Monday, November 15, 2010

Retail (baby) therapy

I've had a very strong urge to go shopping for baby stuff lately. And not for any of the eleventymillion pregnant people I know. Nope. I want to go shopping for myself. For my phantom baby who is not even conceived yet & whose existence is months or maybe even years away. If at all.

I know several perfectly sane infertile women who have bought baby gear ranging from a cute $5 onesie to the Cadillac of cribs. For a very long time I've given them a bit of a side eye, I'll admit. But at the same time I totally get how it sucks to have to walk into Babies R Us & print out yet another registry full of items that will not be used by you but you want so desperately to need.

From shopping for everyone's baby stuff over the past several years I've come to know there's a whole lot of crap out there people will buy because they are told they need it. As my husband likes to point out, he slept in an old sari fashioned into a sling for the first several years of his life & turned out "just fine". Well, the fact that he is "just fine" can be argued I guess; he does calculus for fun but doesn't seem to understand the concept of matching socks into pairs. Here's a photo of what I'm talking about in case you have a heard time imagining this set up (not the socks, the sari):



While I don't plan on doing the same for our kids, I do think I'll be an earthy-crunchy kind of parent. I'd love to give birth naturally given the fact we will probably never be able to conceive naturally. Then again I was almost 10 lbs & my husband was over 8lbs (my mom-in-law is your typical tiny Indian woman); we were also both 2 weeks late. So it's probably just a nice thought.

I also want to breastfeed as long as possible. I want to make our own baby food. I want to cloth diaper. And apparently we're also earthy-crunchy for leaving our phantom sons' foreskins alone: we won't circumcise. I didn't know this was a "new, hip" thing to do of late, but given Vid is Hindu & I'm Catholic, neither religion says we need to do it so we won't. Cutting off a part of my kid for no good reason seems mean to say the least, but I won't get into that argument now.

I anticipate getting a lot of hand-me-down clothes from friends when the blessed event of my being pregnant comes, given, of course, they haven't been eaten by moths by then. And I'm fine with that. I fully plan on using the dresser set we have in our 2nd bedroom when it turns into a baby room. And if a friend wants to give me their old crib, that'd be awesome! I'm not picky about things matchy; in fact, I rather like things that are not store bought, pre-fab sets.

Which brings me to my final thought for now: I love this idea for baby room decor. It's not your typical baby animals of some sort theme. And the colors are bright, which I also love, because I HATE PASTELS. Change out the pink accents for blue and you could make it appropriate for a boy. Or use red, yellow, purple or green & it's completely gender neutral! The best part is it doesn't require painting walls since I am assuming we will still be renting this place if/when we have a baby.

2 comments:

Kate said...

I have to admit that sling looks pretty comfy... ;) I recently started looking at baby stuff again after a long embargo. Hope we both need it soon. :)

M said...

THANK GOD someone posted this! Yes, yes, yes! This is so me right now! I went to the mall yesterday and the baby Gap had the cutest little winter hat that was like a little russian hat with ear flaps (you know the kind?) and it had little bear ears sewn on top! I wanted that thing soooo bad! Hubby said put it back, I said if we are BFN this time the dog can wear the hat, he wasn't buying it...the idea or the hat! OMG it was so cute. $16 bucks though! I feel your pain and share in your strange obession. Good Luck to us!!!