36.5

When you're in the last month of gestating your first baby, it's entirely too easy to hemorrhage money. I managed to add in the neighbourhood of $3,000 to our savings over this time, and work plenty of baby things into the monthly budget, so as not to touch said savings. But now that's over. Time to dip in.

For example, this weekend cost us somewhere around $400: Bassinet/playard (Used, thank you, Kijiji), vertical drying rack, nightstand, toy box, hamper, baby bath tub, drug store things for the birth, plus other normal household stuff like groceries and cat food, and a Zipcar to grab all this stuff.

This month was also the Dude's birthday and Valentine's Day. We didn't blow the bank, but we also didn't let the days slide. Pre-parenthood special days should not be neglected.

And that's all on top of the other stuff I ordered online/bought last week: baby carrier, breast pump, BDA pants, crib sheets, changing pads...

The baby has dropped. I now feel like I'm carrying one of those 5-pound bowling balls in my pelvis. I waddle. When the baby squirms, my cervix cries. I'm 37 weeks in a couple days and more or less I'm term. Almost. I am so looking forward to being done with this. The fact I risk massive vomiting every time I cough and that I cough after every meal I eat got old many moons ago.

We're hosting one last party before the birth. Most people thought we might skip our Oscar party this year, but oh no. I'm not losing the chance to do this one last shindig sans bebe. I may be a huge beast of a person right now, but there's no wee one crying or needing anything and I intend for the Dude and I to make the most of our last bit of freedom.

It's so funny. Everyone talks about how hard and awful having a baby will be, but generally think pregnancy is exciting and sweet. Having looked after children (pee, poo, vomit, tantrums and all) and having now experienced pregnancy, I kinda think it's the other way around. You suffer for a purpose and then you enjoy (occasionally lament and curse, but mostly enjoy) your offspring. I sort of feel sorry for those who love pregnancy, in a strange way. It's a temporary state that you only experience so much of and then it's done and gone. My memories are going to be of looking back over these months with total gratitude that they're over. I try not to laugh too hard when someone tells me I'll miss it.

Also, I think having IBS in comparison to dealing with this will really put things into perspective. Your body can always be a bigger asshole. I won't have as much life freedom, but my God, I'll have bodily comfort again. That's my new idea of what freedom is: feeling good in your own skin. Oh, how I'm looking forward to that.

35

My friends threw me a super adorable shower this past Sunday at the McPal house. It was cutely decorated and there were yummy sammiches and cake and cheese and such. My Toronto friends were all there and they gave me some really nice things for the baby, like a charming mobile and books and blankets and sleeping gear. It was a really nice day. I love my friends.

We also got a used rug from McPal, and it's in the nursery now. It really fits in and makes it more of a bedroom space. Touches like that really make it complete and, because I can't help but say so, really ties the room together.

The McPals are the one household I know that have their own helium tank and actually get a lot of great use out of it. We took home many balloons in our Zipcar. The Dude considered leaving them in the trunk for the next person to open it and be assaulted with a ton of helium balloons. But no, they're in the living room. The big one is still holding on. The cats approached them cautiously at first and then nothing exciting happened, which was too bad. I'd hoped maybe Sprinkles would pounce them like the clown she is. Smokey was scared of balloons in his day. Poor old guy probably would have had a heart attack.

And wildly, with the showers over and me being about 35 weeks, that means I have a little over a month until I'm due to give birth. The crunch time to acquire the remaining items has begun, and I have three weeks of work left until I can stop and relax and focus on the baby. It's all happening stupidly fast now.

But the list of things to get has shrunk a ton:
Play yard/bassinet
Bedside table
Gliding rocking chair
Cloth wipe solution
Wrapping baby carrier
Breast pump
Bibs

But in all honesty, the pump and bibs can wait. Well, hopefully the pump can wait, otherwise the Dude will be running an errand shortly after the birth. I don't want to think I'll have issues breastfeeding, but it happens.

I also investigated a daycare in the area. $1450 per month for an infant. $1450. Even if it drops a couple hundred for a toddler, it's still so much money. So, we won't be going there. There's one even closer to our house that I'm going to check out, which my in-laws use. Hopefully it's not also $1450. Jesus, this city is expensive. I mean, I knew that, but hell.

I've already been asked a lot by some family when I'm going to have more and now I think my answer is I'll consider it if someone wants to pay me $1450 a month for three years. Crazy, but having two kids would literally make the difference between ever being able to buy a house, or not.

