I have no idea how to eloquently begin this blog post, so I’m just going to dive in & hope for the best . . . One question I’ve been asked a lot since becoming pregnant is “How are you decorating the nursery?”  Each time my answer is “I’m not.”  Seriously, y’all, it took me MONTHS of living in our house to even begin to decorate our house & even now, three and a half years later, there is no cohesive theme to our decorations, unless you count various scattered stuffed animals as a theme.  I know it probably makes me boring but decorating has just never interested me.  If anything I find it stressful.  I enjoy seeing other people’s decorated houses or nurseries but I have no interest in doing the same for my own.  And let’s be honest here: for whom do parents really decorate the nursery, the baby or themselves?  The answer has to be themselves because there is no rational reason to believe that a baby is going to notice or care whether his or her nursery is decorated or not.  By the time they’re old enough to notice it or form an opinion about it, they’ll probably want it redone to match their own particular taste.  And all of that sounds like entirely too much work to me!  

On another note, is it normal that instead of being really excited about picking out baby gear I just find most of it stressful & annoying?  I’ve never been an indecisive person, but staring at literally dozens or even hundreds of different options for every baby thing known to man can be more than a little overwhelming.  Thank goodness for my college roommate, dear friend that she is, who helped me create our baby registries or else they’d probably still not be done.  Creating the registries with her guidance was fun but otherwise I really don’t know how it would have gotten done.  Seriously. 

I hear/read all the time about women who struggle not to buy every baby item they see but that has not been a problem for me.  I’ve only bought a handful of things myself, most of which were from a neighbor who was selling baby girl clothes for $1 each which was entirely too good of a deal to pass up, as well as a changing table/pad with attached chest of drawers which I found on Craigslist.  Part me of wonders if this means that I’m not as attached to my baby as I should be.  Or maybe I’m just being practical as always & realizing that having a bunch of STUFF won’t make me any more prepared to be a mom, no matter how much it might be nice to think it would.

I’m sure I’ll start buying more baby gear once we have our shower in a few weeks & I can say more definitively what we actually need to buy.  I’m excited of course for our shower but at the same time I’m nervous about it.  I know that must sound ridiculous but I do not enjoy being the center of attention.  I felt the same way about my bridal shower five years ago.  Am I crazy or are there other moms to be who feel this way?

I think I’ll be doing a lot of “winging it.”

People have also asked me if I’ve read various parenting books & magazines.  The answer is no.  Considering my OCD personality traits (& my husband’s as well), maybe it is odd that I/we haven’t jumped into reading all kinds of parenting books but we haven’t.  There are plenty of things about parenthood that scare me & that I know will not be easy, but at the same time I feel like a lot of things will come to us intuitively.  If they don’t, we can start researching things, but in the meantime I really don’t feel like filling my head with other people’s opinions on how to raise our child.  Is that being selfish or proud or too self-assured?  Or even lazy?  I have no idea.  

I’m trying to remind myself that when we got married I was equally ambivalent about creating a wedding registry & plenty of other aspects of wedding planning (the only things I really cared about were my dress, the color of the bridesmaid dresses, the reception location, & most importantly THE GROOM).  Yet our wedding turned out beautifully & more importantly we’ve been happily married for five years now.  People told me many times that I was the most relaxed bride they’d ever met, & while I’m sure I’m NOT the most relaxed mom-to-be, maybe not being too caught up in some of the “pregnancy hype” isn’t such a bad thing either?

I didn’t know how to begin this post, & I’m equally unsure how to end it.  I guess I’d just like some reassurance from other moms (or dads!!) out there that I’m not losing my mind & that at least some of the things I’m feeling are normal (or at least okay) on some end of the spectrum.