Sunday, August 30, 2009

20 Weeks: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Being Halfway There

Wednesday marked the halfway point for us, and things have been going fairly well, if completely crazy, between baby planning, new job seeking, house renovations, my current workload, and work for a board that I am on. Time is FLYING by, and I never quite feel like I've accomplished as much as I'd like to.

Weight this week: +14.5 pounds from pregnancy. (Wow!)

I had pretty severe lower abdomen pain on the lower left side this week for about 24 hours, starting on Wednesday. Although I wasn't entirely constipated, I suspected a digestive issue, so I had the brilliant idea of buying some prune juice, which I had never drank before. Upon opening the bottle, I discovered that the prune juice was a little thick, so I cut it in half with soda water. Thinned out, I discovered that it really reminded me of molasses, which I kind of like, and I downed a glass easily. And then a bit later, another. And then another. . .let me advise you, dear reader, that if you ever decide to try prune juice, you should start slow. Indeed, the prune juice DID do the trick. . .albeit a little too well, all the next day. But hey, the pain was gone!

The baby has been really active over the last couple of days, although less active today. It's really fun to feel her moving. Yesterday, T. felt the baby move for the first time, which was really cool.

On the completely vain front, I have finally cobbled together a decent maternity wardrobe for work. I have a couple of Olian suits, a bunch of dresses (some maternity and some not), some Old Navy and Gap maternity, and a ton of eBay finds. The funniest part was that I bought a pair of Olian maternity pants in a size XS, to correspond to my "normal" prepregnancy size. They looked really nice on the hanger, but when I tried them on, they were obscenely tight, and I had to exchange them. But then I bought two pair of nonmaternity pants with a stretchy waist at Ne.w Yor.k & Company, in a size small, and they fall down when I walk! Who sizes this stuff???

And finally, we are hard at work on the baby registry. It's taken most of the weekend to try to figure out what we need and what we want. I wasn't giving it a ton of thought and was sort of thinking I had months to get it done, but one of my friends came in and plopped herself down in my office this week at work, and announced that I needed to register. She thinks I am having four showers, at a minimum (thanks to incredibly supportive friends and large families). She also knows that I am getting really busy at work, and in her words, "if you don't hurry up and register, you are going to get crap." In fact, she was so insistent about it that she returned a while later with a list of suggested stores, and then again after that with a list of suggested items to register for.

And, we are such hapless idiots when it comes to baby equipment!!! When I came home and told T. that she had said we needed to register, I happened to show him a bassinet that I like, which I'd like to use next to the bed. His response? "But I thought we were going to get one of those crib thingys." I was actually confused by what a "crib thingy" was, but further prompting elicited confirmation that he meant "the big things we looked at at Bab.ies R' Us." Um, that would just be a CRIB. Oh, the learning curve is going to be very steep for us. . .don't even get me started on the two of us wrestling with car seats yesterday in the store, trying to sort out how the infant seat/base/stroller worked. Let's just say that we need some schooling, preferably in the remedial class.

The final verdict is that we are registering at both Bab.ies R' Us and a local baby store, mainly because the local store has a better selection of furniture, but they don't carry all of the everyday types of necessities like BRU does. I am off shortly to go finish looking at a few things at both stores, and hopefully then I will be done with this madness! The only question I have left is whether I have registered for too many items, or for not enough. How many individual items are/were on YOUR registry?

5 comments:

VA Blondie said...

My registry is in progress. A help for us was baby Bargains Book. It really helps clueless people like us. I think it even has a checklist of stuff you need to have, and it rates brands. (So you avoid things likely to be recalled.) It also helps you decide where to spend your money, and where to go cheap. I love it!

Heather said...

Congrats on getting to the halfway mark. We registered at BRU and we did get a lot of the things on our registry. There were only two big ticket items left on our registry that we didn't get. And they are things we can hold off for right now (double stroller for after they are our of infant carriers and the high chairs).

Jessica White said...

(long response coming later)

Email me: Jess.white05@gmail.com
re: CDs and coupon

Jamie said...

We registered at BRU and Target and registered for quite a few things. Mostly because I know how frustrating it can be to try and buy something off a registry, I wanted to be sure to have enough for people to choose from.

My advice would be to NOT register for any type of blankets or clothes. I only registered for the blanket sleepers and didn't get any of them but got TONS of 0-3 month clothes and more blankets than I know what to do with.

You should have seen Hubby & I trying to figure out how the stroller/car seat worked in the store. It was funny enough to me, I can only imagine what other people were thinking.

Jessica White said...

(Ok here's my comment :-)

YAY! For halfway! Definitely think agony and ecstasy are good ways to describe it.

You can check out my registry if you want...we had about 45 things on there...and really it was only a couple of the bigger items that people bought (car seat, stroller, cosleeper etc)....for the most part people bought whatever they wanted (clothes, toys, gadgets etc). We have to get a few more things, but for the most part we're holding off on the things until we need them.