Just think, a working class man's income alone used to be able to buy a house and provide for a family of six. Now? Pfft. Not bloody likely!

Nursery 1.0

You know how everyone says babies are expensive? Well, babies are expensive. I can actually see why people have more than one because the more use you get out of all the stuff you acquired, the cheaper each subsequent kid is going to feel. Ha!

Today the Dude and I organized our baby gifts, taking things off hangers, clipping tags, throwing away boxes and packaging. The room we're turning into the nursery had been slowly losing control, slowly being suffocated with baby things, looking like it was about to vomit a daycare any second. The closet, full of mostly the Dude's things, was spilling out and could no longer close. Basically total mayhem.

Now? The Dude set to work after we finished sorting everything. It's finally starting to look like a proper room. Linens, toys, safety items, toiletries and clothes are all unpacked and separated. The scary closet is now a work of elegant Tetris. The floors are swept and mopped. It's prepped, and now I feel more at ease.

Some of our friends are coming over in several days to help us assemble our crib, dresser and hutch. And even then we still won't be done. We're still missing stuff we need, and I need to rent a birthing pool as I'll be giving birth at home. I'll get more into that later. It's definitely been a conversation starter and it'd be better to devote an entire blog post about it.

Anyhoo, pictures!

The organized closet,
and the unassembled crib & mattress in boxes.

All the stuffed animals, plus the hand-painted carousel horse.

We'll have to put gates up eventually.
The paint cans are temporary.

It's obviously going to be open-concept. Down the hall, past the closet, is the bathroom and then our bedroom. We're going to get a funky rug to go over this hard floor, and all those toys will likely go in the hutch. The dehumidifier keeps the temperature up and moisture down in there, not to mention it could easily double as a white noise machine. There's only the one small window, but it gets decent sunlight, unlike our bedroom, which despite a larger window, faces our neighbour's wall to the south. 

A part of me feels a little bummed we don't have our own house. But this is Toronto and homes are running for 600k and up these days for small places that likely wouldn't give us any more space than we currently have. Plus, you know, we can't afford 600k. We can't afford 400k. So here we stay for several years. We'll see what happens after that.

We have a room for our baby, we have a yard out back, our neighbourhood is safe and there are parks all over, daycares, easy access to the TTC, and the Dude can walk to work. Not owning a home when we start our family is more of an emotional bummer, not a practical concern.

I bet once I see the nursery finished I'll feel even better.

32

I'm 32 weeks pregnant today. I am huge. The Dude assures me I am not huge, but try actually being this size and hauling around my ass all day and tell me I'm not huge. Because I totally am. And, oh, sweet merciful crap is my back feeling it.

And my lower abdomen too. Yes, you can actually feel your uterus stretch out and it don't feel good, boy howdy. Sometimes I walk around with my hands under my belly as if to hold it up. The weight is surprisingly challenging to manage. How do fat people do it? Dude, seriously. Lugging around excess you is exhausting.

I went to my baby shower in my hometown last weekend. My aunt threw it for me and my family came, plus my friends in town and some of the Dude's relatives. It was really nice to see everyone. It was a laid back affair, the kind where there was enough seating for everyone, some sandwiches, no games and a tasty chocolate and vanilla cake. It lasted two hours. Frankly, it was the sort of shower that I like: simple, quick and with cake.

I received some lovely things, ranging from the nice-to-have to the need-to-have: Diaper bag, toiletries, toys, blankets, washcloths, books, teething rings, thermometer, harnessed baby carrier, change pad, monitor, bottles, and lots of clothes.  The nursery, still completely not put together, is stuffed with bags. We're going to have to get organizing or the delivery of more nursery furniture is going to be a pile of chaos.

We still need:
Breast pump
Play yard
Bibs
Car seat adaptor for the stroller
Rug
Portable changing pads
Wrap baby carrier
Crib sheets
Nursing pillow
Glider

It's sort of wild to think about. I've been squirrelling away money for over a year, so we will able to manage all this, but good god. These upfront costs are crazy. And I'm eight weeks from my due date. Unbelievable. Nine months is a long time physically to be pregnant, but financially I could go for another three months to bulk my savings.

More Sales

I made my cloth diaper purchases. There was a sale and thus I couldn't not do it, not when saving money was on the line.

BumGenius 4.0
(I got the snaps version)

I spent $472 on 18 diapers, two medium wet bags, one large wet bag, and 24 washable wipes. Sounds like a lot of money, but that was after I saved $72. I still need laundry bags and newborn diapers. I bought everything thus far on Caterpillar Baby and I'm going to get the rest I need from Ava's Appletree. Oh, the expense of it all. And yet disposables can cost $2,500 by the time you're done with them, so as expensive as this is right now, it's cheap.

