Monday 25 February 2013

Are we nearly there yet?

 

No we aren’t, I have 14 weeks left still. I was reading ‘what to expect when you’re expecting’ and one of the emotional symptoms for month 6 was something like ‘some boredom with the Pregnancy (why cant people think about something else?!)’. I related instantly, then felt guilty for doing so. But It does really seem like I have been pregnant for ever, but am only 2 thirds of the way through!

As I may or may not have said before, I feel like I would have more of an affinity with 'baby’ if I knew the gender. Instead we are both calling it ‘it’ or sometimes sprog. Personally I don't think this wrong, I'm carrying it, we made it and we can call it what we want… And will when it’s born! However other people have sneered and made their feelings clear (hello, mother in law) about it, and people on Facebook have accused me of not being maternal (coming from a middle aged guy who has no kids I didn't get too offended)

I have also had to endure endless rounds of questioning from various friends & Sam's family members who we visited in our week off and travelling round the country to catch up with people. Some questions bordered on invasive and fell right into the ‘none of your business’ category. I completely understand that each person didn't know that all these questions had been asked yesterday/a week ago by someone else, but people seem to think that just because I’m incubating a new life that it gives them complete freedom to ask really personal questions about the birth/our financial situation/my career/the routine that we will implement and so on and so forth. If these people are women then they of course give anecdotes of ‘in my day we…’ and ‘well you DEFINITELY shouldn't/should do x/y/z…’ I don't even know the answers to half the questions and may not until the time comes for many of the scenarios, I'm worried to death about how we’ll cope and what the future brings, but attempting to focus on being positive and luckily I know that whatever comes at us Sam and I will manage to get through it together.

Anyway it was all a bit overwhelming and I was kind of relieved to be in the car and heading home, although that was also partly because the car was JAM PACKED full of baby related things that we’d been given or bought over the week. So the relief was partly to do with the fact that we started and have subsequently almost accumulated all the things we’ll need for the arrival of the bouncing bundle of joy, hurrah!

We had a few gift cards left from Christmas/various other things, and had other things already as they’d been given to us, so now the catalogue runs as follows…

  • 4 ‘grow bags’ in various sizes and togs
  • a heap of muslins/bibs
  • bottles and teats in different flows (in prep for expressing milk/if breast feeding doesn't work’
  • a travel system (2nd hand but for £40!) that includes a car seat/changing bag
  • a baby bath
  • a play mat (given to as no longer needed, as with the bath)
  • a huge bag of toys and the book ‘what to expect in the first year’ (From Sam's cousins)
  • an even huger bag of clothes (boyish, but we will pass them on to someone else if we have a girl)
  • 3x boxes of nappies (180 in each, supposedly enough for a month) in various sizes
  • a cotbed (its PURPLE!) and was 2/3rd off and should last till 4 years old ish, and we got a changing table to go on the top (this will stay in storage at work until we have room for it!)
  • a Moses basket (that my mum found at a bargain price, unused in a charity shop!)
  • a baby monitor
  • a baby carrier
  • a huge box of assorted baby care things (cotton wool, breast pads, nipple cream etc!)
  • a white rocking chair (this and the last 3 things from my friend Amy, who's baby will be a year old on my due date!)
  • We also bought lots of non gender specific vests/sleep suits/clothes etc in various sizes which should be enough to keep us going until we can go out (with the baby!) and buy the rest the clothes that we’ll need

Needless to say I've catalogued everything in sections in my ‘baby notebook’, even down to clothes by size. Now I cant honestly say this organisational streak will continue post partum but its a start, and I now feel SO much happier that we’ve effectively got what we need to be going on with, (Even if we do need to get Sam's friend Theo round to get it all back out of the loft when we need it, because I cant fit through the hole anymore, and Sam never could in the first place!

And before you say it, I know that we haven't got a steriliser yet, but Sam is in charge of the technical things and he’s on the case! What else am I missing?

3 comments:

  1. Good "Haul", you should do a bloggeresque picture of it all. lolllz. Im glad to hear you are taking the positive road, because lets face it, we HAVE to get through it someway, so what's the point in putting up hurdles before we've reached them. xxx

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  2. Fantastic haul! I'd love to see it (i'm such a baby addict since having my daughter). I didn't purposely tell anyone until I was really far on because I feared people dictating to me about what to do/how to raise my child. Even now I have made mistakes and I'll know better if there is a next time. At the end of the day your choices to do with your child are the only ones that matter, if you make mistakes they're yours to make at the end of the day!

    Good luck for the next 14 weeks! I'm getting excited for you :D:D

    Amy x cocktailsinteacups.blogspot.co.uk

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