I just received an e-newsletter from a pregnancy website that I didn’t sign up for. My subscription could be the result of one of my hilarious Mabel’s Labels co-workers thinking I should be following this pregnancy of mine a little more closely.
My first e-newsletter arrived congratulating me for being 30 weeks pregnant. I did the math which confirmed that the website knows more about my pregnancy than I do. It went on to tell me how I should be feeling – which is bad. Each day should now be greeted lethargically. Varicose veins should be plaguing me, along with the inability to sleep and the constant urge to urinate. This coming week I’m told to look forward to stretch marks, and the word “gassy” came up on several occasions.
And here I’ve been going along feeling great and largely forgetting that I’m actually brewing a baby. Time to start pulling rank, I say. I’m going to commit to some waddling and maybe groan when I go from the sitting to standing position. Hey, I’m 30 weeks pregnant so fully entitled – my new e-newsletter told me so. Take that Mabel gals and see how much fun I am to work with now. That little e-newsletter thing really backfired!
My e-newsletter also informed me that my baby is now the size of a squash, which erupted controversy among the other 30-week e-newsletter subscribers. There were no less than 47 comments from the moms-to-be expressing passionately either for or against the baby/squash comparison. With so many opinions on the topic, I was left thinking that this was a case of hormones gone wild. I tried to have an opinion, but nothing happened. Does this mean I don’t care as much as they do about my squash….er…..I mean, my baby?
The next part is what really freaked me out. It provided me with a link to my personalized pregnancy to-do list. It looked like this:
Number of items on to-do list: 78
Number of items completed on to-do list: zero
Yes, apparently I have 78 things left to do before I have this baby. I can’t even bring myself to open the link to my list. As someone who is now 10 weeks late for her first obstetrician appointment, I can’t start stressing about pulling out my little sleepers from bins in the basement and whitening my whites.
Mamas have about nine months to prep for baby. While there may be about 75 things left on my official ‘to-do’ list on the day this baby arrives, I have a feeling we’ll somehow muddle through it.
**The pic is of me 38 weeks pregnant with some other baby…..probably thinking it would be my last pregnancy so got the photo done!

RSS
“which confirmed that the website knows more about my pregnancy than I do” — priceless!
Hah! My bet is you could not even look at that list and you’ll muddle through it better than I did my first time through!
Love the photo! You look radiant! I hope you’re feeling that good this time ’round!
I read a few pregnancy books before I was pregnant and began to look at the pregnant people I knew and wondered how they were even standing upright since I was under the impression they were supposed to be lying on the couch with a vomit bucket and an icepack for their hemmorhoids. Turned out pregnancy wasn’t actually all that bad!!
As for the 78 things left to do…with any luck your babe won’t come out expecting teddy bears stenciled on the walls and ‘whitest whites’
I do get off easily in the pregnancy department for sure….I’ve seen how some of you suffer!
Someone suggested as long as I have several bottles of wine ready to go, the to-do list is pretty much done!
My ‘nursery’ is a basinette thrown on a table in the living room….ah, but that’s another blog post!
I don’t think I did anywhere near 78 things to get ready for my first baby! Although first baby did have a nicely painted nursery…baby #3 and #4 both lived in a plain, plain room. I’ll get to it one day – when they are teenagers.
You can bet I had the first steps of baby #1 on film!
It’s funny how we do less and less for subsequent pregnancies and babies – my #4 has been taking steps for a few weeks and do you think I have dug out the videocamera to capture it forever? This despite several pleas from faraway grandparents!
78 things left to do, you say? I am sure that one of the top things on that ‘to-do’ list will be to recruit the help of others. So, along with your waddling and groaning, go ahead and throw in a little delegating and general bossing about:) After all it takes a communiity to raise a…errr..squash.
I do truly believe that “what you don’t know, won’t hurt you” and it won’t hurt baby either.
Lists like the one you mention here stress me out far more than not feeling 100 percent prepared!!
What you do before baby comes is not that important…it’s what you do after and your other five kids prove you are doing a great job.
10 weeks late for your first appointment? Funny how things change from the first pregnancy.lol.
yeah, things change alright…I have not had blood tests done or gone for the sugar diabetes test….and don’t plan to!
to funny!
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