Over the past several months, I've been very lucky to share the pregnancy experience with friends, family, past and current coworkers whose pregnancies overlapped and mirrored mine. It's been such a huge help! Being pregnant is both a lonesome journey that can only be made alone and also an incredibly uniting state that you share with a pretty good chunk of the population.
Over the weekend, Dan and I went off the grid for a couple days to spend time with family in a land where magically our phones don't work even if we wanted them to, and it was blissful. When we got back to civilization, I discovered that a solid half of my "pregnant clan" had given birth...early. Babies are all healthy and fine and going home soon if not home already, and that's the most important thing. But immediately after determining that important information, I turned white as a sheet and felt sick to my stomach.
Women due AFTER me just had healthy fat babies. I'm in the zone where like, this could happen. To me.
You know that dream where you find out you're in some sort of performance, and it's opening night, and you don't know any of the lines and you're supposed to do your own makeup? I have that dream regularly. This is kind of like that, only it's real, and someone sends me home with a baby at the end. And I still have to do my own makeup, which is really a tragedy.
Our house is a DISASTER. The "nursery", which is really just one side of our only other spare room which we use for every practical thing you can think of, is in no way assembled. The crib is built. That's about it. Her armoire closet is still a total wreck. The 10 layers of paint on the hardwood floors which are highly likely to contain multiple flavors of lead and arsenic are chipping and desperately need to be sealed in with a safe topcoat. There is nothing cheery or charming or baby-ish plastered to the wall above where her head will lay. My idealistic ambition to make her mobile myself out of hand-sewn horses and roadrunners has yet to even make the fabric store shopping cut yet, let alone all my snazzy ideas about making my own diaper pads and such.
Yes, diaper pads. 6 months ago, in my eagerness to save the earth and my money, I decided we were going to do the cloth diaper thing. 4.5 weeks from my due date, I'm totally panicking about how I've never even TOUCHED a cloth diaper in my life, and will soon be applying one to my flesh and blood 15-20 times a day.
Anyone who has ever seen the inside of my life the night before a horse show knows how I thrive on preparation. I have to-do lists, what-to-bring lists, color coded tape to signify different equipment for different classes, perfectly organized show boxes, a pristine horse and a spotless car, and a terrible case of nausea. That is the opposite of what I look like right now, except for the nausea part.
Have I mentioned that we don't have a daycare, yet?
I know it's "all going to work out", but right now, I feel totally unprepared for the onslaught of logistics that have to happen before the totally random hour of the craziest thing I'll ever do. I miss being able to say "oh well, it's just a horse show." It's the opposite of anything that's a "just". It's just everything.
But hey. I got this out there in the universe, and that helps. I'll start there.
Over the weekend, Dan and I went off the grid for a couple days to spend time with family in a land where magically our phones don't work even if we wanted them to, and it was blissful. When we got back to civilization, I discovered that a solid half of my "pregnant clan" had given birth...early. Babies are all healthy and fine and going home soon if not home already, and that's the most important thing. But immediately after determining that important information, I turned white as a sheet and felt sick to my stomach.
Women due AFTER me just had healthy fat babies. I'm in the zone where like, this could happen. To me.
You know that dream where you find out you're in some sort of performance, and it's opening night, and you don't know any of the lines and you're supposed to do your own makeup? I have that dream regularly. This is kind of like that, only it's real, and someone sends me home with a baby at the end. And I still have to do my own makeup, which is really a tragedy.
Our house is a DISASTER. The "nursery", which is really just one side of our only other spare room which we use for every practical thing you can think of, is in no way assembled. The crib is built. That's about it. Her armoire closet is still a total wreck. The 10 layers of paint on the hardwood floors which are highly likely to contain multiple flavors of lead and arsenic are chipping and desperately need to be sealed in with a safe topcoat. There is nothing cheery or charming or baby-ish plastered to the wall above where her head will lay. My idealistic ambition to make her mobile myself out of hand-sewn horses and roadrunners has yet to even make the fabric store shopping cut yet, let alone all my snazzy ideas about making my own diaper pads and such.
Yes, diaper pads. 6 months ago, in my eagerness to save the earth and my money, I decided we were going to do the cloth diaper thing. 4.5 weeks from my due date, I'm totally panicking about how I've never even TOUCHED a cloth diaper in my life, and will soon be applying one to my flesh and blood 15-20 times a day.
Anyone who has ever seen the inside of my life the night before a horse show knows how I thrive on preparation. I have to-do lists, what-to-bring lists, color coded tape to signify different equipment for different classes, perfectly organized show boxes, a pristine horse and a spotless car, and a terrible case of nausea. That is the opposite of what I look like right now, except for the nausea part.
Have I mentioned that we don't have a daycare, yet?
I know it's "all going to work out", but right now, I feel totally unprepared for the onslaught of logistics that have to happen before the totally random hour of the craziest thing I'll ever do. I miss being able to say "oh well, it's just a horse show." It's the opposite of anything that's a "just". It's just everything.
But hey. I got this out there in the universe, and that helps. I'll start there.
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