Baby Nesting Complete…I think

I remember when I was pregnant with my oldest child, my sister and I discussed how I was planning on decorating the baby’s nursery.  We didn’t have much money at the time.  I was going to do a gender neutral pale green with teddy bears.  It’s funny that now that I’m nearing  the last part of my pregnancy with our 6th, the desire to nest and prepare doesn’t get any less with each child.

I am however, coming into the nesting phase with still a bit of unrealistic dreams, but a ton of practical knowledge just of how I like to mother in those early weeks.  For one, now I know that the baby will sleep in our room for about 6 months.  We have a beautiful cradle that Knut’s dad made me when I had Silje, and all of our kids have used.  After the baby is born, we will move it over to my side of the bed, so I don’t have to go very far.  But in the meantime, I don’t want to trip over it or try to shimmy my big belly around it, as it can get tight. Very often, I prefer to feed the baby laying down in my bed, not sitting up in the chair.  (I have actually had a baby roll out of my arms from exhaustion while sleeping before and it scared me so bad, that I now nurse laying down, and have worked really hard to make that a safe situation.)  Sometimes we fall asleep this way, sometimes I crave deeper sleep and move the baby to the cradle if possible.

 

I have a little trick for that too, that I’ll share with you.  Lots of new mothers that I have spoken to said it works for them as well.  The tough part of laying a baby down so you can get that deeper sleep is that first shock of the cold cradle sheets that wakes them up and you have to get them to sleep all over, usually with you crying this time.  So whenever I pick up a baby to feed him, before latching on, I lay an electric (or water bottle, I’ve used both) heating pad in the cradle, and turn it on.  Then I feed the baby.  When I’m ready to get the baby back to his bed, I remove the heating pad, put my hand on the bed to make sure it’s not too hot, and then slowly lay him down.  With the bed pre-warmed they actually stay asleep through that transition, and their own body heat keeps it warm.  Then I can sleep sprawled any way I’d like.

This isn’t intended to start a debate on co-sleeping or anything.  I co-sleep, and I put them to sleep by themselves.  I have learned 6 kids in that all mothers are trying to just survive this stage with both their baby and themselves intact, and what that looks like depends on the sleeping habits of the mother.  Like I’ve said, I’ve dropped a baby trying to stay awake to feed.  That’s the hard part about this newborn stage.  There’s just danger everywhere and exhaustion is a given.  If I stand on my little soapbox for a second, I think if we truly want what’s safe for baby, we as a culture will support our new mamas, so that they have adequate help to get adequate sleep (whether day or night) during this phase, rather than judge how that mother gets her sleep when she has no support.

Off soapbox.  Whew.  Sorry about that.  I want to also add that I’m so thankful for all the support I’ve been given in the past, most especially last time with the help of my husband and our midwife.  The care received from midwives is just so stellar in this department.  Her post-pardum care instructions and help were night and day different from instructions and care received from previous doctor care.

Shoot, now I’m really off my soapbox.  Sorry.  I’ll try to stay down this time.

I just know that it’s a few months of sleepless haze, and I basically live in this room.  Perhaps that is why I’ve been working so hard to finish up a bunch of projects in this room that have been years in the making.  I want my post-pardum space to be a sanctuary, not a prison.  I want it to be a place for me to breathe and relax and enjoy.

So I thought back to all of my pet-peeves that I threw together in past births.  For one, I usually have all the baby clothes set up in his or her own room.  (In this case, he will have a hanging dresser in the boys’ room closet, as the 3 boys will be sharing a room eventually.)  It just logistically makes sense because we can’t fit any more dressers in our space, and it’s not like the baby being in our room is a long term thing.  So what ends up happening is I throw some clean baby clothes in a laundry basket, and just have this basket full of junk that gets turned over and messed up multiple times a day, and it ends up looking like this mountain of laundry that is constantly there, with pacifiers, swaddling blankets and random socks in there somewhere.  This pile is just a presence in our room while the baby rooms with us.

So this time, I bought one of those ridiculously cheap RASKOG carts from Ikea, and I’m organizing a space for just some of the baby’s things.  It’s not his whole dresser, it’s just some things so when I have to change his clothes in the middle of the night because he spit up all over everything, I don’t have to take him screaming into the boy’s room, and search in the dark for new clothes, or turn a pile of laundry over and over in an effort to find the thing I’m looking for.

Here’s how I have it set up:

On top I have his first outfit: a little sleeper and hat.  I have a few extra hats, a few bibs, some receiving blankets (which I also use as burp rags) a large gauze swaddle blanket since he will be born in the heat of summer, and maybe he’ll sleep in that better.  I don’t know.  I have some pacifiers in here.  I also have a few washcloths, and my the socks that are my favorite to use as little mitts if he scratches his face.  (Silje was the only one of my babies to take a paci, and even then it was around 6-9 months when she gave it up.  The rest of my kids have thought the pacifier was a mean horrible monster and cried whenever it showed up.  I’ve always wished I had something to make my babies be quiet like a nice little paci, but alas, it doesn’t really happen for me.  But I will try again, in hopes that I will have that luxury again.)

In the middle section, I have the nightgowns that have easy diaper access that they really only wear at night.  I also have a few of the newborn sized sleepers for those tiny newborn days when nothing fits, and a package of wipes.

On the bottom, I have a bunch of flat cloth diapers, a few fitted newborn diapers, a few newborn diaper covers, and a few leftover disposable diapers that are good to use until that meconium poop has worked it’s way out.  I use pocket cloth diapers mostly with little ones. (confession, my toddler right now is in disposables because I haven’t potty trained her yet and I’m so certain I will soon that I haven’t made or bought her toddler diapers.)  But for newborns, I have found that I like the old fashioned flat diapers the best.  They are so absorbent, and they are so easy to work around the little umbilical cord stub, and it’s fun to get them good and snug around the thighs so not many blowouts.  I even prefer them to disposables, as I just get less blowouts to deal with.  Sometimes my kids have slept better in disposables, so I like to have some on hand for evenings, and the cloth for daytime.  But after a few blowouts in disposables at night always go back to the cloth at night too.  This is just my pattern.

I have tried prefolds in this newborn stage and I just get constant leaks no matter what I do.  So I save my prefold diapers to use as inserts for the pocket diapers I use once they’re a tad older.

I know I’m still idealistic that there won’t be a big pile of laundry in my room after the baby is born.  It won’t always look this nice and neat and folded.  That’s where the dreamy side of nesting comes out.  It’s folding the diapers so they have no creases, knowing full well that once the baby comes, it will probably go straight from the drier to the baby’s bottom.

But, on the practical side, maybe this solution will work, and I’ll have places to put the baby things for those few months he will be in our room besides a pile in a laundry basket.  Maybe, just maybe, this will be a peaceful place for me.

For now, I’m at 27 weeks.  This baby isn’t here yet, and I don’t want to wash a couple months of dust off of it all again once the baby comes.  So a little receiving blanket is on top of it for now, promising that little one’s arrival is just around the corner.  I’m thinking that when I get closer, I’m going to squeeze in a bunch of granola bars and keep some water up in my room too.  I get so famished in the middle of the night while breastfeeding, and I hate wandering around the kitchen at 2am looking for food when I could be sleeping.  Granola bars in here will be a must.  I think that’s all.  I might think of more before he comes.