Baby Gear Advice Needed

Worlds are colliding!

At the very same time I'm packing up the kitchen, dining room, and living room finding things to get rid of in anticipation of our upcoming remodel, I'm putting together a list of must-haves for when the baby comes. Somehow, in the next three months, all of this will come together, right?

We are turning our kitchen, formal living room, and tiny formal dining room into a more open, but not completely open, space. Gulp.

If you have advice for me regarding baby products, either lifesavers or duds, please let me know in the comments.

I HAVE:

I got the following items from our yard sale site or from friends.

Changing table
Crib mattress
Bouncy seat
Bumbo seat
Inflatable bathtub insert
play mat
Peg Perego Primo Viaggio infant car seat (from a friend, no accidents)
Britax Advocate Convertible car seat (from a friend, no accidents)


KNOW I NEED:

Crib, here's the one I'd like to buy because the baby's room will be gray and yellow (Margaret has the decor under control :))
Breast pump and bottles
Nose Frida
Nail clippers
Thermometer
Infant bathtub or insert-- Is there a good one for washing baby in the sink or on the counter?
Fisher Price Rock and Play sleeper
Diapers
Wipes
Changing pad and cover
Crib sheets
Diaper trash can
Snap and Go Stroller
Boppy pillow
Clothes
Extra car seat base

FILL ME IN:

What am I missing? Please tell me about: sleep sacks, the DexBaby DayDreamer, swaddles, co-sleepers, The Happiest Baby on the Block DVD, baby wash, diaper creams, Moby wraps, Ergos, an infant car seat that swivels for getting in and out of the car...and anything else you can think of!

Is there one product you wish you had known about sooner?

Thanks for your insight!

(affiliate links included in this post)

Advent

Things are quiet around here. I mean really, really quiet. I haven't been inspired to write much, even though I think I have a novel noodling around in my head somewhere, and while January is pretty packed with speaking engagements, December isn't. The fact that I discovered 7 seasons of "The Good Wife" on Amazon Prime probably hasn't helped.

Advent is a time of waiting, as is pregnancy, and it hasn't escaped my notice that I'm experiencing both at the same time. During my first two pregnancies I was busy-busy. I think that helped keep me in great physical and emotional shape throughout, not just focused on what was happening on the inside. With Jack, I taught high school until just hours before he was born. Pregnant with Margaret, I had an active toddler to chase around, and with free childcare at church activities, I took part in pretty much every church exercise class, Bible Study, and committee I could sign up for. Busy.

This time is different. Tim and Margaret are gone all day. The doggies just follow me around and collapse into sleep wherever I park myself in the house. My body doesn't feel the same as it did 17 or 15 years ago. Things are swollen. Private things. Other things are sore. Exercise seems too monumental to attempt. Most of this has to do with age, but some of it likely has to do with the cocooning I've experienced in the 4 years since Jack died. While Tim and my sister channeled their grief into running, I channeled mine into sitting, writing, meeting with the bereaved, and drinking a lot of tea, as if conserving energy for something. Was it this? Rather than keeping me healthy, however, I found that the grief settled in my shoulders and other parts of my body, making me prone to aches, illness, and injury. Today, I'm trying to decide whether I'm having a flare-up of shingles or whether it's just the permanent nerve damage I got the last time I had them. Regardless, my body is saying, REST, Anna, and wait. So the dogs and Julianna Marguiles and I do just that.

I did all of my shopping online, and I've never been much of a baker, so I don't have reams of checklists to follow right now, unless I'm forgetting something, which is likely true. This makes me feel a bit off kilter with all of the busyness around me, as if it is one more way I don't fit in.

Advent is a time of expectation, a virgin's growing belly, and now this 46 year old non-virgin's as well. Sometimes it's a time of numbers and counting and waiting. Margaret counts down the days until she can open her presents. We anticipate our last Christmas with 3 members physically present: Anna, Tim, and Margaret, and are proud and a little shocked by the way we have handled the 4, soon to be 5  that we've faced since Sept 2011. Our 2 trees glisten with lights and hundreds of handmade ornaments of dough and beads that now bring us joy rather than pain. For the first time ever, we hang lights outside, a tribute to our dear friend Brian who died 1 week ago at the incredibly young age of 39, and who loved Advent and Christmas. Tim tracks his hours at work, trying to figure out how to be present with us during the holidays while still getting his job done. I watch the pounds pile up on the scale, and follow the size of the baby according to websites, going from a grape, to a tangerine, an avocado, and then a banana. Is he1 lb yet? Baby Donaldson just swims, and flips and dives,  oblivious to all of this, or perhaps somehow wiser than the rest of us put together.

