Don’t Mess With the Nest
I’m 30 weeks pregnant today. Which means I’m 10 weeks away from having this baby girl. Which means I’m entering my third trimester. Which means I’m nesting like a giant, puffy, round bird.
Anyone whose ever been pregnant and experienced the urge to nest will tell you that it is the strangest, strongest sensation. It cannot be ignored. It cannot be denied. It cannot be mistaken.
Nesting is freaking weird.
Even as we’re in the middle of it, pregnant women know it’s odd. We know it doesn’t make sense to suddenly not be able to do anything else until your medicine cabinet is perfectly organized alphabetically and cross-listed by expiration date. We know it doesn’t make sense to want to empty out an entire closet just to vacuum under all the coats that have fallen on the floor in there. We know it doesn’t make sense to not be able to function in the world until every baseboard has been bleached.
WE KNOW IT!
But if you think it’s hard for us pregnant women to understand what’s happening to us, try explaining it to our husbands. Chris does not understand nesting. He just doesn’t get it. He thinks I’m being ridiculous. And I can see his point. Perhaps cleaning the garage when I’m 30 weeks pregnant doesn’t make much sense. But I can’t help it. And I can’t be stopped.
SO WHY DOES HE ARGUE WITH ME?!?!? WHY!?!??!
Doesn’t he know that pregnant, nesting women are irrational? Doesn’t he know we make no sense whatsoever? Doesn’t he know we defy logic and all things sensible?
SO WHY DOES HE ARGUE?!?!?
I know that Chris functions differently than me. I get excited because my hormones tell me there’s a person growing inside of me. Chris doesn’t REALLY get excited until after the birth. I mean, he’s excited we’re going to have a baby. He can’t wait to meet her. But he’s not going to be sitting around the nursery with me, dreaming about the perfect bedding set or just the right curtains. It’s just not in his DNA. But that doesn’t mean those things aren’t important to me.
I’ve been pretty patient, too. I haven’t spent hardly any money at all. Anytime the nesting urge has hit, I’ve just sorted through what we already have and organized, cleaned, and arranged that stuff instead of going out and buying a bunch of stuff. I haven’t gone crazy with decorations for the nursery. I’ve kept things relatively simple and calm.
BUT WE’RE TWO AND A HALF MONTHS AWAY FROM HAVING A BABY.
It’s time to start getting some stuff ready. Nesting or no nesting, we’ve got to get some things done. Not a lot of things, but some things. And every time I mention them to Chris he melts down. Completely.
“You’re being ridiculous!”
“You’re rushing things!”
“Settle down, you’re acting crazy!”
I’M NOT CRAZY! I’M 30 WEEKS PREGNANT, YOU DOPE! JUST CLEAN YOUR COLLEGE CRAP OUT OF THE NURSERY CLOSET AND LEAVE ME ALONE!
If you don’t hear from me in the next few days, send help. I’ve probably gotten stuck trying to vacuum underneath some piece of furniture. Or, I’m in jail for beating my husband with a curtain rod.
Don’t mess with the nest.
*****
Today I am grateful for 72 degrees and sunshine.
30 Comments
Liss
Oh man, I know this all too well. Except I’m like this ALL the time, pregnant or not. My mum told me, when I was a teenager, that I was like a pregnant woman, perpetually nesting. When I actually was pregnant, I went into overdrive and started to feel like I’d never have the opportunity to clean anything ever again, which is why, at 38 weeks pregnant and with my partner out of town, I cleaned the whole unit, including moving furniture and mopping all the floors. And taking parts of the washing machine apart to clean them, because of course that would matter to a new baby… Nesting IS weird.
Rachel @ dreaming of the country
Oh gosh, I’m like this all the time! What hope do I have when I’m pregnant?!
Leah
Oh how I’m dreading/anticipating the nesting phase. I wish it hit me 2nd trimester when I could breath and lift things but I think I’ve been waiting until this business trip is over. It’s my last one. I’m only 6 weeks away and after reading this post I’m so ready to get home!! Panicing a bit….eek!
Abby @ They Lend Me Their Hearts
The nesting urge is strong! I wish I was in nesting mode more regularly while not pregnant… after all, my bigger chicks would like a pretty nest too!
We’ve never had much money to spend when I’ve been pregnant, so I did the same thing you’re doing. Organizing, re-arranging, cleaning toys, obsessively looking for things from the previous babies that I could still use!
Catherine M.
Chris is lucky you’re not like me. I used to delegate my nesting (“Dan go scrub the floors!” “Dan polish our appliances!”). Hahahaha.
