Pregnancy is a funny thing. You spend months and months and months preparing just to end up never feeling quite prepared and maybe never really even needing to be quite that prepared at all. You start by preparing for the fact that you’re having a baby at all. After that positive test even if you’re happy, there’s still that element of shock and you just have to take a few days to ride it out. Then once you come to grips with impending parenthood, you start looking for a care provider, then you start making life changes (eating healthier and exercising more) to give your little one the best shot at life. You start thinking of names, buying clothes, considering how your going to raise them and what parenting styles you will use, you find out the gender (or decide to keep it a sweet surprise), you buy the crib and start putting together their room. You help plan a baby shower, (because no matter how many people tell you the mom is the guest of honor, you still end up playing a part in the planning) come up with a birth plan, plan your maternity leave…
Never in my life have I prepared so much for anything, and especially not just to still sit here at 30 weeks pregnant and feel so unprepared. It feels like we have done it all, but still have so much left to do! We've bought clothes, made the decision to cloth diaper, ordered the bassinet and crib, we found a midwife, got better insurance, started saving money and came up with a budget to fit the needs of our growing little family, Ryan took out a second job, I started perfecting a cleaning routine, (in order to have some semblance of hope that MAYBE the house will stay at least vaguely organized after her arrival) we researched car seats, decided on a name, yet there is still so much left to do. We still have to paint the nursery, assemble the crib, wash all of the clothes, put the nursery together, come up with a concrete birth plan, go to the baby shower, learn about labor positions, and so much more. This week though I'm starting to wonder how much it all really matters.
This will probably be the biggest shift in life I will ever endure. To go from not having really anyone to care for but myself to suddenly having a little girl relying on me for everything, and for the rest of my life. She will need absolutely everything from me and I will somehow have to guide her through this messed up world, just hoping the whole time that I don't screw it up. So I'm just at a point this week where the preparations feel funny and out of place. I don’t think there is anything that can actually prepare one for parenthood.
As my belly grows and I feel her kicks inside me becoming stronger and stronger I start to think that none of the preparation matters. I am starting to think that one day she will just arrive and no matter how much preparing we do, there will still be scrambling at the last minute. There will still be things that don’t go as planned and obstacles that we never saw coming. The birth plan will probably at some point go out the window and everything that I thought I knew will probably no longer matter. But, we will make it work. We will scramble at the last minute, we probably won’t know how to hook up the car seat correctly, or she won’t latch on well when we try to nurse, but in the end we will laugh over all the preparing we did and just be thankful that a life surrounded by love will be enough.
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