baby shopping

 Like I said a few days ago, I have really resisted the urge to do a ton of or really any shopping for our upcoming delivery.   The only prep we did was paint the baby's room the prettiest shade of what I thought was a neutral pale, pale, silvery blue.  More on blue as a unisex room later.  

Once we found out our Mom was in the hospital a few weeks ago on bedrest, we took the liberty of setting up an emergency baby bag to take with us...just in case.  At the same time, my Mother and Sister talked me into "registering" for a few things in case friends who have known of our 4 year path to parenthood wanted to send any gifts, once we were home.   At the time it seemed like a great idea, but what I wasn't prepared for were the feelings of shopping/registering for baby things while not pregnant.  Be warned what comes next may have been in my own mind but, I am pretty sure I was discriminated against in the store.  First I was of course not pregnant, whereas all the other registerees were visibly due within the next 90 days. My only visible issue was that I was on crutches trying to register...no one moved out of the way for me.  Pregnancy trumped the not pregnant girl on crutches.  No one asked if we needed help and I felt compelled to explain to the girl handing out the scanners and setting up the registries that we were adopting and not just a crazy girl in her first trimester registering already.   

Perhaps the discrimination was in my own mind and I somehow felt like I didn't belong there baby shopping let alone registering for anything for a baby.   After so many IVF cycles and a couple of miscarriages I am afraid to jinx anything.   I have taken great pride in being the woman who got up dusted herself off and went for a run after each attempt. I didn't want to talk about it right away and always said "it's not the worst thing that could happen to a woman". I don't know that I could that now.  All that self protection keeps rearing it's protective head now when people ask "Are you excited?"  I say,  "a little" and change the subject.    

On another more positive note.  I did have at tremendously positive baby shopping experience yesterday.   I went to Pottery Barn Kids on the UES of NY and finally found a crib set that could work for what I pictured our nursery to look like.   It was discontinued though so they didn't have it all in stock.  I had the NICEST sales associate who hunted down every piece of it from other stores.   It literally took an hour, but all pieces are on the way to our home.  She didn't look at me funny when I said, our nursery is blue, but our baby is a girl and I wanted some blue with a lot of yellow.  She just helped me and made sure I was a satisifed soon to me new Mom. That was really fun and for some reason now I am excited.  Somewhere my heart needed the validation of that nice, nice woman.