Sorry its been so long! I hate going so long without posting because then when I finally do I have so much more to say haha. To make up for it, I'll try to post 2x's this week. :)
Today I am 23 weeks (and 4 days). Baby girl is the size of a Grapefruit right now. She is somewhere around 11 inches long and can weigh anywhere between 13-20 ounces! I feel her kicking all the time now and Danny can feel some of the big ones now too, so that's really neat for him. She is most active when I sit down or lay down right after being active. :)
This past week was a crazy, crazy week. I was working on the baby registries allll weeeeeek loooooong and I got super overwhelmed with everything.
Previously, I had been excited to start the registry process. I mean, we did Bridal registry with no problems and it was one of my favorite parts of wedding planning! Well... registering for a baby is very different. I had no idea where to begin such a task. I googled checklists for baby registries online and printed off a couple from TheBump.com that were helpful. Still... I was overwhelmed. There are two main reasons that make up why registering for baby is a terrible, overwhelming job:
1) Baby Stuff Overload.
There is sooo much baby stuff out there these days - it is ridiculous. Its like all of these companies got together and thought, Hmm, we have everyone sucked into buying all kinds of unnecessary things for weddings... what is another life event that we can use to target unsuspecting women with an overload of ridiculous gadgets, systems and accessories to suck their budgets dry and only make their lives more chaotic? Oh, a BABY! Seriously, there are so many recommended items for a baby registry ... its crazy. So, the challenging part for me, a first time mom, was figuring out what products are actually good to have and what is just junk. Its a serious task!
2) Opinion Overload.
As many crazy baby gadgets are out there, there are double the amount of opinions about what is necessary and what is the best/safest/cheapest product. Ughhh. This can be more frustrating than all the actual stuff you're bombarded with. Now, I'm not saying I don't like advice from anyone. In fact, there are many people's opinions I do want and even ask for. Take my mother, for example, and my mother-in-law. These are two women I love and respect, and I know they'll give me the most honest and knowledgeable answer they can. However, they both haven't had children in over 20 years, so even as wise as they are, I feel like I then need other opinions for all the stuff that has changed in the last couple of decades. Well, then you think, Ask your friends, right? Close friends that you love and trust are usually a go-to for advice in any other situation, right? Well, it just so happens a lot of my close friends aren't even married yet ... none of them have kids. So then you have the "mom reviews" online. Those are trustworthy, right?? Well yeah... except for the fact that you don't have a clue what kind of woman, wife or mother this lady is... or really if she is a mother at all! Then, of course, you have all of the different recommendations from the American Association of such-and-such's and Pediatric Physicians of such-and-such, but those can differ too ... not to mention change every three years. Sigh... so what did this first-time-mom to do?? Well, I'll get to that later ... right now I need to finish my rant :)
On top of these two reasons, I am a long distance away from all of my family and close friends. I have my husband - who is truly my best friend and love of my life - but, lets be honest... girl friends are just different. Anyway... point is ... I. HAD. A. BREAKDOWN. I mean lying in bed crying - the whole nine. "I don't know what I'm doing!" "I'm going to be a horrible mother!", "I'm too emotional for this!", "I feel so alone!" blah, blah, blah and so on and so forth. I was sooo emotional and Danny was soo sweet to me. He tried his hardest to comfort me and encourage me but I was so emotional it was no use. I ended up just taking a break from the registry for the rest of that afternoon and taking a long nap. That helped quite a bit. Later that night, my sister-in-law, Jana, called me. (Their precious baby girl just turned one in March) She spent TWO HOURS on the phone with me going over registry things. I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW HELPFUL SHE WAS!! She told me all the things that have helped her and was able to de-myth the things that aren't worth crap. It was beautiful. It was so encouraging to hear her affirm decisions I had made already (that I had been unsure of) and it was empowering to be filled with little nuggets of knowledge that were new to me. I was a sponge and she was pouring out liquid gold. Lol. After we got off the phone, she even emailed a list of everything we had talked about and a couple things she forgot to mention. That night, I went to bed encouraged and excited. I felt like a new woman. :) The next morning I woke up and finished my registries in just a few hours - and the crazy part is that I felt good about it!
I realize that motherhood is not going to be just a nice little walk in the park just because I have great family supporting me. I also know that every baby is different so there is a good chance some of the things that worked for my niece won't work as well for my baby and that's ok. It is all trial and error, I guess. About my huge breakdown, though, I've decided it was simply a healthy outburst of emotion in reaction to a serious reality check. :) Here's why. I have two best friends back home in Knoxville. Jess and I have been friends for nine years now and we have spent much of those years together. We have always been in the same place of life (maybe only excluding relationships). We were the same grade, worked at Chick-Fil-A together in high school and then at 21st Mortgage in college, went to the same community college (and practically all the same classes) for the first two years, and then became roommates, went on to UT at the same time and graduated together. We experienced pretty much all of the "hard stuff" together. We made mistakes together and then learned/grew together. It has been a truly beautiful blessing of unique friendship. My other best friend is Katie. I have known Katie for even longer than nine years but our friendship has its own unique dynamic. She and I didn't become really close until summer 2007 when we worked at a Christian summer camp together. We experienced soo much together in that summer alone, but our friendship continued to blossom after that. When we got back home after that first summer, Katie also began taking classes at the same community college as Jess and I she and worked at 21st Mortgage, as well. The three of our lives were so intertwined and we all lived together (along with one other awesome roommate). Katie and I didn't share the UT experience like Jess and I, but we shared relationship drama. We always seemed to date guys around the same time, we learned and grew together in that way too. The hard truth I realized during my breakdown was that, after all of these years, suddenly my friends and I have lives that are huge worlds apart. Not only are ALL of my girl friends hundreds of miles away, but its almost as if we live in alternate realities. In their world, they live the single/dating life, they have jobs, and go out for fun on weekends. My world is my husband, dishes, laundry, cleaning, etc, and I don't even have a job right now. The thing is, it isn't even that I am not satisfied with my life. I am actually very happy!! And its not as if Danny and I don't do anything fun. We do things like spend weekends in Pittsburgh biking/touring around the city, go out to fun restaurants on the river, and just in general - we laugh SO MUCH. All of these sad emotions were just from the initial shock of my new realization. The realization that this - my family, faith, and life as I know it now - is my life for the next ___ years (who knows how many?!) and my girlfriends and I are no longer experiencing all of these new life changes together, side by side, anymore. It was a sad and scary realization. April 14 of this year marked Katie's first anniversary to her husband Ty, so marriage is at least something we have in common, but its just hard to share in that due to the miles that separate us and the fact that she has a job and an actual life haha.
I am not sharing all of this to sound pitiful or complain at all. In fact, after really mulling all of this over, mourning the loss of certain aspects of friendships, and coming to terms with the fact that this is the life I freely chose, I feel so refreshed! New phases of life are always hard for me at first - my mom is a testament to that. She'll tell you that I hated all of my jobs when I was new... only to shed tears when I finally left them years later because I had grown to love them and grow in them. So, I have resolved by God's great grace, to look at this new phase as just that - a new job. After all isn't that what wife/motherhood is? My vocation of ministry. I am excited to start this new crazy journey.
Ta-ta for now! :)
I know exactly what you are saying. It seems like every week it's some new overwhelming experience going on. To bad we don't live closer together.
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