Amateur Hour

I only recently discovered Danielle Bean’s blog - I loved this article that she wrote.

Ack! I am so not ready! Here’s my list of things to do before the baby comes. Don’t laugh - I know it won’t all get done. Just humor me, please, or I might start to cry.

1. Clean out the car.
2. Retrieve from attic, wash, and install infant car seat.
3. Pack for the hospital.
4. Write birth “plan.”
5. Ignore the fact that I have zero control over how the birth will go and thus calling my personal birth preferences a “plan” is somewhat silly.
6. Worry about how the birth will go.
7. Meet with doula.
8. Stock up on Lansinoh and hope that nursing doesn’t hurt as much this time around.
9. Purchase a breast pump.
10. Order at least one nursing bra that I think might fit. This is much harder than it sounds. Apparently women like me do not exist in normal stores like Target. We must special-order nursing bras from some warehouse in a far-away land that is impossible to locate (much like the island on Lost) and charges a premium, due to the extra expense of shipping to and from a place that exists in some sort of quantum-physics black hole.
11. Call the church re: new baby’s baptism.
12. Update family address list - for birth announcement.
13. Retrieve from attic and wash: baby clothes, blankets, bouncy seat, baby toys, baby swing, etc.
14. Declutter bedroom to make room for co-sleeper. Hope that the new baby will actually sleep in the co-sleeper.
15. Declutter and take to Goodwill stuff that we don’t need in the: office, Charlie’s room, the living room, our bedroom.
16. Organize and set up new baby’s clothes and supplies in our bedroom, somehow.
17. Declutter and organize the linen closet.
18. Stock up on newborn diapers. Pretend that having two kids in diapers at once will be “no big deal.”
19. Figure out a way to organize the mail and junk that always finds its way to the kitchen counter and multiplies.
20. Prepare and freeze at least one week of meals. Meals that I can heat and feed to Charlie and myself with one hand. On second thought, no hands would be better.
21. Get a haircut.
22. Scout hotels that are near the hospital (we live far enough away that we are going to need a place to go hang out in early labor.)
23. Straighten out the laundry closet so that it is neat and ready to tackle the additional loads that come with a new baby.
24. Hang blackout curtains in the bedroom.
25. Hang stray pictures around the house.
26. Clear the clutter off the top of the refrigerator.

I’m sure I will think of more things to add to the list. Right now its pretty overwhelming…

When dealing with a less-than-helpful bureaucrat: If you announce that you are 8 months pregnant and start to cry, said bureaucrat will suddenly become much more helpful.

I swear that I did not plan to play the pregnancy card, and I wasn’t trying to get preferential treatment. I was just having a really bad day.