I still look at my favourite online clothing stores and pore over the pretty, pretty dresses that no longer fit and which I can now not afford to have anyway in light of my looming maternity leave. And besides, I need to be able to nurse and that means clothing that grants boob access. It's an understatement to say I miss my clothes. I will not be able to wear my lovely things for over a year from now. And that's if they fit.

Many people are telling me I'll have more than one child. I don't know what they're basing that on other than their own family preferences. It can't be based on what they know about me personally. I'm an introvert. A small family will best enable me to get more opportunities for me time. I'm frugal. One child is less money spent total than any other option. I'm practical. One child means a likely ability to pay for post-secondary education. I'm pragmatic. One child means no sibling rivalry and thus no fighting in the house to referee.

Plus I don't want to be pregnant again. My sleep schedule doesn't exist. I now just sleep when I'm tired for however long and it doesn't seem to matter what time it is or isn't. While I look forward to motherhood with an open and ready heart, I also relish the fact I'll have my body back, though I'm nervous about what it'll look like. I think I'm already prepped for disordered sleeping patterns. I'm living that now.

Two and a half months to go.

Sale

Six days?! I sometimes just don't blog. But more importantly, it's two days till Christmas. Well, sort of. It's technically the 23rd, but I haven't gone to sleep yet, making it still the 22nd mentally.

And it's 3:30 a.m. and I'm up, battling sour heartburn as usual. Also, I took a long, long nap today accidentally (The nap was intentional, the fact it went three hours was not).

I had to get up at the ungodly (not really) hour of 8:30 this morning to go to the hospital to get a blood product to prevent my body from potentially attacking future fetuses. I'm O- and the Dude is B+, hence if blood mixes, I create antibodies, and so on. Bad news. Except I ain't doing this more than once, dagnabbit. But the medical community don't see the sense in closing doors on yourself. So very well.

Yesterday we got our first baby gifts from Matt's dad and stepmom, plus a couple others from our hometown who wish us well. It made it so real. Painting the nursery? Having a crib delivered? Seeing the ultrasound? Feeling actual kicks inside of me? Somehow I've managed to experience them in the abstract. Tangibly holding things my baby would wear really hit me. How's that for weird?

Holding a little toy lamb and soft blankets and infant pyjamas really hit me. I mean, right now my baby is kicking me so hard it's moving my abdomen up and down. But holding the things I'll use to care for and nurture him or her really moved me. And there was the horse. Matt's stepmom painted this gorgeous carousel horse for the nursery and I love it. Handmade and sentimental, the sort of thing my own mom would have given me. I'll take a picture of it soon, when it's not almost 4:00 a.m.

Our stroller was delivered yesterday too. The aforementioned generous dad and stepmom gave us $500 to buy a stroller a couple months ago. We had budgeted around $200, but SM insisted we needed something of quality and wanted to gift us a stroller. So I looked around online, reading reviews and we tested this bad boy out:

Urbo stroller from Mamas & Papas

It retails for about $579 in Canada, which after tax is an exorbitant amount of money, about $654. When one receives $500 for a stroller, paying anything further out of pocket just feels like frivolous bad planning and parenting over-excess. So I waited. And waited. And hoped the dang thing would go on sale, though I sincerely doubted it would.

And then it totally did, a whopping 25% off, and after tax I got the thing for $502. Boom. Sales fill me with joy. Good deals sing in my ear. This elegant contraption, which is now the closest thing we own to a vehicle, turns on a dime and is the lightest full-size stroller we could find/afford. It's narrow and more compact, making it a less intrusive option for taking it on the TTC. It's got thick single wheels that are good for snow, and is welded and sturdy. The seat comes off and can hold a car seat, and the actual seat can face either direction and it reclines.

How it performs for us over the next few years will obviously colour my feelings significantly. But it's designed for urban life, which I live, so I have reasonably high hopes.

My next big purchase will be cloth diapers. For the brand I want in the amount I'll likely need, the cloth wipes, the washable diaper pail bags, and wet sacks for a diaper bag, it'll probably run me about $850. That's less than what it costs per year in this country to diaper a baby in disposables, and it'll be all I need for the whole duration of pre-potty training life.

Actually sitting down and committing to spending that amount upfront? It'll take awhile. And anyway, sales. There could always be a sale.