Congratulations!

Craigslist is your friend. Babies are only babies for a short time, so you can often get like-new stuff at a fraction of the price. For us, it didn't hurt to be living near a wealthy area where people were regularly listing high-end stuff.

A good stroller is worth the investment if you'll use it. We started out with a Bugaboo Frog. I was very pleased with it. It does take up a fair amount of space in the trunk, but it fit in our Tercel, so it should fit fine in most cars. Definitely not worth $600-800 (to me), but we got it used for $300 (including the Graco carseat adapter), and it seemed like a good investment. My only gripe was that the handlebar didn't extend. I'm 6'3" and could have used a couple extra inches of handle. On the newer Chameleon model they've fixed that. When we moved to Belize, we sold the Frog and picked up a Baby Jogger Summit XC. I swapped the tires for wider knobbies since there are no paved roads where we live. Works great over dirt, rocks and sand. My only gripe with it is lack of parts to repair it if damaged. I contacted the company about buying parts and never got a reply. Parts were easy to get for the Bugaboo.

Another thing I loved was the Baby Sherpa diaper bag. Perfect size for carrying all the stuff for the baby, insulated pockets for bottles, etc., changing pad. Great for two additional reasons: Your hands are free to carry your baby and/or anything else you need to. You or your wife/partner can wear it without being ashamed. Try that with a Petunia Pickle Bottom.

If your wife/partner is planning to breast feed, a good quality Medela breast pump is also worth spending some bucks on. They resell well, so you should be able to recoup your investment.

My wife loves her Moby Wrap. We're not into that whole kangaroo care crap, but the babies love to be up next to mommy and my wife likes to be able to have her hands free. It's comfortable enough that they'll sleep inside when young. As they get older, they love to be carried up front facing outward. I can't tell you how many airports we went through with my wife wearing the Moby Wrap and Baby Sherpa and still having her hands free.

We bought a bunch of cloth diapers (including both bumGenius and FuzziBunz) and never ended up using them regularly. We had trouble finding ones that would fit our skinny, tall baby right. Poo and pee leakage all the time. Then, whenever there's a poopy, you've got to find somewhere to put it in the toilet and rinse the diaper. If you're out in public, you have to carry soiled diapers around until you can get home to wash them. My best advice for diapers: Target's house brand. Decent quality diapers at half the cost of Pampers or Huggies.

It's very easy to get caught up in the excitement and buy thousands of dollars worth of stuff for the baby. We fell into that trap with the first one. Now that we're on baby number two, it's a whole different story. Literally all we have is a crib, some pacifiers, clothes, a diaper bag, a car seat and a stroller. Oh and one of those snot suckers.