from 100 to over $500.

I didn't even know what that meant. There were jumper roofs that were almost 200 bucks.

And the fancy baby swings and nursing chairs that swiveled seemed significantly outside of my price

range. I didn't know which products were best, what I actually needed, or how to decide how much

I really needed to spend. But from where I was standing in that baby aisle, it looked like it was

going to cost thousands of dollars. And that wasn't even everything it looked like the baby would

probably need that first year. Babies come with so many unknowns and the fear started to overtake

my joy really fast. Instead of being excited, I was just stressed. Plus people close to me had

opinions on the importance of organic diapers or cloth diapers which had a monthly service fee.

Did I really need all of this?

Rumor has it, babies are expensive for a nuisance. What does having a baby actually cost?

Well, if you ask the US Department of Agriculture, which I didn't realize they were the experts,

but they have actually tallied the figures. That's parent and money expert for a nuisance to Robby.

Looking across all the different aspects of households expenses when they have children,

housing, food, childcare, of course, over the course of, say, 18 years. So this figure doesn't

even include college, but they estimate it is roughly a quarter of a million dollars over those 18

years. That's just average. So depending on how you want to raise your kid, what you can actually

afford, it could be very different depending on your household. But the bottom line is that it's not

...