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The stroller is not the expense. The daycare is.
First-year baby budgets fail because people price the gear and forget the childcare — one is a one-time $1,200, the other is $1,200 a month. This calculator builds the year from its real categories, dominated by the childcare line, and lands on the monthly number that matters: the amount to pull from your budget now, before the baby arrives, to prove the budget survives.
Expecting parents use it to replace anxiety with a number: the daycare-dominated first year, priced by category, ending at a monthly figure they can test-drive before the due date. It turns "can we afford a baby" into a budget question with an answer.
Childcare decides it. Example: $1,200/month childcare for 12 months, $70 diapers, $150 formula, $1,200 gear, $800 medical, $50 clothes, 10% buffer → $19,640 for the year, about $1,637/month, with childcare at 73% of the budget. Without paid childcare the same year runs closer to $5,800. Price your local daycare first; everything else is rounding.
Test-drive the budget: starting 4–6 months out, live on your current income minus the projected monthly baby cost and bank the difference. It proves the budget works and builds the newborn buffer. Also check the health insurance math — adding a dependent changes premiums and the deductible you will likely hit in the birth year.
No — the gear already exists (crib, car seat is the one item to check for expiration), the clothes pipeline is built, and you know which "essentials" were not. Childcare is the exception: two kids in daycare can exceed a mortgage, which is why some families re-run the one-income math for the daycare years.