I get so emotional, baby . . .

Little known pregnancy fact . . . when you don’t want to eat pasta for dinner, and yet that is what your spouse is making, your hormones can turn you into a crying baby sitting on the chair in the corner of the kitchen. Don’t ask me why, it makes no sense. Yet this happened on Friday night to me and Jon. And in case you didn’t figure it out already – I was the spouse on the chair crying and Jon was the spouse cooking. :)

I don’t know why, I can’t remember how, but it started with a discussion about what to have for dinner and me saying, “I don’t want pasta” and ended with me crying on the chair blubbering that “Everything is all out of control, I don’t know what is happening to me! I just want my life to be in order and not feel crazy emotional all the time!” And Jon making dinner, wiping away my tears and telling me that this is the one time in my life when I can be crazy and he’ll understand completely. What a good husband.

It really is remarkable though how different I feel emotionally while I’m pregnant. I didn’t think I would be like that -- though how could you ever know what you’re going to be like really. I get upset more quickly now though and can’t recall crying as much in the last 5 years as I have the last 5 months! It’s usually over stupid stuff too, not big things -- which makes it harder for me to understand. I’m used to being in control of myself and not being all emotional like that. Now my emotions are so unpredictable that it’s hard to cope with sometimes.

All of this makes me sound like I’m walking around crying every day, which I’m not – it’s more like one emotional cry a week on average I would guess, really mostly in the last month or so. Hopefully the frequency doesn’t go up any – or my husband may get sick of me and start looking for a new home!

Registry Gauntlet

Well, we made it. We have . . . drum roll, please . . . registered! And we still have all our appendages and some modicum of emotional health left (not much, but some). What doesn’t kill you, or your marriage for that matter, only makes you stronger, right? Let’s hope so.

It all began innocently enough, with a fun little scanner gun. Cool! We get to point and shoot stuff! We proceeded to the first “color-coded” section –infant care, neat! -- and then we saw “THE WALL.” The wall of floor-to-ceiling bottles. Uh oh, I didn’t research this.

And Jon’s looking at me, holding the scanner in his hot-little hand, saying “what should I shoot?” Uhm, I have not the faintest clue. And I see Jon’s confidence in my ability to shepherd us through this registering process plummet. I quickly check the Babies R’ Us “recommendations of lots of stuff you should register for and if you don’t you are a bad parent and your children will be monsters” sheet. Hmm, 8-12 bottles -- doesn’t say what kind or size. Crud. Well, let’s register for a starter set of “these” bottles (not saying what kind, I make no money off endorsements) – I remember a lady at work saying that her baby had chronic ear infections and colic until she switched to this brand. That’s a representative sample and adequate market research, right? Sure, we’ll go with it. Hmm, do you need to register for extra nipples for these things? No idea, so we better just in case. You can never have too many nipples, right?

At this point I send Jon off to get a cart to put our coats and my printouts and books in (I came prepared to choose car seats, monitors, gates, etc. but not bottles), since we’re beginning to realize that we could quite possibly be in this store “registering” until I go into labor.

After bottles comes monitors – easy peasy, I’ve got research! Then safety equipment – uh oh. Do we need toilet seat locks? Hmm. Then bathtubs – no idea, though we see later on the Babies R’ Us website that the one we registered for has been rated only 2 stars by parents so we change to a better one. Don’t get me started on what we’ll call “babygate” – oh the humanity (we had research on safety gates and it still took forever!). By this point we had been in the store an hour and a half. But we’re still in the FIRST section!! And there was a decided, shall we say, “lack of communication” between Jon and I (swear words don’t count as communication, no matter how many times you say them).

Plus, I had managed to get a charley horse in my foot about half an hour in that would not go away. We’re looking at Boppies and I’m walking up and down the aisle without my shoe on, then jumping up and down, then sitting down rubbing my foot, then putting my shoe back on, and nothing is helping. Do we need bottle warmers and sterilizers? Jon says no, my foot hurts, and I don’t care. We skip bibs too, since we were more apt to strangle each other with the bibs than decide on ones to register for. Our one consolation – two other couples are in the same section registering and they look just as miserable as us.

Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel – we turn the corner to a new section. The car seat section. Yippee!! We know what we want here already – shoot it honey, shoot it! Then strollers – we picked that out already too! Bang bang! We’re on a roll! Smiles are on our faces again! Pack n’ play! Highchair (we had fun testing these out)! Bouncy seat! Researched, researched, researched -- scan, scan, scan! We’re on the move to the other side of the store, and it feels good. And we can remember again why we actually liked each other enough to procreate together, so everything is on the upswing.

