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Ah, the wonders of motherhood. Sleepless nights, insurmountable exhaustion, irrepressible panic that you might be a bad parent and vitally, the inevitable downward spiral into poverty.

These are especially hard times for bringing up baby so what could be better than this - a new book billed as the indispensable, inspirational guide for new parents, to illustrate how raising a child need not cost the earth – literally or metaphorically.

Aimed at ecologically minded types as well as the credit-crunched masses, and brimming with ideas on how to cut financial corners, The Resourceful Mum's Handbook: Baby on a Budget by Elen Lewis sounds like the sort of publication that many of us middle-class misers in the grip of recession have been crying out for.

In these straitened times, we're uncomfortably aware that raising a child costs £186,000 – we can feel it every day as our bank balance trickles away into the coffers of Mini Boden and the Early Learning Centre. Scrimping and saving, we feign contempt for Bugaboos because we can only afford Maclarens, and stay up puréeing food at midnight because we refuse, on principle, to spend 89p on a jar of apricot mulch.

Most five-month old babies today aren't wearing cotton nappies to save the planet; they're wearing them to save money. They leak so much that one has to strip the child down five times a day like a Formula One car, but if you repeatedly focus on the fact that Huggies cost £9 a pack, one can just about grit one's teeth and get through until bedtime.

Against this backdrop of chronic penny-pinching then, most of us would joyfully clutch The Resourceful Mum's Handbook to our maternal bosom. And drop it almost immediately in horror.

If you can follow, for example, the instructions for how to Make Your Own Padded Coathanger using vintage floral print fabric, the Make Your Own Cot Mobile, with seashells and driftwood, or the Make Your Own Bib (cut out a simple motif and stitch on by hand) without feeling bilious then you deserve a medal.

If you manage to trudge your way even further to the Make Your Own Chalk chapter without turning to the Make Your Own Bonfire section for a tutorial on burning the book, then you are either a saint or Blue Peter presenter with a great deal of time on your hands...which of course means you can't possibly have a young child and thus shouldn't be reading the book in the first place.

Should you persist, be prepared to be filled with gradual irrational hatred of Becca, Abs, Nics and the rest of the insufferably cool-sounding resourceful mums quoted in the book. Catrin (mother of Theo and Cerys) cuts up her old sheets and hems them for the cot.

Amy (mother of Seth and Agnes) throws together her own in-car entertainment with ribbons and drawings, and Rachel (mother of Josh) paints original artworks on canvases for the nursery.

Mildly more likeable is Lynsey (mother of Amber) purely because she blithely puts her newborn daughter to sleep in a drawer (not slammed shut into a chest of course, although that isn't actually stated) but otherwise one might understandably feel oneself growing more truculently uncreative (otherwise known as inadequate) by the page.

Elsewhere there are a number of tips from the stating-the-bleeding-obvious school of advice, such as save a small fortune by borrowing a cot or baby sling; don't be too proud when friends offer to give you cast-off children's clothes (as if!); and look on eBay for bargains.

Thankfully there are a few rare moments of useful guidance such as don't fritter your child benefit on a chichi designer baby bag (it really won't make you look like Angelina Jolie), and the ideas for rustling up toys from household objects are nicely inventive. But even though you might consider yourself to be reasonably hands-on in terms of home-baking, crafts and activities, it is fair enough to draw the line at making your own dog sock puppet.

As a note to all budding authors out there; if you're thinking about writing an 'inspirational' book for knackered mothers, cynical from exhaustion, it's probably best not to assume they have nothing more pressing to do of an evening than rustle up organic bath-time finger paints. But then again it probably doesn't matter what you write, as if you have any clue what motherhood is like you'll know, they won't have the time to read it anyway.

For tough times like these isn't there more practical advice for mums on a budget? Saving money and the planet are all very well but time is precious as a new parent, both with your child and grasping that elusive 'me-time', so how about tips that might actually serve all three of these objectives? Let's face it, there are more important daily tasks than padding your coat hangers and whittling your own shoe trees so share your suggestions, impart your wisdom and tell all your tricks – with books like these, we could all do with some sound, sensible advice.