Baby prep and other stuff

So I'm starting to feel slightly more prepared than I did in my last post. We bought a really good stroller from a listserv of local moms in our neighborhood; between that and the bassinet, baby bathtub and high chair that various girlfriends have given me, I no longer fear I will have to put my baby in a shoe box.

I'm also in the process of setting up a registry, after getting numerous inquiries about when I was going to do this. I've gotten lots of good advice from girlfriends on what to pick; a couple have said you should just register for everything the Consumer Reports bay products guide tells you that you will need.

So I'm doing that. Except I do feel a little weird about putting a digital rectal thermometer on a gift registry. I know we'll need it, but is it just me or does that seem a little weird?

Anyway, one major area we are not prepared for is who will look after said baby when I go back to work. I'm taking 12 weeks, and even if I decide that I love being a mom so much that I don't want to go back, that is not even remotely an option. We need both of our incomes. We're both journalists, so it's not like either one of us has a large enough income to support a family of three.

I had been resolutely in favor of daycare--I don't want to leave our kid with a nanny, for a host of reasons--but it turns out that there are no daycares in the neighborhood we're moving to that will take infants. My objection to hiring a nanny had to do with cost, but also because I don't like the idea of leaving my child with just one person, especially an undocumented worker who is not licensed or anything like that. Then, of course, there was the news this week about this happening. That horrifically tragic and terrifying incident has prompted lots of hand-wringing on parent listservs, some of which is just disgusting. The fact that ANYONE could blame the parents in this scenario makes my blood boil. And it's so regressive to suggest thatit's somehow the mother's fault because she wasn't home. If you honestly think that and you're reading this right now, fuck right off this page and never come back.

I really don't know how anyone could have prevented this. They vetted her, they knew her really well, they went to visit her family in the D.R., for fuck's sake. Also, everyone needs to outsource childcare sometimes. Even the most slavishly devoted stay-at-home moms have to go to the doctor every once in awhile.

So yeah, it's scary, is the moral of the story. That is really the only lesson anyone can learn from this.

Hippie-birthing

So this baby business is starting to feel real. For one thing, it’s moving around all the time—which, by the way, is awesome. This is the best part of being pregnant, by far. (There isn’t much else to recommend it, frankly.) I call it Sir Moves A Lot, even though I don’t know the gender for sure—I just really feel like it’s a boy.

Anyway, in preparation for all this realness, I signed up for a Hypnobirthing class. Please believe that I am in no way of the mindset that I do not want any kind of drug-induced pain relief during labor; I just want to manage on my own as long as possible, because sometimes if you get an epidural too early it can lead to unnecessary medical intervention and even a c-section, which I want to avoid like the plague.

So the Hypnobirthing technique is supposed to help you deal with the pain, among other things. (The goal is to do it unmedicated, but again, I’m not even going to pretend like I want that.) That said, the very phrase “Hypnobirthing” makes me feel so hippie-dippy; I just picture Edina in AbFab when she’s going through one of her faux-flower child phases. “Hypnobirthing, dahling, hyp-no-bir-thing!”

Anyway, I just took my first class last week, and my homework was to start listening to the CD that comes with the course materials. It’s really just this chick with a soft voice and a lilting British accent saying things like, “you are feeling very caaaaaaaaaalm, and relaaaaaaaxed, all throughout your body,” over the sounds of new age-y music. As a professional cynic, I’m not sure how this is supposed to work, and yeah, I really can’t relax, ever. I don’t think I unclenched my butt the whole time I was listening to the CD because all I could think about was my work deadline and how much I had to do the next day. Supposedly this stuff starts burrowing into your subconscious with repeated listens, enabling you to make yourself relax on command. We’ll see.

As much as this goes against pretty much everything I believe, however, I want to stick with it. In the first class, we watched videos of women giving birth under self hypnosis. Those bitches were CALM. They didn’t even make a sound when their babies were coming out. So I’m gonna give it a whirl.

Today I totally had a breakdown. There have been a lot of changes at my job lately, and my workload has just officially gotten insane, to the point where I really don't think I can handle it all, and on top of that we just signed a contract on an apartment, and so we're starting the insane mortgage and coop board application process. Plus, there is a ton of baby shit we have to do that I haven't even thought about--figuring out what we need, registering for stuff, sorting out the daycare situation, taking childbirth prep classes, etc.--and I really haven't had time to deal with any of it because of my job.

So today, when I logged in (on Sunday) to do about an hour of work, then realized it was actually going to be more like three hours of work, I just lost it. I totally broke down sobbing like Nancy Kerrigan (to paraphrase Eric Cartman).

My husband forced me to step away from the laptop and take a ten-minute break, then rubbed my back while I blubbered about how stressed out I am. I do love that man. (But I'm never going to call him "DH." Apparently this is an acronym women use on message boards, as I discovered during my brief and ill-fated foray into pregnancy message boards. I guess it stands for "dear husband." Barf.)

This week is going to be insanely busy, and includes the dreaded glucose tolerance test. So there's something to look forward to.

 Anyway. Yeah. Shit is stressful, and my hormones are not helping. But I made a big comfort food dinner tonight to make myself feel better. Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy. It was goddamned delicious, if I do say so myself. And here's hoping tomorrow will be better.