Yes, absolutely.
You mentioned the car seat. They won't let you leave the hospital without one, so you need to have one. There are a lot of other costs, of course, in just setting up for the child, getting somewhere for them to sleep. As Melodie said, just making sure you have a suitable roof over your head that you can bring them home to is costly. For some people that is a really big struggle, and I think, depending on the pregnancy, there can be other costs, such as needing physiotherapy, needing gestational diabetes medication, and all of those things. If you're now on 55% of your income because you've had to take your maternity benefits early, and you're living on a bare-bones budget and you now have to spend hundreds of dollars on medication, you're probably choosing not to get the massage or physiotherapy you might really need, because it's just not an option.
I think there are a lot of costs like that, that pile up for people quite quickly. There is a lot of help out there in pregnancy care centres and places like that, but again access is a problem, and as Melodie said, there are long waiting lists to get into different places. I think paying for job training for people who are coming into a new role at a job is like job training for becoming a mum. There's a period of investment before that baby arrives where you need to be prepared and ready to take on that role as best you can.