Friday, March 1, 2013

Nesting - Round 3

I remember when I was pregnant with my first child, I couldn't wait to meet the little guy. The last couple of months were filled with agonizing anticipation, especially due to some bouts of false labour, and 2-week early active labour which stalled when little guy pulled out of position. But he came, exactly on his due date, and the wait was totally worth it.
With baby number two there was less of the joyful anticipation of meeting the baby and finally holding him, and more of the "I'm so ready to be done - get this baby out of me NOW!" feeling. But again, I had to wait until his actual due date, and then my body essentially forced him out - ready or not.
Now we're on Round 3. I'm nearing the 37 week mark, at which point they declare your baby 'full term' and everything should be in working order. And all I can think is, "please not yet, please don't come now, just a few more weeks..."

This is very likely due to the fact that we just finally got moved back into our bedroom. We haven't even hung pictures in it, or put away all of the reno materials that are still piled in a corner of our dining room and hubby and I are still recovering from the exhausting process of being displaced and home renovations (I haven't once heard the boys wake up in the night since we moved back up to our room, so poor hubby has been on night-time duty thanks to my exhaustion). I just don't feel like our house, or our lives, are ready to welcome baby #3.

However, it's not for lack of trying. You see, my nesting instincts have kicked in. Now, for those of you who haven't had a baby, you need to understand that nesting is more than just getting ready for your baby. Nesting is a borderline sickness. What else would make a pregnant woman think that 11:30 at night is the perfect time to make rice krispie squares and clean the kitchen to perfection? Or convince her that the dishwasher needs to be cleaned RIGHT NOW? It's one thing to get your house tidy and check off your to-do list, but nesting is a whole other thing.

I have a friend that knew she was nesting when she got the uncontrollable urge to clean the fan in her bathroom. She'd never thought of doing that before, so she didn't even know how to disassemble it, but she eventually got the cover off, cleaned the inner workings, soaked and scrubbed all the dust and grime off the cover, and slept much better that night knowing that the bathroom fan was clean.

It makes no sense that when your body should be at the peak of exhaustion, you suddenly get these urges to bring your house to perfection. I'm exhausted from the above-mentioned home renos, not to mention my pregnancy-induced anemia and the fact that no one really sleeps well when they have something the size of a melon tucked in their tummy, kicking and punching their bladder and ribs at all hours. But despite the lack of 'sense' involved, it happens. And it strikes when you least expect it.

Now, I'm not saying I hate nesting. I just plain don't understand it. It's actually quite handy... You see, yesterday I woke up feeling like there wasn't a hope that I could get the living room tidied to the point I wanted it, let alone put away all of the clean laundry we failed to put away in our time living in the basement, and yet by the time I went to bed last night I had washed, folded and put away all of the newborn clothes that I dug out of storage, I cleaned the basement, folded and put away about 6 other loads of laundry, I'd cleaned the kitchen back to perfection (including the dishwasher), tidied the bathroom and packed my hospital bag. Not bad for a prego. And as I stood there in my newly renovated bedroom, rolling receiving blankets so they looked cuter when I put them in little baskets in our change table, I realized that this was something supernatural. This was a pregnant woman's SuperMan episode. I wouldn't have had the means, or the will, to do what I had done on my own without something else working on me. And what was it that gave me these superhuman abilities? Hormones. The same thing that made me tear up the other day when hubby was teling me a funny story from work (serious.), the same thing that makes my hair look amazing when I do little more than wash and towel dry it, and the same thing still makes me unable to eat supper if I look at the fish tank... they all come from the same source. Granted, this nesting thing is probably much more welcome to my hubby than a super emotional wife (I honestly think he's getting weirded out by how many times I've had to say, "I have no idea why I'm crying! I'm so sorry!") but it's rooted in hormones all the same.

Now all I need to worry about is that those hormones get the rest of my house and my life in order before this baby decides to come! And hopefully I can channel my nesting urges towards the more pressing matters at hand before it turns full force to the more trivial tasks (for example, I need to clean my bathroom before I clean my furnace room...)

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)