Jennifer
I’m not even pregnant and I get irrational about cleaning things sometimes :-). Can’t believe you only have 10 weeks left, that’s so fast!
Elizabeth@The Sweet Life
“I’M NOT CRAZY! I’M 30 WEEKS PREGNANT, YOU DOPE! JUST CLEAN YOUR COLLEGE CRAP OUT OF THE NURSERY CLOSET AND LEAVE ME ALONE!” — this really sums up marriage sometimes, doesn’t it? Stop talking to me and just pick up your darn stuff! Thanks for another entertaining and spot-on post.
Katy @ MonsterProof
My husband can’t WAIT for this. He’s the perpetual nester, and and I’m still in the, “I’m huge and achy and want to sit on the couch” phase
Casper
I am almost 36 weeks along and I am not sure if nesting has hit me yet. I am normally a clean freak! My closet, when I had clothes that fit, were color coded by type of clothing article. I clean the house top to bottom every weekend, when I wasn’t spending my days on the couch keeping my bun in the oven. So when the moment strikes to clean up I don’t know if it is just my need to clean or if it is nesting. So maybe if I don’t know if it is or isn’t… than it isn’t.
Tiffany
HA! Thanks for making me smile this morning… It cracks me up that men try to fight this nesting thing. Shouldn’t they just shut up and appreciate the extraordinary cleanliness of everything while it lasts? It really seems like a good thing, and being asked to help move a few things is no big deal. You’re the one carrying around a BABY in your belly, for crying out loud!
Diana @ A Little Bit of Life
My son came five weeks early so I completely agree with time being of the essence. We luckily pretty much had everything ready but if I hadn’t been a crazy nester it would have been a whole different story!
Emily
Oh my gosh! I was about 36 weeks pregnant when I decided that garage HAD to be swept and cleaned out. It was an absolute MUST! I asked my husband to do it and two days later did it myself. Why don’t the guys get this??? Just do it already! Oh did I mention is was February, in Nebraska??? Hello single digit temps! And there I was with my huge belly sweeping out the garage. Thanks for the memory 🙂
Lindsay (YoungMarriedMom)
Careful, Katie. My aunt nested/cleaned herself right into labor! On the other hand, if you’re interested in something else to obsess about, Craigslist is a great way to nest on a budget–we got our glider/ottoman, changing table, and co-sleeper for waaaay less than retail, and it’s all like new!
Mindee@ourfrontdoor
I got lucky. My nesting urge compelled me to cook and bake non-stop until I had 30 full meals in the freezer ready to go. And muffins, cookies, pie filling . . .I don’t know why 30 was such a magic number but I could not rest until they were all there. Before I could go to sleep at night I had to go through them all in my head.
Not. Rational.
Lyz
Um I resemble this remark. I’m 30 weeks pregnant, and I am pretty sure last weekend I tore apart our bedroom and repainted, the weekend before I tore apart our kitchen and reorganized and this weekend I have my sights set on the basement. My husband is literally cowering in the corner.
Sarah in CT
I’m only 21 weeks, and I’m feeling it too! Luckily, I have Jon on board with getting our room ready, since we will be living on top of each other when baby boy arrives. He has finally caved ( I WIN, I WIN!!!!) to painting the room and rearranging all the furniture, since we might have guests and people popping in to see the baby or change a diaper or whatever. We might actually have a grown-up looking bedroom now!!! And once Jon gets a bee in his bonnet, there’s no holding him back. I like that about him. All I have to do is plant a rationalized seed, and he takes off! He is just like Chris with the “plenty of time” response, though. I think he’s just excited to have a project right now.
Ashley
While I have never been pregnant, perhaps this is the explanation for why my mother tells me that when her water broke when she was pregnant with me, she began vaccuming and cleaning our house.
Jen c
I had such strong nesting urges but they were thwarted by my severe sciatica. So I was confined to the couch, muttering and grumbling as I stared at my living room and thought about all the organizing I wanted to do. And I’m insanely jealous of your 70’s and sunshine. It’s 20 here in st louis and we’re in for 6 inches of snow tonight. Wanna trade places for a few days? 🙂
Sandy
i am supposed to be cleaning my baseboards with bleach? wait a minute, let me back up…i am supposed to be cleaning my baseboards?