And Jack? His wait is over. He is in the presence of holiness every minute of every day. And what is  a day to him? A millisecond? His work and mission are unfettered by billable hours and busyness, outward expectations, and binge-watching TV. Partisan politics and war and violence make no sense to him as his new lens is one of LOVE, only LOVE.

I don't know when my time with come, although I know I've already lived more years than Jack and Brian. There is much for us to do here, to try to make the world we are living in more loving, kinder, and more just.

But there is also much to anticipate, as Jack and Brian already know, and that it is worth longing for.

Pregnant again in your 40’s? 10 ways to tell if you had your last child A LONG-ASS TIME AGO:

1)You needed reading glasses to see the pee-stick results this time.

2)The terms Push Present, Baby-moon, and Gender Reveal are new to you.

3)The last time you wore maternity clothes, they were amorphous denim overalls and shirts built like tents; this time you wear clingy sweaters and leggings that accentuate your age baby bump.

4)You find yourself tossing around words like bouncy seat, diaper genie and stroller, but everyone else is talking about the Nose Frida, Moby Wrap and travel systems.

5) You thought swaddle was a verb, but somehow it appears to be a noun now, as in, "How many swaddles do we need?"

6)You realize how quickly the infant stage is going to go, so you plot ways to get this stuff out of the house before you even bring it in.

7) You repeat the mantra, “40 is the new 20” as you try to haul your burgeoning girth out of bed.

8) You ask Siri if Botox is safe while breast-feeding.

9) Newborns look a whole lot scarier to you than teenagers.

10) You wonder how you’ll do it all again, but you remind yourself that you did it before, and what’s a few more gray hairs, anyway?

It's A Glamorous Life

I had my monthly OB appointment today, and the baby seems fine!

The appointment itself had some ups and downs. I was running late, and got a bit frazzled when faced with a crowded parking garage. By the time I made it to the office, I had to pee, which is great, because that's the very first thing you do at each prenatal check-up-- provide a urine sample.

I sat on the toilet, relieving myself and also feeling relieved to have made it reasonably on-time despite a 30 minute fight with traffic. I looked down at the Dixie cup in my hand. Empty. I had peed all right, but I'd forgotten to pee in the cup.

Now, I am a prolific urinator, pregnant or not. Ask anyone who has been on a car trip with me. Just thinking of a waterfall or a raindrop will make me have to go. So, I sat there visualizing Niagara Falls, the ocean, and a tall glass of water, to no avail. I soon realized I'd have to wait a while before providing a sample.

Back in Reception, I explained my failure to produce and asked if I could please have a glass of water. Not a problem, they said. You might think a pre-natal appointment would be extensive, giving me ample time to work up a good pee, but I wasn't so sure. Because rather than gathering 'round me oohing and ah-ing, treating me like the Advanced Maternal Age Walking Miracle that I find myself to be, the professionals act, well, as if they've seen this kind of thing before, and this isn't the first baby to come around the bend. Thus, early visits are a quick blood pressure and fetal heartbeat check, a smile, and a "See you in a month." This is a blessing, because it means things are going well, but it didn't provide much time for the water to work its way through my system.

No fear! I KNEW I could produce. My bladder was filling by the second.

So, I said good bye to the nurse and headed back into the bathroom. However, I hadn't counted on the time and skill  it would take for me to wrassle myself out of various pregnancy undergarments while clutching a Dixie cup.

First there were the maternity jeans that come up to my chest.
A squeezy support tube top around my middle.
And the piece de resistance-- something that resembles a chastity belt, but that I like to fondly call The Vulva Holster, a utilitarian maze of straps and velcro designed to try to keep one's lady parts from dragging the ground whilst one walks. Mothering often robs us of our dignity, so why not start in utero?

I was doing fine with the wrangling, but I clearly did not expect what happened next.

As a germaphobe, especially around medical offices, I carry a jumbo pump bottle of hand sanitizer in my purse, to be used obsessively throughout my visits. My purse, weighed down by the pump, as well as my fears, jumped from the hook high on the door. Down it came, clocking me on the head and scattering my wallet and all the other contents onto the RESTROOM FLOOR.

At this point, the precious drops of liquid gold I'd worked so hard to produce over the last half hour did burst forth, not into the Dixie cup, but into the multitude of undergarments with which I struggled.

Nooooooooooooo!

I wanted to seize my personal items from the floor, hoping that the faster I did it, the less germy they would become, but I was here to give a urine sample, and I wasn't leaving until I did. So I lunged back over the pot and managed to secure the remaining pee in the Dixie cup.

Whew.

Since I couldn't celebrate this small triumph with a glass of wine or even a McDonald's iced tea because of the caffeine, I treated myself to some quick thrift store shopping, where I scored some new-to-me maternity clothes.

And I only had to stop to use the bathroom twice.

The Sonogram

I have a new article featured on BonBon Break about our first sonogram appointment and making room for love. You'll find it here.