Baby Registries

Baby Registries. I'm at the stage of life where everyone around me is pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or just finished being pregnant. Baby Registries abound!

Baby Registries serve a purpose. They give direction. Options. Suggestions. Ideas. They direct friends and family members to help prepare for the new one based on what the parents have decided they want or need. In many ways they're indispensable, as baby goods are expensive and soon to be new parents need that help.

But baby registries also create a lot of pressure. To spend spend spend. To a degree they encourage excessiveness. So many items are wanted but un-necessary, but they're so cute. And when you don't have a lot of money to spend spend spend, or when you're not close to the soon-to-be-parents, you dread scrolling through the baby registry. You don't want to seem cheap and only get the pacifiers. But at the same time, you don't want to go broke, again, for another baby whose items you purchase will be long forgotten and sometimes rarely used for the parents who you barely speak to or see except on social media.

So you purchase an item or a group of items. You send them if the parents live far away or if you're unable to make the baby shower. You take the items to the dreaded baby shower if you're able to make it (another reminder that you're in your thirties, not pregnant, and in a world that you truly can't understand yet that makes your social anxiety sky rocket because you're uncomfortable and surrounded by people you don't know but know all about the world of children).

Sometimes you get a thank you note, and that justifies your purchase and social anxiety. But more often than not, you don't receive a thank you note. And that just increases your annoyance with baby registries and baby showers -- it feels greedy and dirty. Cause if you don't gift something, you're looked down upon from the parents eyes and eschewed in future friendship and social situations.

And when people are pregnant, baby shower invitations come out of the woodwork. Oh, you're a classmate who I haven't heard from personally since we were in middle school and are only facebook friends -- but you're pregnant so you track down my address through other family members and suddenly I'm being pressured to attend (ahem, spend money on a gift) a baby shower.

It's ludicrous.

I enjoy giving gifts. I enjoy spoiling people I love and care about. I enjoy strolling through the baby departments and admiring all the precious, tiny things. I just hate the social and financial pressure that comes from the invitations of those who I am not close with.

And while I rant, I'm sure that there will be some people when I'm pregnant who receive an invitation and feel the same way, because they don't perceive our relationship the same way I do.

Such is life.

Now back to scrolling through this baby registry and figuring out how to appropriately spend what money I can to make the biggest impact possible so the parents feel a moment of appropriate excitement from us...

Grief (Originally written 5/16/18)

A week ago today I got the phone call that Dad had had a heart attack and was in cardiac ICU and I dropped everything and drove four hours to be with him. I was with him day in and day out, leaving only twice to get rest in a single bed and shower. After just a few days, he passed away on Saturday afternoon. There was a lot more involved than just this, but I just don't know if I want to share every single detail. I've journaled it. I've talked it through multiple times with different people. I don't know that I want to repeat it all AGAIN right now.

But I can say that Dad passed with dignity, surrounded by people who loved him, and in the way he wanted to go even if it was too soon for him to go. I can also say that he died knowing and accepting God's love. And that is a huge relief.

We put the funeral off until next week. So this week is a weird week. I'm feeling very numb and confused. It's so new it's not real. It's a rush of do this, do that, take care of this, don't forget that. We're tying up all the loose ends. Cleaning out the apartment. Figuring things out. It's a lot.

I took this week off of work. To process. To be able to get things done. To decompress. I went to counseling yesterday. I'm exhausted -- I have no energy between the lack of sleep last week and the grief and stress this week. Folding laundry takes everything I've got, and then I have to take a nap.

I'm so grateful that I have people in my life who care. Who  keep checking on me. Helping me. Letting me talk. Letting me vent. Letting me cry.

I'm so grateful that I got those last few days with my Dad. And that all things considered, he went out on his terms and by his rules. But what I would give for one of his bear hugs....

My heart is broken. It feels like there's a hole. And there is. That hole will never be filled again on this earth. But I have to smile because I know where my Dad is and whose he is and who he's with right now.

I don't understand why. I shake my fists and scream out about how unfair this is. I tremble with the pain of loss. I wonder how to navigate my future -- Dad was always the one I called first about everything. We had plans. Big plans. Trips. Get togethers. Holidays. He'll never meet my children and my children will never meet him.

I have waves of  intense emotion and waves of feeling like life is completely normal. And the normal waves make me feel guilty.

Grief is a back and forth experience.

Keto: Week 1