Kristan @ Scenes from the Galley
While I’m not currently 30 weeks pregnant, I am a 31 year old woman, and that nesting urge can also hit pretty hard when your biological clock is tick-tocking away! And nesting urges are not so easily cured in a super small apartment with stuff crammed into every nook and cranny and a similarly misunderstanding fiance….
Tressa
OH YES, the nesting stage! I remember that oh so well. LOL With my daughter I was going crazy nesting for about 4 weeks. I was scrubbing the guttering with a toothbrush!! Watch out Chris, you may get bleached too!! Just step out of the pregnant ladies way!! 😉
Renee
I have been nesting since the second I found out I was pregnant. The future baby’s room is currently an office. The office will need to move to the basement (husband’s job) before I can create the nursery. But…hubs is ignoring his job. I’m the opposite of you–I am 10 weeks, which means I have 30 weeks until this little one arrives. But I still can’t help but feel the urgency of getting the room ready.
Michelle
This makes me smile because I was feeling these exact same things at this exact same time last year (my daughter’s was born on april 9th last year). My husband did not understand nor really want to help at all. In fact i ended up going through all of his boxes that were in the nursery closet by myself when he was gone one day; which by the way worked out well because i was able to throw most of the crap away! Good luck with nesting! What colors are you doing the nursery in?
Kat @ Living Like the Kings
Chris – are you reading this? Seriously dude, it’s pregnancy 101 – do not stop a pregnant woman from nesting! The hubs and I took this birth prep class where the lady actually sat all the guys down and explained nesting to them and told them that they were, under no circumstances, to get in the way of it. Unless it endangered the life of the mother or child. Like trying to change the light bulb on the outside light when there’s 2 feet of snow on the ground. That’s the only time they should really interfere.
rebecca
Oh my GOODNESS!!!!! When I went into my nesting phase I was 36 weeks pregnant….I’ll never forget it. Driving home from his mother’s house I decided that my house was utterly disgusting and needed to be cleaned from top to bottom NOW. Brad thought I had lost my cotton pickin mind! (In general, I have never…in my life…noticed a dirty baseboard) We cleaned for the next 2 days straight…taking a break only to eat and to go to the store to buy organizational items that I NEEDED. On the way to dinner after 48 straight hours of this my husband asked if this happened with every pregnancy or just the first. I responded “with every pregnancy”. I’ll never forget his response, “I’m making an appointment with the dr on monday. this is the absolute worst part of pregnancy.” I would like to point out that I puked my GUTS out for 9 months straight…and to my husband, nesting, was the worst part!
Megan (Best of Fates)
Now I wish I was nesting so I’d force myself to clean my closet. But then I’d have a baby and it’d probably just mess my closet up again. So that wouldn’t work.
Meghan
Too funny! I’ll be honest, I WISH I had the nesting instinct when I was preggers (or now, for that matter). My house would be a whole lot cleaner and more organized! I found out I was pregnant less than 2 months after we bought our house, so we hadn’t even completely unpacked yet. I kept waiting for the nesting instinct to kick in and help me go through boxes and organize everything, but I ended up being too tired and irritated to do anything about the mountain of stuff 🙂
Just when I thought nothing would get done (I spent a lot of my pregnancy off my feet…doctor’s orders), my husband suddenly got the nesting instinct. A good thing, too, or our daughter’s nursery would have NEVER gotten done. I wanted nothing to do with any of it. Thank goodness he picked good colors for the walls 🙂
Lori @ I Can Grow People
I nested pretty hard around 30 weeks. Aaron was at USITT and there I was, me and my big belly, on my hands and knees scrubbing the baseboards in the master bathroom because they NEEDED to be SPOTLESS!!!
And you aren’t rushing things. We tried not to “rush things” and had A LOT of stuff not done when P-Bo arrived 5 weeks early!
Tracy
I understand COMPLETELY what you are going through. I’ll be exactly 28 weeks tomorrow and my husband and I have the same conversation/argument all the time. He thinks I’m neurotic (I’m not necessarily arguing with him on that one…), but I think he’s being to laid back about not getting things ready. Talk about driving a pregnant woman to brink. It doesn’t help matters that we just finished a big remodel only to come home and find our house flooded after Christmas due to a busted hot water heater. So now, there is furniture in places it doesn’t belong (THE BABY’S ROOM!) and I’m having a hard time conveying the urgency to move it out of there. And we have concrete floors in the dining room where the new wood floor is supposed to be. It never ends!!!
Ann G-B
I never had any nesting urges. Maybe I should have – We never put the nursery together until months after he was born. I guess I didn’t really believe it was real. I did really want my husband to clean up though!