Minor debate on sheets, mostly because we’re hungry and tired and our feet hurt. That brings the mood down some but it’s still better than the “infant care” hell that we’ve gone through. Then a discussion on blankets -- “What do you mean I can’t scan them all, Jon?!?” – and a perusal of the activity gyms and toys. We decide to register for one activity gym and no other toys. We figure people will give us a bunch of toys anyway, and judging from my nephews’ and nieces’ toy collections there will come a time when the last thing we want to see is a toy, so why register for them. :)

Then we’re turning in our “gun” and cruising for the exit. We’re outta here suckers – the other two couples are still back in highchairs and have no research, haha! At dinner we start plotting ways to take down Babies R’ Us. After our baby shower of course – we wouldn’t want people to not be able to get us the stuff we just spent all that time registering for after all. We made it though – we’re registered! Feel free to lavish us, er I mean lavish the baby, with gifts now. :)

I think I swallowed a soccer ball

At least that is what my tummy resembles. It’s still hard to tell that I’m pregnant, since I was “pre-padded” before pregnancy, so it doesn’t look too much different now. :) But my tummy certainly feels different. It’s very hard underneath and quite round. I used to be squishy though – so when Jon and I hugged we kind of smushed together and fit together tightly. We hugged each other last night though and realized, for the first time, that we couldn’t smush! My tummy is all hard and no matter how we contort we can’t get close together! I can lean forward so my tummy is more “hanging” and then our chests are together. But when we just hug normally our legs don’t touch at all, and just our tummies connect. It brings home the point that our baby is well-protected in there though. He’s in his little soccer ball, practicing his kicks. :)

Baby boy is 25 weeks this week and this is what he's up to:

How your baby's growing: Head to heels, your baby now measures about 13 1/2 inches. His weight — a pound and a half — doesn't sound like much, but he's beginning to exchange his long, lean look for some baby fat. As he does, his wrinkled skin will begin to smooth out and he'll start to look more and more like a newborn. His hair is probably recognizable now (in color and texture), although both may change after he's born.

Decisions, decisions

Wow! I haven’t made an entry in a while! And there is so much going on! The things I call “baby decisions” are being made every day it seems like lately.

“Baby Decision” 1: Registering for childbirth classes. DONE! After much reading and discussion we decided to register for Bradley classes, to aim at having a natural childbirth. And to answer the most often heard questions when people hear this: Yes, I did say natural. Yes, I know what the word natural means. :) No, I have not lost my mind. Yes, I know that there will be pain. No, I don’t hate you if you’ve had an epidural or c-section or think the people that do are evil or misguided. I chose to prepare myself for a natural childbirth to give myself every chance of having the safest birth I can for me and the baby. I still might end up having an epidural or c-section, you never know what happens. I just think it would be next to impossible to have a natural childbirth without preparing for one. So we’re going to prepare and then take it from there!

“Baby Decision” 2: Picking out a crib. DONE! Last weekend Jon and I finally decided that we really had to get off the fence and decide on a crib (okay, so maybe the more accurate description would be me on the fence and Jon standing next to the fence making sure I didn’t fall and hurt myself -- meaning lose my marbles or have a breakdown). Either way we finally decided on the crib and the color! We saw the color we wanted in a catalog and asked the saleslady at the crib store which color it was of the two tiny color samples at the bottom of the page which looked similar (seems like they should note these things in the book, but that’s another story). She said it was “Autumn” but we didn’t really believe her – it was so hard to tell! Of course, if we had just turned around from the table we were sitting at we would have seen the manufacturers color samples on the wall right behind us and known immediately that she wasn’t lying. We did eventually figure it out, with the help of the aforementioned color samples, which we discovered about 15 minutes later. :)

“Baby Decision” 3: Picking our crib bedding. DONE! It has a frog theme and is adorable, if I say so myself! :) Both Jon and I really like it. Another thing to cross off the list of “to-dos.” Ribbit, ribbit!

“Baby Decision” 4: Register for baby stuff. Almost done. We were such productive little puppies last weekend that we also went to Babies R’ Us to look at strollers. I had been looking a lot on-line and really not sure of what to get, but Jon was “uninitiated” into all the stroller hype and lingo. Which actually helped since he could pick one out solely based on features (what a novel idea!). Good thing he was there too, since we quickly discovered that there are exactly two strollers in all of Babies R’ Us which he can actually push and walk behind! That’s what you get for being a giant. :) These strollers were also the two that I liked the best as well (nice when it works out that way), and were also the two most expensive (not so nice). But, they are also by the stroller manufacturer with the highest ratings for quality and durability, so we should expect our investment (or what we hope will be a generous benefactor’s investment) to last for quite a while.

We’re going to register for the rest of our stuff tonight actually. I’ve printed out comparisons and have the Baby Bargains book for help, so I think it should be fun! I have decided that Babies R’ Us and Target are not my favorite stores, but it seems like such a hassle to try and register for different things on-line. We still might register for some things at babycenter.com, we’ll have to see how the trip goes tonight. Crossing more things off the list! It feels good!

After taking some stuff of the baby list we should probably work on the other list of stuff we have to do . . . like taking down the Christmas decorations (hehe). It’s not March yet, so if we get them down this weekend it will be a record for the earliest that we’ve taken them down I believe. The house looks so pretty with the garlands up and snowmen all around though. :)

Water Buffalo?

Is it possibly to actually drink so much water that you turn into an aquatic mammal? If it is I think I might be approaching the limit here pretty soon. The last two days I’ve, quite literally, not been able to stop drinking. I’m only drinking when I feel thirsty, yet yesterday from the time I got to work (8 am) to 9:30 in the morning I had already had 4 glasses of water. By the end of the day I think I was up to 15 or 16 glasses. Now, the scary thing was that I really didn’t go to the bathroom more than usual . . . so where did it all go?!? Today I haven’t had quite as much water as yesterday, but it’s only 1:30 pm and I’ve already had 8 glasses and am working on number 9. :)

Now, in pregnancy your blood volume increases dramatically, so maybe that’s what is happening. I can’t remember drinking only when I’ve felt thirsty and yet drinking so much water in one day before. My teeth are floatin’!